The Nissan Tekton has dropped. It landed in India first. It is basically a third-gen Renault Duster. But dressed up. Like really well dressed up.
Does it matter that it won’t be coming to Australia? Probably not, but still. The Tekton rolls off the line in Chennai. Same platform as the Duster started earlier this year. But the face? Totally new. Sharp angles. A taller grille. Headlights borrowed directly from the new Y63 Patrol.
There’s a badge on the hood that spells out the name. Loudly.
Surface-Level Changes
The sides look simpler. Sills and door trims got the minimum viable treatment. Then Nissan slapped on fake vents on the front doors. Why? Because the Patrol has them. It’s a visual nod. Or just aesthetic borrowing. Hard to tell.
Round the back, the taillights got a graphics update. Bigger badging. A different bumper.
The inside? Actually decent. Better than the Romanian-made Duster sold in Europe and Australia anyway. More piano black plastic around the vents. New trim piece over the passenger dash. Different upholstery mixes.
You get a 10.1-inch touchscreen with built-in Google stuff. It looks linked to the instrument cluster. Either 7.0-inch or 10.2-inch. Connected by that slab of shiny plastic.
Safety tech includes six airbags, blind-spot monitoring, lane assist, autonomous emergency braking.
Not bad. Not great. Standard for the segment.
Power and Place
India gets two engines. The cheap one? A 1.0L three-cylinder turbo with a mild hybrid assist. 74kW. 160Nm. The expensive one gets the 1.4L four-cylinder. 120kW. 280Nm.
The 1.8L hybrid Duster doesn’t exist in this lineup. Gone.
In India, this is one of only four Nissans on sale. The other three? The Gravite. Which is a Triber with a new sticker. The Magnite. A small SUV built for the old Datsun brand. And the imported X-Trail.
The Tekton is going to fifty markets in Asia and the Middle East though. Australia is left out. Why? Because Australian Dusters come from Dacia in Romania. Different rear end. Different interior. Different engines.
Renault and Nissan aren’t what they used to be. Since Ghosn fell out. Since the legal mess. But they still talk. Still share platforms. The European Nissan Micra is just a Renault 5 in clothes.
Is the Tekton anything more than that? Or is it just a Duster trying too hard to look like a Patrol?
