Pamper your puppers in the Nissan Rogue Dogue
And no, it's not just a rebadged version of the Nissan X-Trail 4Dogs concept.
In March, Nissan showed off the 4Dogs concept, using the Euro-spec X-Trail crossover. Now, at the New York Auto Show , it's adapted the concept to the US market, relying on the Rogue and making a few unique tweaks.
The Nissan Rogue Dogue concept -- don't ask me how to pronounce "Dogue" -- is a modified Rogue that puts the puppy first. If your dog returns to the car covered in mud, there's a hose connected to a 10-gallon water tank that you can use to give the little one a quick shower. Getting the dog into the car is even easier, thanks to a retractable ramp that connects to the trunk.
Hell, the dog probably has it better than the humans in this car.
Speaking of the trunk, it's been converted into a puppy paradise. There's a secured dog bed in the back, and the whole cargo area is covered in easy to clean materials. A Rogue Dogue branded partition keeps the dog safe in the cargo area, but the second row pass-through can be lowered to allow easy movement between the cargo area and the second row, which features a removable hammock to better catch all that dog hair.
The cargo area also features a built-in food and water dispenser, a dog-specific first aid kid, harness clips and heated air vents. If he or she is more of a head-out-the-window dog, there's a side-view camera that can capture the dog's best jowl-flapping moments and record them to an internal hard drive.
Nissan surveyed dog owners about what features would be most welcome in a car, and 81 percent agreed that a clip-in harness hook was most important, followed by a water dispenser, with the slide-out ramp in third place. And what do you know -- they're all present and accounted for here.
Try as you might, but it's sadly unlikely that Nissan will actually put this into production. That doesn't mean you can't cobble together your own homebrew version, though. You can check out the Nissan Rogue Dogue concept in person at the New York Auto Show this month.
