Three dealers. Three used Nissans. From Bonneville Salt Flats to Ophir Pass — with the most-feared transmission in modern car culture under every hood.
1,500 miles from Utah salt to Colorado high pass. The cars are 2014–2017 Nissans we bought used. The roads are not.
Utah · Bonneville Salt Flats · CVT torture test
Three Nissans. The most famous straight-line race surface in America. Zero prep. The first question of the season is whether anything makes it home with its transmission still attached.
Utah · Little Sahara · Sand dunes
Salt trades for sand. The Nissans claw through dunes that AWD CVT crossovers were never built for. Someone catches air. Someone else regrets a fuel decision.
Utah · Cathedral Valley · River crossing
A route the maps label "impassable for most vehicles." River fords, deep sand, rock steps, and three transmissions doing math they were not designed to do.
Utah · Moab · Rock crawling
Moab is where the bad ideas get tested at scale. Bentonite clay, razorback ridges, slickrock climbs, and a roof rack that ejects at highway speed.
Utah · Moab · Cliffside switchbacks
Long Canyon ledges into the Shafer Trail switchbacks — clinging to the rim of Island in the Sky with no guardrail and no second chance. The smell is the transmission asking us to stop.
Colorado · Telluride · Mountain roads
Moab to Telluride. Desert heat to thin alpine air. The repairs are zip ties. The math is bad fuel math. The climb is past 11,000 feet.
Colorado · Ophir Pass · Finale
The send-off was supposed to be smooth. Ophir Pass had other plans. A ledge barely wide enough for one car, a boulder with a personal grudge, and a finale that nobody scripted.
