Anti-Aging

"Another Quality Story" Anti-Aging3:19

Anti-Aging. In time, all things deteriorate to varying degrees as the years pass. And just as we work to slow the aging process with diet, exercise and health products, there is a team at Nissan who work to ensure your car won't age prematurely, and is fit to give you years of driving pleasure. Their work goes on day and night to keep your car from aging, but for them the enemy is not wrinkles, blemishes and greying hair, it's rust.

Mr. Umezawa, Vehicle Reliability Test Group

The aim of our tests is to build a car that does not rust through giving a car a lifetime's worth of rust or creating a corrosive environment.

One of our tests is for when a car is in motion, such as chipping on gravel roads, and then on roads with mud and salt water. We re-enact market environments on a test course and accelerate corrosion.

Another test we do is in a testing laboratory. We spray salt water in the room and leave a car in hot and humid conditions to make it rust. In these ways we speed up rusting on the car.

The moisture is also quite high, accelerating corrosion.

We run tests imitating the harshest of regions, even conditions that ordinarily we do not experience, making the car rust and checking for problems.

We also run final tests over rough roads, and over curbstones and steps. We put the car through all kinds of shocks, checking there are no problems with the car's functionality.

When everything is finished we then disassemble the car again, down to every single panel. If there is rust, we learn from this and correct it. We ultimately hope to guarantee a car that will have no rust problems.

By subjecting cars to a barrage of tough tests - equal to the harshest conditions the planet has to offer - the team can prematurely age a vehicle by a matter of years in just a few hours.

Mr. Umezawa, Vehicle Reliability Test Group

Corrosion protection is a natural element of quality. It is a capability that customers almost never think about when they buy a car.

However, if there are problems five or ten years later, then it really hits home.

We think it is important to make a car that never rusts.

Since the tests and phenomena take time, it is important to keep continuing to do our work.