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Nissan rowed the Note ashore [w/video]

Normally we wouldn't suggest trying to float your car on water, but Nissan has made some modifications to turn its new Versa Note hatchback into a makeshift rowing shell.
Nissan replaced the car's rear seats with a sliding rear rowing seat, modified the doors to open wider at 90 degrees and fitted a pair of oars. Most importantly, they put the whole thing on a floating platform to keep it from sinking into Eton Dorney Lake, the site of the 2012 Olympic rowing competitions in England (where the car is simply known as the Nissan Note).
Then they invited medal-winning competitive rowers Helen Glover, Sophie Hosking and Polly Swann to come along and row the thing, making use of the around-view monitor system to see where they were going. All in all it may not be quite as cool as the boats which Fiat made out of the 500 or Mini made out of its convertible, but it's still enough to float our boat. Check it out in the video clip and press release below and the image gallery above.

Nissan recalls over 220k Altima sedans over hoods that could fly open

Nissan will be recalling 220,000 Altima sedans, according to a new recall bulletin from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Apparently, model year 2013 Altimas built between March 6, 2012 and February 28, 2013 are at risk of their hoods flying open at speed.
According to NHTSA, debris, corrosion and interference between the hood's inner panel and the secondary latch lever could bind the mechanism in the unlatched position. While this in itself won't cause the hood to fly open - there's still a primary latch that needs released from within the cabin - it presents a potentially dangerous situation should the primary latch be accidentally released.
Nissan will begin notifying owners of the affected vehicles, who will need to report to their local dealer for free repairs. Scroll down for the full bulletin from the government safety watchdog.

Dacia Duster to spawn inexpensive Nissan Terrano, will we get it?

When going to overseas auto shows, one can't help but spend an inordinate amount of time eyeballing forbidden automotive fruit. It's often of the seriously rare, criminally powerful and six- or seven-digit variety. But more often than one might think, the genuinely affordable overseas hero makes us swoon, too. So it is with the Dacia/Renault Duster, the cheap-as-chips, hard-wearing utility vehicle. We've often thought that its basic, rugged charms would play well in the US if saddled with a low enough price tag, but we've never seen much of a window for that to actually come true.
But now, Autocar India is reporting that Nissan will flex its alliance with Renault to spin off a Duster of its own, one that exhumes the Terrano nameplate, a moniker once used for overseas versions of the first- and second-generation Pathfinder. The new model will feature unique sheetmetal to give it a familial look, but the interior will be the same, and we expect the same goes for the powertrain, meaning there will be a range of gasoline and diesel four-cylinder engines with both manual and automatic gearboxes and front- or all-wheel drive.
So, does that mean we'll get a Nissan version of the Duster-based Terrano to call our own? Sadly, almost certainly not. Company spokesman Dan Bedore tells Autoblog flatly, "There are no plans to bring this model to the US." Bummer. Even if it isn't ultimately as capable as the larger, long-in-the-tooth Xterra (it's more on par with the now departed Canadian-market X-Trail), we think the Duster's archetypal SUV looks and low cost barrier would win it plenty of fans in our market. Our guess is that redesigning the model to meet US regulations (crash, emissions, lighting, etc.) would be prohibitively expensive, and the Dacia/Renault model is built in some pretty distant facilities - Brazil, India, Romania and Russia among them - making the business case harder still.