I thought about the Element, even though my kids thought it was embarrasssingly ugly. That didn't stop me, but the lack of ground clearance did. The Element would never make it to my fishing camp. I don't know that it has a whole lot of cargo-hauling advantages over the X-Trail, either.
And after a couple of weeks with the dashtop gauge pod, I actually like it better. Maybe in something extremely wide like a Hummer or Escalade, it would be a problem, but in the X-Trail the tach is directly opposite my right shoulder, with the speedo only an inch to the right of that. And they're almost at eye level -- you can check 'em without fully taking your eyes off the road. I feel unsafe in my other car now, with its conventional dash display hidden 'way down low behind the steering wheel.
