‘Has anyone ever heard of this?’: Man opens a letter from Nissan. Then, he’s shocked they want to borrow his truck

Nissan is apparently asking actual customers to borrow their vehicles for a few weeks of “testing,” and a man named Matthew Rutledge is going viral after sharing the unbelievable request on his TikTok, @thatsmrdad. Back in August, Rutledge says he got a letter in the mail that essentially said, “Hey, we know there was a recall on your truck’s emission system, so can we just take it for a few weeks to run some tests?”

I honestly can’t believe a car company would send a letter like that (or make the commercials they do), but Nissan did offer him a pretty sweet deal for the inconvenience. The automaker apparently wasn’t planning on leaving Rutledge high and dry, which, to be fair, is a nice gesture. Rutledge quickly pointed out one upside: “They said they would pay me for the inconvenience,” and they also offered him a loaner car with unlimited miles while his truck was gone.

A free rental with no mileage worries plus cash sounds like a decent trade-off, but the whole situation still left him completely stunned. It’s the kind of thing that makes you ask, just like he did in his video, “Has anyone ever heard of this?” This isn’t even the unsellable Nissan Leaf, either.

Nissan is paying a driver to borrow his car

If you’re scratching your head, wondering if car manufacturers can actually do this, the answer is a big, fat, yes. It turns out this whole thing is much more common than most people realize. The reason automakers like Nissan want to get their hands on a regular person’s truck, one that has some wear-and-tear and has been driven around town for months or years, comes down to data and compliance. Every car company has to participate in programs like the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) In-Use Verification Program.

This program randomly tests a selection of vehicles to make sure they still meet the government’s strict emissions standards long after they roll off the dealership lot. The key here is that a controlled track in a lab can only reveal so much. You can test a brand new engine on a factory course all day, but only a vehicle that’s been driven in real-world conditions (through stop-and-go traffic, different climates, and maybe even a few potholes) can truly tell them what’s happening under the hood.

By testing systems like emissions controls, brakes, sensors, and cameras in real life, they get a clearer picture of how the car performs and how well its components hold up over time. It’s user-centric data that helps shape how future models are built and improved. Plus, this real-world testing is a huge benefit for us, the drivers, because it can flag potential defects before they explode into bigger, more expensive problems, which is always nice to see.