Nissan’s Next Titan and Frontier Trucks Still Years Away

Current Nissan Frontier There will be replacements for the aged Titan and Frontier pickup trucks, but Nissan has confirmed to us that they're still several years away. The company had hoped to have a new Titan on the market by now; the design and engineering work was completed on a Nissan-branded version of Chrysler's Ram 1500. But with Chrysler's bankruptcy and subsequent takeover by Fiat, that deal was dissolved, and it left Nissan without a truck to launch. Fortunately, Nissan's engineers did work on evolving the Titan's frame when building the big NV vans, and on earlier occasions we've heard that they would make fine bones for even a heavy-duty pickup truck. This isn't to say that product developers at Nissan have an easy task ahead of them in building the next Titan, but at least they've got a start. We're still "a couple of years" away from seeing the finished product, one source says. Nissan's smaller Frontier also will get a replacement, but at this point, development is even farther behind the Titan. We're told that the Frontier will almost definitely remain a body-on-frame vehicle, even though the Pathfinder, with which it previously had shared a platform, is moving to unibody architecture. If Nissan does go ahead with a body-on-frame Frontier, you can bet that there also will be a body-on-frame third-generation Nissan Xterra, too. (The current Xterra still rides on a frame, and production has been confirmed for many years to come.) While we'd have liked to see new-gen Nissan trucks sooner, the delay is understandable. Chrysler's financial woes had nothing to do with Nissan, and compact-pickup shoppers are more forgiving to older products than are those looking for, say, a mid-size sedan. Ford just discontinued its Ranger after a 28-year product run with decade-long lapses between updates. Until GM finally delivers the new Colorado to the U.S., the current Nissan Frontier will have only the Toyota Tacoma as competition. from Car and Driver Blog http://blog.caranddriver.com

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