The Nissan Navara is a model sold around the world in different guises. In the United States, the mid-size pickup is called the Nissan Frontier but remained identical to the Navara until a few years ago. Now, for the 2022 model year, there is a new Nissan Frontier in the U.S. but it will now stand separate from the internationally-sold Nissan Navara.
In the Australian car market, car-based pickup trucks or Utes were quite popular. Some of these vehicles, like the Holden Maloo or the Ford’s FPV F6, took the pickup truck to levels of performance unimaginable for the genre. But taking their place are midsize pickups such as the Ford Ranger and the Toyota Hilux, both of which come with aggressive offroad versions. Now Nissan is thinking about cashing in on the combined opportunity of fast pickup trucks by dropping a V8 under the hood of the Navara, giving birth to a NISMO variant.
Swedish magazine Teknikens Värld, well-known for their “moose” tests that involve swerving a car to the next lane, then swerving back to the original lane, has performed these tests on a variety of pickup trucks, with interesting results.
German luxury auto-maker Mercedes-Benz showcased the X-Class Concept — a new pickup truck — on October 25 in Stockholm, disclosing few details.
If you hadn’t noticed, the Nissan Xterra was discontinued in August last year, with final stocks selling out by the first few months of this year. While the fate of the true body-on-frame 4×4 was up in the air, we can now confirm via sources that a new model is in development for release sometime in 2017. There is even a prototype running in Australia, with a Pathfinder Classic body.
Nissan made its debut in the pick-up segment way back in 1933 with its pint-sized Datsun 12, yet Toyota managed to comprehensively usurp it with the launch of its Hilux in 1968. The latter’s dominance in this region is especially emphatic, and the stats reflect this -– the Hilux has succeeded in cornering a huge 75% of the segment in the GCC, while the existing Navara and Pickup have been able to muster up just 12% between them. Nissan aims to at least partly redress this imbalance via its new “NP300” Navara line-up, which replaces not only the old Navara,
The Renault-Nissan Alliance and Daimler AG have just announced a joint venture in the form of a pickup truck. Together, Nissan and Daimler will develop a 1-ton pickup truck for Mercedes-Benz.
The Dubai dealer for Nissan has announced the introduction of the 2012 Nissan Patrol Pickup in the UAE at the 2012 Commercial Vehicles Middle East show. The company also displayed the Nissan Urvan panel van and the Nissan Navara pick-up.