Ah, the topic of trucks.....Just don't wheel a D40 very hard. The front axle is an aluminum R180 and stresses will crack them like an egg. When they switched over from the D22 platform, they added 85HP and put in the smallest axles they could find. The D44 rear seems to hold up OK (unlike the Titan axles which have had tons of failures with guys who actually use the trucks to tow the rated amount). This would only be due to the fact it's a smaller, somewhat lighter truck that typically isn't used for heavy towing.

Frontiers are still OK trucks but they don't compete with the Tacoma in resale. Not even close. You'd have to get a smoking deal on one to make the Frontier purchase worth while, and then plan to drive the wheels off it. If you are a trader inner, the Frontier is a terrible deal compared to a Taco, no matter how good the truck is.

I too wish the solid front axle would come back. I've SAS'd a few D22s myself, and we've got literally hundreds of them over on N4W that have been SAS'd over the years. You'd think manufacturers would notice this. Jeep is at last making a Wrangler pickup in 2019 that satisfies almost all my wildest dreams about what an OEM should do. The problem with it is that it's still a fricking Jeep.

Toyota got the mini truck exactly right from 1979-1985. It's the gold standard. Underpowered but otherwise basically bulletproof and simple as they should be.

I have wheeled my R51 Pathfinder on some very mild trails, but if I were going to get back into full on wheeling again I would not put that kind of stress on my daily. I used to wheel an 81 Jeep CJ7 Renegade on 33's and it still had the old AMC 20 in the rear of it. I finally spun a hub on it one weekend and had to drive home on the front axle, but other than that I just threw some one piece axles in it and kept right on for another couple of years.

I've got a 94 Dodge Ram 1500 Reg Cab Short Bed i've been holding on to that has a D44 Front Axle and Chrysler 9.25 Rear that i'm considering turning into the next wheeling rig. It wouldn't be my choice if I were buying, but it basically fell in my lap since my father in law decided he didn't like it anymore.

If I were starting fresh, it would probably be with another Jeep(probably a TJ), for simplicity sake.

That Dodge wouldn't be a bad platform to start with. I sold My Frontier after 19+ years (it was solid axle swapped, crawler gears, dual lockers, exo cage, etc)....I am now in a '77 F150 short bed reg cab 4x4 built reasonably well. It does great on the trails...its only drawback is its width, but since most of my wheeling is more expedition style these days the additional space for gear is worth it.

This is a non-CVT household. Period. I've test drove so many of them I could just puke. They are just awful, awful, awful.

When we were in Japan, I was talking to one of the engineers out of the Philippines. We were talking about the Americans view on Nissan and I was perfectly honest with him. We love the old stuff, can't get excited about the new lineup. He seemed surprised to hear that Americans haven't grown to like the CVT since technology has "improved". I told him that no one who considers themselves a car enthusiast likes a CVT. The project planner from India agreed.

I distinctly remember a black, red, and white box shaped car at the Childs household with a CVT, lol. Looked like Eddie Van Halen's guitar.

I'm joining this party a little too late, but whatever. 2 years ago, I told my dad to take me to the car dealers in Miami, as we were in vacation at that time. However, when we went to Nissan, my dad literally made an offer on our current and only Nissan and bought it. It was a sad day to see our old Odyssey leave. Fast-forward 1.5 years later, we had to buy another car, and my dad wanted a Lexus (part of those killing death traps IMO that I seriously hate and had plentiful negative experiences with them) or an Infiniti. Him knowing that I'm a car guy, I convinced him to buy an Acura MDX, after I made a huge argument to him that Honda is down-right better than any other Japanese brand and we are a Honda family. So far, we have 3 Honda's (if you count Acura as a Honda), 1 Nissan, and 1 Hyundai. Unlike Honda, Nissan does screw up in so many departments, and I am at the point that I cannot rely and trust the stupid Navigation. Now, our Rogue just passed the 48k mile mark, as we put roughly 20k-25k miles on it per year, and man, does that car loves to be super loud. However, I haven't yet encountered an issue on the Rogue, which is weird, considering how many people on these forums has encountered multiple problems within the first few thousand miles.

Now, most of my experience has been with Honda, so I will go back to them, but probably to their luxury division, Acura, in 4 years, after I graduate from college. Would I trade my Nissan in, probably not, because I will be using this as a beater car and probably a show car too, but definitely not a family car. Will there be another CVT car in the family, I don't know, but definitely not in the next few years.

I've honestly had my share of terrible Nissan customer service when it comes to dealing with anything parts/warranty related. It astounds me how they manage to still sell vehicles in this modern day and age, where "word of mouth" as you call it is instant (look at examples like Snapchat basically loosing millions of dollars from a single tweet). It's as if dealers have adopted the mentality of "you're going to buy it anyway, so give us your money and when it breaks (freshly out of warranty I might add) give us more of your money because we won't stand by our product".

Now the issue with that mentality isn't so much that it's terrible or bad for product image (it is) it's that now not only will I (and I have) advise friends and family to stay away from the brand as a whole, I can easily refer to countless horror stories of others buying from the brand and never going back.

Three out of my last five cars have all been Lexus brand, and yes Lexus does charge a premium for their product from sales straight down to parts and service. One thing i'm hard pressed to find from /any/ Lexus dealer is terrible service. Now i'm not here to advocate for that brand in particular it's just that i'm ashamed and almost saddened to see what Nissan has become. My first car experience, my first turbo experience was ALL Nissan, from my brother's CA s13 to his VQ(turbo) Cedric, my neighbor had a R33 gts that I got to drive, Hell my DREAM car used to be the 350z. That was why I even bought one, (and I promptly turned around and sold it as well) If left up to me I would have never bothered going to any other brand/manufacturer outside of Nissan if the dealerships didn't ruin the experience for me.

I'm in the market for a new car right now and test drove the Juke and it felt like it would break if I even bothered to try and push it, the sentra's reliability record is swiss cheese, and the 370z is honestly to old of a car to consider buying new (i'd pickup a used 370 before buying one off the lot ((even then i'd still prefer a used G/q/whatevernomenclaturetheyusenow)) and before I'd consider buying one of those i'd consider spending my money on a vehicle that's marginally slower than both but far more reliable.

/rant

Signed
Someone who would love to love Nissan but like...