What do I mean by that?

Well the temptation of making it grow in size must have been there.
Thats where everyone else has been going, to the point that todays "midsize" trucks are similar to what fullsize was 20 yrs ago (and so get bigger price wise too).

Instead on the Frontier they showed restraint and modernized the exterior and the interior.
Gave it more power, while keeping the same size and I bet approx the same weight.

Making a PreRunner trim available ("PROX) was clever too.

Yes ,some folks will decry the demise of the manual but if this truck takes off as much as I suspect it will, the volume will be there in a couple of years to justify the huge expense of presenting multiple manual models to DOT and EPA for testing.

Keeping it at one engine/tranny choice gives Nissan the economy of scale to keep the price of this content rich truck reasonable.

This will be a hit:

I'm a fan. I've never really been interested in another truck (our 2005 Frontier was PERFECT) but I'm really intrigued by this one.