A new Nissan Frontier is on the way. We talked about it a bit earlier this year, and if this new report is accurate, it’s going to hit the streets in September of 2020 as a 2021 model, with a few welcome changes.
According to Automotive News, the new Frontier is slated to drop in the fall of next year. The outlet’s sources say that the new truck will have an available 3.0-liter V6 making approximately 300 horsepower. It’ll get a newer seven-speed automatic transmission, replacing the antiquated five-speed unit, and is likely a component similar to what Nissan uses in other products.
This report interestingly suggests that the next Frontier, while “looking futuristic” and being something “a truck guy will want,” the Frontier won’t be based on the a new version of the global platform that underpins Navara.
Allegedly, the next Frontier will ride on an updated version of the F-Alpha truck platform that the current Frontier uses. Yes, it’ll be heavily updated but it won’t get the more-expensive-to-produce link-coil rear suspension, but rather retain the leaf spring setup of the current Frontier. This also allows for the truck to get bigger, which seems to be a midsize truck trend.
Ed Kim, an analyst at AutoPacific told Automotive News, “Navara is a smaller truck than Frontier. It makes more sense for Nissan to re-engineer the existing Frontier platform than spend significant money and resources to up-size the Navara platform and develop a new North American truck from it.”
Frontier sells consistently well, though it is down a bit this year. For a truck that was last redesigned in 2004, it has aged well and is the third best-selling light truck behind the Rogue and Murano. It could help that the average transaction price of the Frontier is less than $30,000 when the segment sits at $32,800 last year.
A lot is riding on this new Frontier, which is part of the company’s plan to bring people into the Nissan truck fold and increase Titan sales. Tough competition exists with new offerings from Jeep and Ford, but the midsize truck segment is one of the few that are continuing to grow. We’ll find out soon enough, it seems.