Nissan Titan Pro-4X Review and Off-Road Test - 13th Best?

This is the Nissan Titan Pro-4X. With updated looks and a solid feature set, why doesn't anybody buy this truck? That close! Well we hit the trail looking for answers on this episode of Driving Sports TV. In the truck world, the Ford F-Series reigns supreme, with annual sales hovering close to 1 million units a year. Whether you're hauling or hooning, Ford has a truck to fit your requirements. Look a little further down the sales chart and you'll see some great other options, from Ram, Chevy, and Toyota. In spite of where they sit on the sales chart, ask any owner and they'll tell you that their brand is the best of the bunch. That's just as true with Ford, you know, actual number one, as it is with Toyota, which was number four last year with the Tacoma. But how about even lower on the sales list? Is there a truck worth looking at way on the bottom? This is the 2020 Nissan Titan, otherwise known as the 13th best-selling truck in America in 2019. Yes, it was 13th, behind the Jeep Gladiator, the Ford Ranger, even Nissan's own Ancient Frontier, which was 9th for the record. Refreshed in 2020 and completely carried over for the 2021 model year, the new Titan is loaded with some great features, and a design that is worth taking a closer look at. Under the hood is one engine option. Nissan's 5.6-liter Endurance V8. This setup puts out a peak 400 horsepower and 413 pound-feet of torque. It's connected to a shift-on-the-fly four-wheel drive system with a dual-range transfer case and a nine-speed automatic transmission. EPA rates this setup at 15 miles to the gallon in the city and 21 on the highway. Our test rig came with the Pro-4X off-road packages. Together, these add a functional skid plate and rugged step boards. In addition to a long list of convenience and tech upgrades. If you're looking at those red tow hooks, yeah, they're standard. Prices you see it here, $60,180 including destination. Maximum towing capacity is 9,370 pounds. Fold down the rear gate and you can see this Titan bed is fully lined from the factory. It also has a customizable rail system and a fold-down step to make bed access super easy. Total payload is 1,680 pounds. The Titan is only available with four doors. The model we have here is the smaller crew cab. When you need to use the second row as a secure cabin for equipment, it is easy to fold up the seat and make a flat floor. But that doesn't mean that it's short of features for human passengers. The panorama sunroof lets in a lot of light, making it a very pleasant space to hang out. Other amenities include fold-down armrest with cup holders, AC power, seat warmers, and USB power. Up front is a bland but functional experience. There are lots of useful cubbies to store everyday accessories. Buttons and switches are clearly marked and easy to reach. The driver's seat is eight-way power adjustable. Plus, both the steering wheel and seats have heaters. The main gauge cluster features the standard Nissan digital screen between a pair of analog gauges. Nissan claims that the main infotainment system is the best-in-class standard screen among trucks. That said, it does trail behind the huge 12-inch options available from the competition on upper trims. The overall design of the system is also starting to show its age, with maps look like they were held over from the late 90s. It does, of course, support Apple CarPlay if you have a compatible device, and that does improve the experience quite a lot. Nissan has loaded up this truck with a nice list of standard safety equipment, including Blind Spot Warning, Lane Departure Warning, High Beam Assist, Adaptive Cruise Control, and Rear Automatic Braking. In addition, our test vehicle came with the optional Surround View Camera system. You would have to pay a lot extra to get such a long list of features on the competition. The powertrain of the Titan is impressive, and Nissan has made it easy to configure to your liking. The transmission lever is mounted behind the wheel with a clearly identified tow mode. Maybe it's a little too clearly identified. Behind that on the dash is an integrated brake controller. Switching drive modes from rear-wheel drive to four-wheel drive high, as well as into four-wheel drive low, is as easy as turning a dial. And there's even a standard rear-locking differential, which might come in handy later. Now that we know all the details of this truck, let's go ahead and take it to the mountains to see just how it all comes together. On regular roads, the Titan Pro-4X is actually pretty fun to drive. Granted, yeah, it's mostly rear-wheel drive, except for when you turn it into four-wheel drive, which is with a flick of the switch. And you can switch into four-wheel drive without stopping, of course. Handling is pretty well controlled. Transmission? The best thing of all about this vehicle is what it sounds like. That V8. There's nothing like a V8, you know? And even though this is the off-road model with the Bilstein shocks, it's not too roly-poly on sealed surfaces. In fact, this is a truck you could easily drive every day. For our first test, let's try a 0-60. Now, because this has all-terrain tires on it, which don't have a lot of grip on asphalt, I'm going to switch it into four-high so we can get the maximum amount of thrust out of the gate. And let's see how this does. Stop completely. Three, two, one, and go. Oh, it's a little slow to start. 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60. Not bad. Now keep in mind, yeah, this is a 400-horsepower V8, but it also is tuned for truck use. That means it's tuned for maximum low-end torque, towing, and, you know, crawling over obstacles. So out-of-the-gate performance isn't exactly a strong suit, but that's okay. Now we're going to head up into the mountains and see what this truck was really intended for. It's roads like this where I'm pretty happy that this Pro-4X is equipped with Bilstein monotube off-road shocks. What that does is it really helps absorb some of the harsher edges of even, you know, insanely rough forest roads like this one. Now, are we going to jump this truck? No, no, we're not. But, you know, for regular driving down a road like this, this is just great. Also, this vehicle has complete underbody protection, so I don't have to worry about dinging my oil pan on an errant rock. The downside here is something that is just a problem with the category, and that is the fact this is a very large truck. And it's just, you know, it's a victim of its class. The F-150 is also a very big truck, so you've got to watch it on these roads for getting scratches on the sides or hitting things as you go around corners a little briskly. But if the road is wide enough, you can go pretty much anywhere. Nice. The Pro-4X here is also equipped with all-terrain titers that do a pretty good job of getting us through the rough stuff. They are on 18-inch wheels, which gives us plenty of sidewall for soaking up those rocks. Oh, mud. Let's get in the mud. Yeah. Sometimes you can't really see what's around the corner, and it's times like that I'm really glad it has underbody protection. Let's go a little slower here. Yeah. Now, I haven't even switched into four-wheel drive mode yet, because, I mean, this really isn't that difficult. Oops, scratched the underbody protection a little there. That's what it's for, right? Let's do a climb. Up we go. Yes. Now, you might hear a lot of noise inside the cabin. It's because we have all the camera gear in here with us as well. So, obviously, that's not an issue with the truck. It's just an issue with loading it with gear. Due to the time of the year that we're filming this, unfortunately, our normal test roads are all overgrown, and the Forest Service hasn't cleared them out yet. So, today, we're going to have to try to find some new adventures. Well, this is going to be interesting. What do you think? Can we get through this? Yeah? I don't know. Let me roll in a little bit closer here. And I'm also going to switch into four low because I can tell already I'm going to need to crawl as slow as possible through this to make sure that I don't impact anything. I'm also going to get a better line here because I'm a little helter-skelter right now. Go a little broader over there. Get this lined up. Okay. So, let me take a look outside and see how things look. I have to be really careful here to make sure that I don't dent that. We don't have a lot of room on the left. There's a large boulder. But I think we can do this. Okay, I'm going to look again. You know, it's all a matter of making sure you don't destroy anything. I got to be careful with this door because I got a big rock right here. That close. This vehicle is too big for this course, but we're going to push ahead anyway. Ready? I hope I don't break anything. I really don't like that this has an old-school antenna because that old-school antenna keeps bumping things. I'm going to go ahead and position my mirror down so I can look at the side down there. I'm also going to turn on surround-view cameras so I can see what's going on right there. You can see we're inches, inches away from a very large dent on the side of the truck. Okay, looks like I'm clearing. Okay, so on that first obstacle, the Titan gave me enough tools to get through it safely. Granted, I had to use my eyes. I had to get out of the vehicle. But I also had the surround-view cameras, which were helpful, albeit very low res. And of course, I could reposition the mirror so they could kind of get a better idea as to my gapping with the rocks. Where does this go? I have no idea. Of course, we'll have to get out of here too, you realize. I don't know if this goes through. And almost immediately, we found out it doesn't go through. Unfortunately, that means we need to get this truck out of here. First, I try a multi-point turn. So without hitting my cameras and without tearing off a front bumper, using all the space that we have. Oh boy. Okay, let's see. Let's try to go a little bit more over this way. Got a tree there too. I don't know which is going to be worse. The trees or the rocks ahead of us? Yeah, this isn't going to work. We're going to have to just back out, I think. Should we just go backwards? Okay, let's do it. Let's put it in gear first. It's a very sensitive gear shift. Now, this is a time where I really wish this was a higher resolution because I can't see anything that's smaller than maybe a foot in size. So any little, like, branches or challenging things on here would be really hard to see. Okay, already I see we have a rock right in line with that wheel. This is where the auto-tilting mirrors aren't always useful. Oh, there we go. Okay, I can't see. This thing, it repositioned my mirror too low. Oh, good. We're an inch away from large boulders, which I can't really see in the mirror. Oh, we got lots of room on our left. Let's go to the left. Make sure I don't rip the front. Ah, I changed the mirror position again. Quit doing that. So we have just barely enough width to get this rig through. So I got to be really careful of stepping over things to make sure we don't land on a boulder. I also need to make sure that we leave enough clearance in the front of the vehicle that we don't, you know, swoop into something as we're going over an obstacle. And it changed the mirror position again. So stop doing that to me. Step over nicely. We got this. Come on, 400. Come on, 400 horsepower. My foot's all the way down and it's not climbing it. Four low. And it can't lift itself up without a little momentum. That's kind of annoying. Okay, there's the branch we hit before. There's a large boulder. I think we're going to do it. I think we're almost clear. Almost there. Branch on the roof. Okay, we did it. On to the next adventure, right? Okay, let's do it. There is one more feature to show off here, and that is hill descent control, which this is equipped with. I'm going to go ahead and just hit this little button down here. Okay, there we go. Get a little light on the dash. And this isn't the most extreme hill, but, you know, it'll demonstrate the feature. It is covered in slippery sand, which is kind of, you know, good for the sake of example. I just take my foot off the brake and it eases me down. Now, can I change my speeds? No, it's basically one size fits all. And actually, will it keep climbing? No. Go back into first, put throttle on, and up we go. Just because this is a big truck doesn't mean that it doesn't have the latest in safety tech. And this is a pretty good little package on this. We have adaptive cruise control with lane detection. And let's go ahead and give that a try. I'm going to go ahead and turn it on. I'm going to set my pace, distance, and I'm going to hit set for my speed. Now it's 70 here, so I'm going to go ahead and set my speed for 70. I'm taking my foot off the gas and it is now doing the cruise control thing. Now, what is interesting here is that it does have lane detection. However, it does not have that auto steer function that we're starting to see in more popular mainstream vehicles. All this one basically does is it'll tell you when you're exiting a lane. Like, hey, by the way, the lane was over there. And so, you know, it's not as nice as some of the new lane centering systems, but at least it is improvement over what we've seen in the past in trucks. Because a lot of times they just skip over that stuff in trucks. So just to show you, like if I take my hands off the wheel, we are going to drift completely off the freeway. It does give me a little bit of vibration as feedback in the wheel to tell me that we've gone over the line, but steering is all me. And I think for a truck buyer, that's okay for right now. However, I think in time, it would be nice if, you know, the lane tracing features would see their way into vehicles like trucks. Because just because it's a truck doesn't mean that you can't have the latest in safety tech. And that's been our first look at the 2020 Nissan Titan Pro 4X. What would you get? Would you get this? Or would you get something like the Toyota Tundra or the Ford F-150? Post a comment below. Also, be sure to subscribe and like. We make these videos for you, and we hope you enjoy them. For Driving Sports TV, I'm Ryan Douthit. Thanks for watching, and we'll see you again next week.