All-New 2025 Nissan Xterra Comes Back Virtually to Fight 4Runner, Bronco, Wrangler

That's a great show of faith from Nissan, as deliveries were up more than 23% during 2023, primarily thanks to the spectacular performance of the namesake Nissan brand and models like the Sentra, Kicks, Rogue, and Pathfinder. Note how most of them are crossover SUVs?

If you look at Nissan's mix of high-riding vehicles, you would say its lineup is packed with the $21k Kicks, $28k Rogue, $36k Pathfinder, $38k Murano, $43k all-electric Ariya, and $55,620 Armada, right? Well, for sure, they're selling like hotcakes, unlike the 2024 Z sports car, which had a disappointing total of just 1,771 vehicles last year, right?

So, instead of a Nissan Z Nismo, maybe the Japanese automaker should consider introducing even more SUVs to the lineup. Well, at least this is the opinion of the rumor mill – more precisely, the imaginative realm of digital car content creators, which seems to believe that Nissan could bolster its high-riding lineup with a veritable off-road SUV offering to ride alongside its many crossovers.

In fact, the parallel universes of vehicular CGI have already come up with a solution – some outlets believe that Nissan could do well to revive the Xterra nameplate, originally a truck-based compact SUV sharing its platform with the Navara-based Nissan Frontier. Remarkably, this little (quirky) SUV envisioned by Nissan Design International (now Nissan Design America) in California was the first vehicle wholly developed and manufactured in the US by the Japanese automaker.

According to the good folks over at the AutoYa info channel on YouTube, who are the latest to dream of a Nissan Xterra revival, and also have a satellite venue dubbed AutoYa Interior, and that's where all the (CGI) Xterra action occurs, the hypothetical third-generation SUV would arrive based on the now-independent third-generation D41 Nissan Frontier mid-size pickup truck now, allowing it to better compete with the current rugged offerings – Jeep Wrangler, Ford Bronco, and Toyota 4Runner.

While entirely hypothetical – so do take it with a healthy dose of salt as nothing is official from Nissan – this design project's presentation is incredibly thorough. The channel's resident pixel master has envisioned both the exterior design with lots of ritzy hypothetical colors as well as the Frontier-based interior with its own color reel. Plus, they also brought a few competitors for size – this time from both the compact (Ford Bronco Sport) and mid-size (Jeep Wrangler 4-door) sectors.

So, would you like to see Nissan revive the Xterra as a D41 Frontier-based SUV, especially if it comes with the big 310-horsepower 3.8-liter V6 engine under the hood and mostly the same quirky styling as its predecessors?