I have a fleet of ten 2017 Nissan Titan 1500s that were all purchased over the past nine months. All trucks are 2WD, all have the gas V8, five are regular cabs, and the other five are crew cabs. The 5.6L gas V8 is the only engine offered in 2017 for the half-ton Titan, and it is likely the only engine option I would bought anyway.
[Editor’s Note: big thanks to Shelby for providing this review and all images you see here.]
There are four SV trim model crew cabs with the only available 5.5-ft beds, one SV trim regular cab (8ft bed), and four S trim regular cabs. The most recent purchase was the Premium luxury package PRO4X with all the options for one of our top executives. It is the only 4×4 we have.
Just a little back ground, I have about 45 vehicles in my business fleet. They are mostly trucks, box vans, cars and SUVs are all in the mix. I currently have four brands of full-size pickup trucks in the fleet. Ever since the new 2017 Titan half-ton was launched last year, I had been following this truck closely, studying everything about it. I do this whenever a new truck product is being released, no matter what brand it is.
It appeared like Nissan was finally becoming a decent option for us to consider for purchase. Nissan had clearly made a lot of improvements to this latest generation of Titan. They finally brought a regular cab with an 8ft bed to the market. Unfortunately, Nissan killed off the 8-ft bed extended cab 1500s. That led us to also purchase the last brand standing that offers a steel floor 8-ft bed extended cab truck, which is the Toyota Tundra. We purchased two Tundras this year as well.
We have between 3,000-12,000 miles on the new Titans. We have had zero problems, and our loaded and working real-world fuel mileage has been ranging in the 15-18 MPG, which is basically the same as the V8 F-150s and 5.3L Silverados that these trucks replaced. The Titan’s 5.6L DI V8 and the 7 speed transmission offer a noticeable increase in power over outgoing 2009-2014 5.0 V8 Fords and even more noticeable over the outgoing 5.3 GMs.
Employee reports have all been positive regarding the new Nissan trucks. Lots of compliments to the seat comfort over the outgoing trucks. I personally drove all of the new Titans prior to putting them into service. I drove each of them anywhere from 50-500 miles before placing them into service around the company. I wanted to double check everything was meeting my company needs and my expectations.
I was really impressed with the trucks performance and comfort. In particular, the seats are very comfortable, more so then any of the other brand’s seats that we have in service. We currently use all five full-size truck brands. I really don’t have any particular brand bias. I always do a lot of research and try to select the best truck to fit our needs for each application. It is not always just price or a particular brand name for me.
The 5-year 100K bumper to bumper warranty meant a lot to me when it came trying some of these new model trucks. I had recently had several costly ($1,500.00) AC system repairs made to some of the outgoing 2014 and 2015 GM trucks all well under 100k miles on them. Ford F150s had been typically having electrical issues with sub 100K miles and some mechanical issues with transmissions and rear-ends with 125k-150K miles. Over the past few years, the Rams have been proving to have the lowest repair cost for us. That honor used to go to GM for lowest repair cost in our typical life cycles, but GM’s recent air conditioning issues have spoiled it. The 2015 Ram that is being traded on one of the latest Titans has 108k miles on it and has had zero unscheduled repair bills. This is why the 5-year 100k mile bumper to bumper warranty is important to our business.
I admit theses Nissan Titans are not really #1 in very many categories, but they are proving to be pretty good trucks so far as they are doing everything we need our trucks to do quite well. For us, it boils down to hauling our products from point A to B, as well as keeping our drivers safe and comfortable while out on the roads.
Nissan Titan S : Pros
- Great warranty 5yr 100k bumper to bumper.
- Nice feature content for the price point. (Ie. Power windows, power locks, tilt and cruise, Bluetooth, push start, intermittent wipers, redundant audio controls) these are all items that come standard on the S models.
- Wheel-well humps inside the beds are at a minimum in size, offering good usable space in regards to the truck bed floors.
- Decent amount of space behind the seat for a regular cab truck.
- Comfortable seats.
- Great power/performance
- Good bed floor loading heights, along with the shorter bed sides, make it much nicer to work out of them, then some of the other brands on the market that have really tall bed sides and really high load floors. This is a category where I truly miss the old GMT-800 platform GM tuck’s from 1999-2007 those trucks were really great to work out of.
Nissan Titan S : Cons
(Things I think Nissan could improve on.)
- Power mirrors are not available in S model trim. This is a safety feature I typically always buy. We have different drivers of different shapes and sizes operating these trucks from one day to the next. Being able to adjust the mirrors from the driver seat can be very important, when it comes to safety. I struggled most with this particular short fall of the Nissan Titan S model, where the SV trim version was just too nice and too expensive for this application, and the RAM did offer this feature at a similar price point on the tradesman trim level. In the end, it was really the warranty that more or less swayed me to try some of these for this application.
- Backup camera is not available on this trim level (a safety feature that I think should be on all trucks and SUVs). I thought the government had mandated this. When will it will go into effect?
- Beds are slightly narrower at the bed rails then all other brands, not an issue really, other then I had to purchase new racking for these trucks since none of my other racks would fit.
- Paint on the long bed trucks was slightly below par (not a major issue on work trucks) also not an issue on any of the SV+ crew cabs.
- Cheaper fuel door hinge design on these trucks with longer 8ft bed trucks, including the one SV regular cab long bed.
- Poor lighting or backlighting of the center info screen, the one that is located in the center of the gauge cluster. At max brightness settings, it can be still very difficult to impossible to read on bright sunny days. The center screen is much better on any trim level above the S model.
Nissan Titan SV : Pros
- Great warranty: 5yr 100k bumper to bumper.
- Good technology features for this mid-level trim price point.
- Comfortable seats. Power seats to boot on our crew cabs.
- Nice rear seat area storage features (similar to Ram)
- Rear seat air vents (I really hope to see GM finally join the rest of the market with this feature on the 2019s)
- Excellent safety features for a mid-level trim, blind side monitors, back up cameras, lots of air bags,
- Good handling characteristics
- Column shifter, even in bucket seat models (lots of functional space in center consoles.
- Trucks have a good working height, at least for a modern day truck. The bed sides are shorter then say an F-150. You can actually reach over the side and grab a few items off the bed floor, without having to get all the way up into the bed.
Nissan Titan SV : Cons
- Small fuel tanks, no optional high capacity fuel tank offered. It’s not offered on any trim level.
- Smaller rear seat area, then a Ford or Toyota crew cabs. Titan crew cabs are more on par with GM and Ram in terms of rear seat passenger room, which more often for us just extra cargo room.
- Odd-shaped front fender badges, plus they are stamped fenders under that badge, so you can’t really just remove it. Interesting side note. S models don’t receive that odd shaped fender badge and the fender is smooth. S model front fenders look a lot cleaner to me.
- Regular cab SV truck did not get a power seat, like our crew cabs. Power seats can make a big difference for guys spending all day in their trucks. This feature is not offered on any of the regular cab trucks. Note: SV is the highest level trim you can get in the regular cab configuration.
Nissan Titan PRO-4x Crew Cab: Pros
- Great warranty 5yr 100k bumper to bumper.
- Nice quality leather seats, again very comfortable seats.
- All the latest tech features i.e. surround view camera system, Blind side monitors,
- Push button start etc. Note (all Titans have push button start)
- LED lighting, including really nice bed lights.
- Wheel and tire package looks really good. Love the 18″ black center wheels with the machined edges. I think this packaged is really a good looking truck.
Nissan Titan PRO-4X : Cons
- The center stack infotainment screen is a little small for trucks in this price category/ trim level. Resolution could stand to be a bit better as well.
- Paint color choices. I am just not wild about getting forced to take a pearl metallic white paint at premium cost, in order to get a top trim truck. I personally prefer the Nissan regular glacier white paint which I have on all our other Titans. I really don’t get why some manufactures think putting metal flake in white is something to be required on high end trucks. GM, Toyota, and Ram all offer their highest trim trucks in their regular real bright gloss white paint. Ford does the same thing as Nissan has, I.e. only pearl metallic white for platinum F-150s. I don’t understand this restriction of real simple gloss white from top trim trucks. I get pearl white on moms mall crawler Luxury SUV, I don’t get this at all on 4×4 pickup truck, especially on a rugged looking off-road model like this Pro4x.
- A larger fuel tank should be standard at this price point. GM has this same issue. Ram, Ford, and Toyota offer high capacity fuel tanks (32-38 Gal).
- (On a personal note): The large 38-gal fuel capacity, plus the pure gloss-white paint being offered in a platinum trim level truck, were the main reasons the truck I bought for myself is a Toyota Tundra Platinum. There were a couple other minor benefits to the Tundra. I really miss the push button start (in the Tundra). I had it on my Ram and would have had it if I bought the Titan.
Summary
Nissan has a good truck on their hands with these new Titans. I feel they are leaders at least in one or two areas: comfortable seating and the warranty. No truck in my opinion is perfect nor does any brand offer a truck for every application. I really feel Nissan is now in the game. I doubt we will ever see them rival the big three in terms of massive sales volumes the big three yield every year, but I bet Nissan is going to be happy with their growth in the truck segment.
