Finally brought home the new (
to us) Nissan Frontier.
I was supposed to get it late last week, but a series of events pushed it to this week.
$22,895
2014 with 34,000 miles. 4.0L engine, auto transmission, 4x4 drive. Metallic Grey paint. 4 doors, long bed (
6'2" is a long bed for a Nissan). This has the SV trim package with some upgrade like a back up camera, rear parking sensors, a bed rail system with tie down hooks, plus a bed extender system. Spray in bed liner. Bluetooth phone connectivity. Cloth seat interior. AM/FM/XM radio with CD player but I have no plans to activate the XM satellite radio. Alloy wheels. Tires look to be new, nearly new. It has 3 12-volt outlets + 1 USB charging port. Fog lamps. Sliding glass rear window. Intermittent wipers. Seat Heaters on front seats. Auto Dimming rear view mirror. Cloth seats. Rear windows are tinted fairly dark. Power windows. Manual seat adjustments. Power mirrors.
Very clean everywhere, even the engine was detailed and spotless. Got to give them bonus points for how clean it is, I've not seen this level of clean on anything that was not brand new.
It came with 1 very small dent and a few touched up paint scrapes. So nothing abnormal for vehicle like this. Touched up paint scrapes were done nicely.
Interior/dash have lots of very spartan looking plastic. This is clearly a utilitarian looking truck design.
Did a mix of suburban and rural highway driving yesterday and was pretty happy with it. Ride is not as harsh as my buddies F150, which is a wonderful thing. Ride is obviously not as nice as the more care-like Touareg we dumped onto Carmax in trade. Turning radius is WIDE and will take some getting used to. Took some effort to get it parked at the super market, then again when I parked it at the high school last evening. Nothing like our VWs or Audis.
The Carmax experience was a mixed bag. People were very nice, no complaints, in face everyone was very polite and friendly. But damn the process took forever. Showed up at 10:15am ... left there at 1:15pm. This truck was transferred into the location for me, it was cleaned up and waiting for me when I got there. They were expecting my Touareg. The salesman I had been talking with met me when I arrived. Chatted a bit, gave him keys to the Touareg for the appraisal and then went for a test drive. Maybe 2 miles. Came back, they gave me an appraisal on the Touareg (which I accepted without a lot of haggle) and I asked for a total, wrote out a check for the difference and figured I would be good to go after signing a title on the Touareg. HOW WRONG I WAS.
OK they wanted to check to see if I had funds in the bank to back up the check. No problem. Gave them a phone #, they called and talked to one of my bankers, then a manager talked to her. 5 minute phone call. OK figured I was good to go after signing a couple papers. HOW WRONG I WAS.
Honestly WTF. I signed probably 20 pieces of paper to buy a car without financing? And had to go to a "signing desk" to do all that, where I met with another very polite, friendly and nice Carmax person. Who, of course, had computer printer problems at the desk were we were assigned to do the signing.
I don't recall all that crap the last vehicle I purchased; thank goodness I did not have to finance it, I probably would have needed to bring a tent & sleeping bag
Brought it home and promptly put a NRA LIFE MEMBER sicker on the tailgate.