You likely know the Nissan Frontier. Midsize pickup, four cylinders, percolates on the periphery of that crowded market. The Frontier reached a noteworthy milestone of sorts recently when Nissan announced that Brian Murphy, a deliveryman from the Chicago area, had succeeded in rolling up a million miles on his 2007 Frontier King Cab after personally setting out to do exactly that. A million miles in a little more than a decade is pretty impressive, but it turns out that Nissan had more than that accomplishment to announce.
As they say, wait, there’s more. Whatever anonymity the Frontier may have endured will be erased, now that Nissan has announced it will receive a totally new 3.8-liter V-6, with direct fuel injection, as standard equipment for the 2020 model year. The beefed-up driveline, which also includes a new standard nine-speed automatic transmission, will boosted the Frontier’s standard output by 49hp, immediately giving it class-leading horsepower. The new V-6 is produced at Nissan’s North America engine plant in Decherd, Tennessee. Expect more big news from Nissan before much more time elapses: 2020 is the final year for the current generation of the Frontier pickup.
Jim Donnelly On Wheels 