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Sunday Drive: Boulder to Springville in the new 2022 Nissan Titan

By Craig and Deanne Conover - Daily Herald | Jun 25, 2022
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A frontal view of the new Nissan Titan.
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A side view of the new Nissan Titan.
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A rear view of the new Nissan Titan.
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A look inside the new Nissan Titan.

Being in Boulder, Colorado, in early May proved not only to be a beautiful environment but also a great place to get to experience the new Nissan “Z” in a first drive experience, as the new sports coupe is set to begin production and arrival at dealers soon.

Getting to drive home in an HD Titan was just the icing on the Nissan cake after a morning of twisting through the curves of Boulder Canyon in the all-new Z.

After that glorious morning with the all-new coupe, having a crystal clear spring day to head through the Colorado Rockies in a large truck made it seem as if we were somehow in automotive heaven.

We love the drive from Denver through those mountains as it always gives us some extra time in a vehicle that we would not normally get with our busy weekly schedules. Five hundred miles always seems to get us very intimately acquainted with any new vehicle.

So it was with the Titan, which was completely redesigned just two years ago, as it proved to be an extremely comfortable truck to travel in — especially with Nissan’s NASA-inspired seats. Even after over 150 miles of freeway driving, we would get out and feel as refreshed as we did when we started the journey.

The XD version of the new Titan comes equipped with a 5.6-liter Endurance V-8 engine as the power plant and proved to be a very capable power source for the full-sized truck. It’s capable of towing up to 9,730 pounds on the bumper or 9,990 pounds on a gooseneck attached to the included mounting holes in the bed of the Titan.

The nine-speed transmission also made getting up to speed and passing on the long drive easy for the Titan to handle. We did average a little lower on the gas mileage side than we would have expected from previously driving the truck from Nissan, coming in at just over 15 mpg for the eight days we had the truck.

We have to think that the extremely strong head wind we encountered for almost all of the second day of driving from Grand Junction, Colorado, to Springville had a huge effect on the number, as the HD Titan sits pretty high, making a big target for that kind of wind. Rated at 400 horsepower and 413 foot-pounds of torque, it is one of the leaders in the truck class.

The Titan did, however, do just fine on Saturday with a trailer behind it weighing 8,500 pounds heading up Spanish Fork Canyon. Having the Nissan birds-eye-view camera also proved extremely helpful in aligning and hooking up the trailer. Craig even had the opportunity to fill the bed with a load of garden soil for our grow boxes, and again it proved to be a trooper bringing that home and maneuvering into the back yard to shovel all the dirt out.

With the included bed liner and Titan boxes that ran down each side of the bed, getting the truck clean after all that dirt was much easier indeed. The boxes would also prove to be very useful, especially for hauling around tools that needed to stay secure but still allowing for the rear seat to be used as just a seat.

Nissan has also devised some unique storage space under the rear seats that would also hold a variety of different tools and other necessary items for any truck owner. There was tons of space in the rear seats for taking passengers and plenty for our two carry-ons and backpack.

The best part of the ride home had to be the interior of the new Titan, with our test ride coming in the Platinum trim. It was beautiful. The brown seating surfaces with brown wood accents really made for an upscale ride.

The seats were both heated and cooled along with a heated steering wheel. We actually had to use both heating and cooling on the trip home, as waking up to temperatures in the 40s on the last day was a surprise along with all the wind. But with the creature comforts in the Titan, we hardly noticed the harsh conditions Mother Nature sent us in early May.

A new 9-inch touch screen is the focal point of the dashboard and was critical for all our navigation, audio and phone connections for our trip. The Titan does include Apple CarPlay and Android Auto — however, only through a cord. We are anticipating that will change soon as other Nissan vehicles have gone to wireless with these features.

On the safety side, our ride came with all the great features we would have expected, including adaptive cruise, blind spot monitoring, rear cross traffic alert, land departure warning, high beam assist and rear automatic braking. All part of the Nissan Safety Shield 360 package.

We were even able to get in a couple of side trips on the way home that got us off road and in the dirt, which of course was not problem for the new Titan, and we got to see some places we would not normally venture out into without such a powerful full-sized truck.

Our ride home and, in fact, the entire week with the Nissan Titan was awesome, definitely giving us something to think about the next time we are looking for a new truck. Oh, and getting to drive the new Nissan Z was just the icing on the cake.

Base price: $63,040

Destination charge: $1,695

Price as driven: $68,735

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