Clearance to Overland
April 17, 2026
Alex KiersteinLong rumored, now confirmed: the Nissan Xterra is coming back, and it’s bringing a throwback styling element I love with it.
It seems to me that there has been a steady trickle of rumor articles, maybe a couple a month, for years now. At least since 2017, if not earlier. The Xterra, rumored to return, perhaps as a real body-on-frame truck based on the Frontier. It makes sense for all the reasons the original Xterra (and the Pathfinder before it) made sense. The chassis and engine have already been engineered. The off-road-lifestyle truck and SUV segment is booming, and the rise of pre-outfitted factory off-road specials have made it even more profitable for automakers. And the Xterra is recent enough to retain some name recognition.
After doing nothing much to stifle rumors, Nissan has now confirmed the Xterra is on the way. There’s even a teaser image, and although it’s just a cropped-in detail shot, there’s actually a lot to see.
When I shared the teaser with Rory, his first reaction was to disapprove of the three orange lights at a small opening between the hood and the grille. The clearance lights on vehicles that don’t need clearance lights trend is, to Rory’s credit, kind of annoying. Almost as bad as folks who put in colored DRLs. But I’m not sure they’re supposed to be clearance lights per se. As a styling element, they remind me of the (awesome) triple cutouts in the old Nissan Hardbody pickup. And the grille below it has basically the same shape as the facelifted Hardbody from the early 1990s, which lost the triple vents above it.
I might be reading too much into the teaser image, too, but I also see hints of the Autech Zagato Stelvio in the wild hood bulges. You tell me if I’m crazy. Could just be coincidental.
The driving lamps seem to be lower down, tucked into wells flanking the grille. It seems to split the difference between the low-slung lights on the Hardbody, which nestled underneath the distinctive “brow” of the Hardbody’s hood, and the modern “hidden” headlight trend where the DRLs are more prominent than the actual driving lamps.
The new Xterra isn’t retro per se. To anyone not obsessive about spotting these things, it’ll probably just look like a blocky, rough-and-tumble SUV. But I enjoy that Nissan is playing with some distinctive historical elements here, applying them in a way that is more interesting than simply scaling a corporate styling language to fit the hardpoints.
The Xterra is supposed to go on sale in 2028, with V6 and V6 hybrid powertrains. Given the rapidly changing political/regulatory environment, with EV incentives being introduced and nixed in a few short years, not to mention our current fuel price fiasco, who knows if other powertrains will find their way inside it. Either way, the teaser is promising.
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