Originally posted by Tony
Again, the only reason I brought it up was ya'll were useing payload and tow ratings to justify the truck choices, for the PRICE, not too much is gonna beat it. I'd take a chevrolet, even a half ton over the Titan any day of the week, chevy builds a more heavy duty truck, period. If you want nice leather interior and a fancy automatic tranny for the lazy types, basically a car that looks like a truck, by all means buy the titan, it's your money. And you are right, you cannot beat the torque of a diesel, but it is only apples and oranges because nissan decided to not even give you the option this year, which makes it a shortcoming for this comparison. For the money, there is not one thing the Titan can do better, so why buy it?? You do bring up a fair point about the MSRP, my trucks sticker was 32,800, gotta love end of the year car buying to get rid of the 03's, but as a general rule they cannot keep the silverado diesels on the lot..they sell pretty well, also 5 grand dumped into a titan won't do much. I do give Nissan props for useing at least a quality axle in the truck, it also did get decent reviews in the magazines.
Tony, you seem like a fairly educated person so i ask you, would it be prudent for any manufacturer that is trying to break into a market to focus on the mainstream of buyers or jump right in with both feet and grandma and try to meet every truck buyers demands for a truck. This is the litmus test for Nissan to see if they can bring to the table an overall product that can compete with the power houses. I believe they can compete, just not in every catgory at this time. I highly doubt they will try to venture into the specialty truck market.
One more point, i believe that it was chevy that used a marketing campaign, for the previous generation of the silverado, of haveing a more rigid and lighter chassis by way of their new manufacturing process. How did they accomplish a lighter chassis? By making it smaller yet more rigid...this was done by tighter quality control at the factory.<--that was their new manufacturing process
Also, by useing a box frame instead of a C frame one can have a much more rigid chassis with a smaller frame. Lighter and more structerally sound...sounds pretty good to me. So bigger is not neccessarely(sp?) better.