There's something cruelly satisfying about the solid, spine-compressing sound that accompanies the gravity-aided marriage of stone and undercarriage. That's doubly true when the racket's coming from someone else's brand-new $29,000 SUV. Call me masochistic. Yes, I may be trying to shove torso-sized lumps of sandstone through the floorboard of the 2014 Nissan Xterra in my quest to scramble up a dry creek bed, but engineers stuffed a line of hefty skid plates between the truck's vitals and fools like myself. This is going to be a good day.
Despite what those ads on TV may lead you to believe, there are only a handful of SUVs on sale right now that are capable of pounding over inhospitable terrain with any reliability. Rigs like the Toyota 4Runner and Nissan Xterra are the last of a once proud breed of crawlers.
Mid-sized, body-on-frame SUVs with solid rear axles and independent front suspensions were once standard operating procedure for most manufacturers, but the advent of the crossover has seen both buyers and builders scramble away from the design. The Xterra is one of the last holdouts in this segment, which is why I found myself doing my damnedest to put a rock through the SUV's oil pan one cool morning.
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