2005 Nissan Pathfinder Review

The mid-size SUV market is a crowded place. From a handful of competitors 10 or 15 years ago, it's grown in numbers to rival the mid-size car market. How to stand out in such a teeming mass is the challenge Nissan faced when it undertook the update of the Pathfinder, its mainstay in the heavily congested mid-size SUV fray.

Nissan had the 4X4 technology, but that alone couldn't carry the burden. It needed a stronger drivetrain. The Pathfinder had long been an underdog, with barely competent power and an aging transmission. The new Pathfinder had to step up with a rejuvenated engine and a state-of-the-art gear set.

The solution turned out to be right at hand: the same V6 powering the 350Z, Nissan's performance star. With the displacement boosted to 4.0 liters and its horsepower and torque curves redrawn to workhorse geometry, the new Pathfinder engine not only substantially bettered its predecessor, it also stepped out ahead of the market's benchmark, the larger V8 in the number one-selling Ford Explorer. Fuel economy is improved, too, by 2 mpg on the highway. The new, five-speed automatic, geared to capitalize on the engine's torque characteristics, completes the package. Electronic stability control comes standard, giving drivers a reassuring safety blanket by controlling skids.

Get up and go is one thing. Looking and feeling good in the process is another entirely, and Nissan had fallen behind the curve here, too. For years, the Pathfinder had made do with modest, cosmetic makeovers of stale design motifs, while the market was moving toward more expressive exteriors and roomier, more accommodating interiors.

Again drawing on the new Pathfinder's stablemates, Nissan dumped its predecessor's size-limiting, frame-less body construction in favor of a larger, honest, body-on-frame truck design. This opened the door to a complete re-vamp of the Pathfinder's exterior, to a bold, broad-shouldered shape more in synch with the company's all-new, full-size SUV and pickup.

Likewise with the interior: With more room, there could be more comfort and more conveniences, not to mention more passengers, something that has become critical as SUVs have grown to keep pace with growing, active families. The new Pathfinder shines inside, with upgraded, less busy, more intuitive digs.

Nissan wants no one to mistake the re-positioning of the 2005 Pathfinder. Any car-like pretensions previously associated with the Pathfinder are now the sole domain of the Nissan Murano, a sleek, curvaceous crossover utility that was recently introduced. The new Pathfinder is intended to be a no-compromise, fully off-road-capable SUV, and its dimensions and styling make this imminently clear.

To achieve this, the Pathfinder's underpinnings have been dramatically altered. Its predecessor's car-like unibody, where the various body panels and connectives give the chassis its form and rigidity, has been replaced by truck-like body-on-frame construction based on a ladder-type frame adapted from the car maker's full-size Armada SUV and Titan pickup. Thus, if the new Pathfinder looks larger, that's because it is, by six inches in overall length, and by five inches in wheelbase. It's an inch wider, too, and almost five inches taller.

Similarly, the bloodlines of the bold, brash front end draw directly on the Armada and Titan, closely mirroring as well the new midsize Frontier pickup. Angular chrome verticals bracket the familiar Nissan logo centered in the grille. Crisply outlined headlight lenses fold around the edges of the fenders. A strong, chin-like bumper houses a wide, low air intake, with small, round sockets for the optional fog lights just inboard of the fender blister creases.

From the side, those fender blisters encircle substantial tires and give substance to the mostly smooth body panels. The trademark sloping C-pillars with high-mounted rear door handles are angled less severely. The roof line, mimicking the Armada's, bows slightly over the forward passenger compartment then flattens aft of the C-pillar. A vertical track carried over from the previous generation splits the rear side door windows allowing the forward two-thirds of the glass to lower fully into the door, a nice feature. Short overhangs front and rear spotlight the new Pathfinder's off-road promise. Openings in the ends of the roof rails at first seem mere styling exercises, but actually offer convenient hand-holds when loading and offloading sport gear.

The rear bumper copies the larger Armada's, with a low lift-over between upturns at each end tying into the large taillights. The backlight's (or rear windscreen's) bottom edge tracks the bumper's geometry as part of an elongated pentagonal outline, picking up on the geometric theme first appearing on the company's more assertive off-roader, the Xterra.