The lease on your bachelor pad is coming to an end. Naturally, the collection of hand-me-down and Scandinavian retail chain furniture occupying your personal quarters needs a way to get across town, because the found-on-Craigslist project car you've been driving is a mediocre moving option at best.
Who you gonna call? Odds are it won't be that motley, jumpsuit-clad crew with a penchant for the paranormal. You want someone with a six-foot-long bed that isn't meant for sleeping. Someone with a vehicle designed to swallow a myriad of weighty objects. You want someone with a pickup truck, and hopefully the particular family member/friend/casual acquaintance you've cajoled into being your accomplice for the weekend will have the keys to something like the 2010 Nissan Frontier.
The midsize Frontier continues to stay true to the prototypical truck mold. It's underpinned by a fully boxed, steel ladder frame -- architecture shared with its younger, full-size Titan relation. Its live rear axle is supported by a leaf spring suspension, and the independent front puts two double A-arms to work. Our crew cab Frontier tester also came equipped with Nissan's shift-on-the-fly four-wheel drive system. Translation: A two-speed transfer case. Add to that 31-inch-tall, trail-ready BFGoodrich tires and a generous ground clearance, and you can be assured the weekend move won't be hampered by big rocks and loose terrain. Or a steep, slippery driveway.
You may find the ride quality to be a bit hard and loud on the way to your new place of residence, attributes surely magnified as you sit weary in your cloth-covered seat. The road noise can be sourced to the tires' blocky tread patterns, but the jarring ride is worth it for the 1250 pounds in payload capacity. There's plenty of bed space -- 33.5 cubic feet, to be exact -- and the box is treated to factory-applied spray-on bedliner and Nissan's Utili-Track channel system with four sliding tie-down cleats, both standard fare for crew cabs. If you were wondering how that comprehensive home gym you ordered to fulfill a New Year's resolution was going to make the trip, speculate no more.