What Happened to the Nissan Titan Warrior Concept?
Think back eight years, and monster off-road trucks were the thing. Ram launched the Rebel, the Ford Raptor was the hottest truck on four wheels, and the Tundra TRD Pro was making waves. Nissan’s full-sized Titan truck came with the off-road Pro-4X package. And then Nissan dropped the Titan Warrior concept and it looked like Nissan was bringing the big guns.
Sadly, the Warrior never made it to production.
What was the Nissan Titan Warrior?
The Nissan Titan Warrior was announced as a cool concept truck in 2016. While it sort of looked like a Titan pickup with stripes, it was (like the Raptor) a fully-featured off-road truck. Nissan beefed up the heavy-duty Titan XD for the concept. It asked the question, “What happens when you take a Titan XD and make a Raptor competitor.” Unfortunately, it was a question nobody else was asking.
It had cool off-road lights integrated into the roof, extra beefy skid plates, and a factory lift that presumably hid fancy shocks, different control arms, and a custom axle and sway bar. It also came with a monster motor. It was even six inches wider than the regular truck. Nissan packaged the truck with a Cummins Turbo Diesel V8, which made an impressive 555 lb-ft of torque.
Inside, it had off-road specific gauges and cool carbon-fiber dash inserts. It certainly looked the part. Though it looked like it would arrive as a 2021 Nissan Titan trim, it never did.
The Nissan Titan Warrior was never built
The Warrior was based on the heavy-duty version of the Titan, the Titan XD. The XD was slightly more beefy than the regular Titan, but it didn’t have the capability of, say, a true 1-ton truck like the Silverado 2500HD. It did, though, have that cool Cummins diesel V8 engine. Regardless, Nissan killed the XD diesel version of the Titan in 2020, but still makes the big truck.
When the company killed the XD, presumably, that also meant that the Warrior was also stillborn. Truck fans clamored for a while to get Nissan to build the Warrior, but it was never to be. The Pro-4X package, however, did soldier on with the Titan’s (at the time) 317-horsepower V8.
The Titan is now going away, too
Nissan’s putting the Titan out to stud soon, and fans of inexpensive full-sized trucks with V8s are lamenting the loss. Sometime before 2025, according to Motor Trend, trucks will cease to exist. However, the magazine also admitted that the truck never lived up to the refinement of the Big Three’s trucks. The titan comes in two versions, the standard and the XD which boosts towing and hauling capacities quite a bit.
The Titan may not be the best new truck you can buy, but it does pack in a lot for the price. The Titan starts at $39,700 and the 400-horsepower V8 is standard. It can tow more than 11,000 pounds, seats five, and comes as a convenient King Cab or four-door. The off-road Pro-4X package starts at $52,810, however it does offer a locking differential, Bilstein shocks and all-terrain tires.
Nissan has made several cool concept trucks that have never been produced. Maybe in the last few years of life, Nissan will finally build the truck we’ve wanted all along.
