Skip to main content

Project Titan is go: Nissan’s crowdsourced pickup embarks into the Alaskan wilderness

Nissan’s marketing manager needs a raise.

Between its brilliant trolls of Ferrari, countless attention-grabbing concepts, and steady commitment to boundary-pushing technological showcases, the Japanese automaker clearly knows how to keep its image fresh in the minds of the motoring world.

The latest example of that? Project Titan.

Project Titan directly involves fans in the production process of a one-off Nissan Titan by allowing them to vote on 10 different areas of customization. The voting process has ended, but the chosen areas included suspension, tires, truck beds, interior, bumper, exhaust, winches, lights, wraps, and wheels.

What Nissan’s fans have indirectly created is a military-style off-roading machine, with enough gadgets and gizmos to navigate any obstacle placed before it.

Related: Nissan wins the Internet, trolls Ferrari with Nyan Cat-wrapped GT-R

The exterior of the vehicle has been fitted with an ARB Deluxe Bull Bar, a one-piece steel bumper replacement that protects the vehicle from animal strikes. The Bull Bar integrates a recovery winch and the truck rides on beefy 35-inch Grappler tires. High articulation PRG suspension gives those big wheels room to travel over the rough Alaskan terrain, and a “Recon Titan” camouflage wrap dresses everything up.

The pickup is also equipped with an all-terrain trailer, one that holds a camp-style kitchen, water/fuel storage, a tent, and of course, a spare tire.

Piloting the beefy Titan will be two alumni from the Wounded Warrior Project. Nissan will document the trek with a YouTube series this fall.

This isn’t the first time Nissan has leaned on crowdsourcing to create a unique project and boost company presence. In 2012, the company debuted another crowdsourced one-off: Project 370Z.

Instead of a rugged Alaskan adventure, the 370Z was built with the track in mind. The sporty coupe was enhanced with a Greddy twin turbo Kit, high-flow exhaust, performance engine management system, and an array of suspension upgrades. In the end, the 370Z produced over 500 horsepower.

Follow along with Project Titan’s adventure at the Nissan Trucks Facebook page.

Editors' Recommendations

Check out Spectre, Rolls-Royce’s first all-electric car
Rolls-Royce's Spectre, its first all-electric vehicle.

Rolls-Royce Introduces Spectre: The World's First Ultra-Luxury Electric Super Coupé

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars has taken the wraps off the Spectre, its first all-electric vehicle.

Read more
Nissan wants the 2023 Ariya to be its comeback EV, but the bar has been raised
Front view of the 2023 Nissan Ariya.

Nissan played an understated role in the modern era of electric cars. While Tesla gets most of the attention, the Nissan Leaf became the first modern mass-market EV when it launched in December 2010. But Nissan has squandered that early lead. The Leaf remains a decent car, but Nissan needed to follow it up with another model, specifically an SUV, that would appeal to more car shoppers. That’s where the 2023 Nissan Ariya comes in.
The Ariya is the long-awaited sequel to the Leaf, boosting updated tech, better performance, and an SUV body style to match current trends. But during the Ariya’s long gestation (it was originally supposed to launch in 2021), other automakers have come up with electric SUVs of their own. So while it was once a leader, Nissan must now follow the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, and Kia EV6, among others.
Pricing starts at $44,485 (with destination) for the base Ariya Engage trim level with front-wheel drive and the smaller 65-kilowatt-hour (63-kWh usable capacity) battery pack. Pricing rises to $61,485 for the top Platinum+ model with all-wheel drive and a 91-kWh (87-kWh usable capacity) pack, but all-wheel drive models won’t arrive until after the front-wheel drive models. Nissan hasn’t discussed plans to assemble the Ariya in the U.S., so it likely won’t qualify for the revised federal EV tax credit.

Design and interior
If it had launched even two years ago, the Ariya would have looked cutting-edge. Its rounded exterior surfaces make a nod to aerodynamics while still preserving the SUV look buyers love. It’s a nice-looking vehicle too, but so are the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, and Kia EV6, all of which have gone on sale since the Ariya was announced in 2020. Nissan is no longer a trendsetter, but the Ariya can at least claim a more SUV-like feel than those other EVs, in both its tall profile and high-and-mighty driving position.
More significant than the styling, though, is that the Ariya rides on a new EV-specific platform. In contrast to the Leaf, which shares some of its structure with gasoline cars, engineers could take full advantage of the efficiencies of an electric powertrain and maximize interior space. Like certain other automakers, Nissan also opted out of a frunk in order to maximize passenger space, moving components like the air conditioner under the hood to make more room in the cabin.
Rounded surfaces nod to aerodynamics while still preserving the SUV look buyers love.

Read more
Tesla to fix window software on 1M of its U.S. cars
A 2021 Tesla Model S.

Tesla is sending out an over-the-air update to a million of its vehicles in the U.S. to fix faulty window software that could leave occupants with pinched fingers.

According to a document issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Tesla engineers discovered that the affected vehicles may not meet certain automatic window reversal system requirements. It said that in some cases, the window may exert more force before automatically retracting when sensing an obstruction such as a person’s fingers. The condition “may increase the risk of a pinching injury to the occupant,” the NHTSA’s document says.

Read more