rideintexas

I am looking at buying a new Xterra, does anyone drive one? How do you like it or not like it. Does it work well with an outdoor/cycling lifestyle? Thanks.

Brillig

It's not a bad truck. We've been happy with ours.

Pluses:
- Very capable. Can actually do things offroad that a lot of trucks/SUV's these days can't. Can also haul a decent load, lots of space to fit things in the back, and a REAL functional roof rack (again, compared to a lot of SUV's that have plastic racks, no rack, etc.)
- No frills. You get what you pay for. Nice and practical without wasting money on leather, wood inlays, rain sensing windshield wipers, etc.

Minuses:
- Underpowered (acceleration-wise). Ours is anyway, I think they've improved that since we got ours though.
- Bad gas mileage. Kind of to be expected I guess. We get around 19 mpg on ours (17xhp V6).

We usually carry our bikes on it with a hitch rack, but in a couple of weeks we are going to be carrying the bikes inside (they easily fit in upright with the front wheels removed). There is an optional interior bike rack for that but it uses up the majority of your space and you would have to squeeze any luggage in beside or put on the roof.

spazegun2213

try the new jeep liberty or a used cheorkee. I have a cherokee 4 door and I love it. I have been beating it up for about 4 years now, and between curbs at 40 mph and other off roading excursions it will still make the 11 hour drive to school like a dream. The gas milage is 18/c 22/h. I have never had to replace anything yet, other than 2 sets of fog lights (those other off road excursions are rough). The liberty has more head room and a "better" engine but should still be worth looking at.

khuon

I'd still take a Cherokee over a Liberty any day. The Liberty my in-laws had was fairly top-of-the-line and I thought it handled terribly. I'm not a big fan of independent suspension on offroad vehicles (it can be done but to do it right is fairly expensive and involved... taking a car-like IS and grafting it onto offroad vehicles doesn't work) but combining IFS with live axle makes for some not so obvious handling characteristics... especially offroad. I also do not think the engine in the Liberty is better. They took the 4.7L V8 from the Grand Cherokee and lopped off two cyclinders to make it a V6. It still has a 90-degree angle on it which works fine for a V8 but in a V6 format is not balanced well. They should have gone to something like a 60-degree crank angle. I liked the old I6 in the Cherokee... plenty of low end torque, balanced and pretty reliable. Interesting thing about the Liberty is that I understand overseas, it's called the Cherokee. I guess they didn't think the foreign market would take to the Liberty name as would the US market.

Race Condition

SUV SUX. Osama and Dubya love your SUV.

spazegun2213

the I6 is great and with their 5sp... its like a miata with 4x4

Chris L

Closing this duplicate thread. Please continue this discussion here:

https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?t=49725