It’s been a couple of years since Nissan first introduced i’s Titan Warrior concept truck. In this age of beefed up, designer truck badassery the Warrior feels perfectly at home competing against the likes of the Raptor and Power Wagon. Offering a styled aesthetic inspired by the idea of futuristic battle armor, the versatility to handle off-road abuse and the inarguable power of a Cummins TurboDiesel V8, Nissan has checked all the boxes required to catch the eye of the evolving truck buyer. Here’s a look at its original reveal, back in January of 2016.
But watching the Warrior’s gentle evolution over the past couple of years, and having poured over countless images and videos (both official and independent) there’s one burning debate that plagues me…
Isn’t it a little bit ugly?
Allow me to explain, and humor me as I do so in a manner that may very well ‘date’ me in terms of my age. I like the Titan, I really do. In fact, of all the ‘upstart’ truck offerings to join the Big Three on roads and highways in recent years, the Titan is easily my favorite. But there’s just something about the Warrior’s aesthetic that I find less pleasing than the
Being a few months past my fortieth birthday, it speaks to reason that my childhood was spent in the 80’s with my teens and early twenties occupying the 90’s. It was the mid-80’s, and I was around seven years old when my older sister first got a Walkman (portable personal cassette player) and my friends, and I first began to receive our own home stereos and boom-boxes (portable stereos). At the time, their designs were squared-off and relatively utilitarian, valuing function over form, aside from whatever color / chrome / matte accents were included to ‘make it pop.’ Portable CD players would follow the same design philosophy once they supplanted the Walkman.
But by the 90’s, the design of such devices began to change. Shifting towards an aesthetic that was more compact, they somehow managed to be more ‘chunky.’ Where there had been refined simplicity, there was now boldly-colored segmentation. Subtle accents were replaced by bright yellow sections with chiseled contours. And the technology was now being marketed for its resilience, tacking the word ‘Sport’ onto their monikers to prove it was ‘New,’ ‘Improved’ and could withstand ‘anything you throw at it.’
Yes, there’s something about the Nissan Titan Warrior that reminds me of a stereo I’d received for Christmas in 1996. From the chunky segmentation of the front fascia to the bright orange accents that are emblazoned around it. As I said earlier, I really do love the Titan…but I wouldn’t want the Warrior in mid driveway, any more than I’d want that ugly twin tape deck stereo in my living room.
