Body-on-lame: Nissan's Terra Staying Clear of the U.S.

Earlier this year, we addressed speculation that there was a chance Nissan’s new body-on-frame SUV — and spiritual successor to the now-defunct Xterra — could go on sale in the United States. Unfortunately, the development team behind the Nissan Terra has advised us to keep it in our pants. It isn’t coming here, despite previous claims from the manufacturer that it could be possible.

“We can do anything,” Ashwani Gupta, global head of light commercial vehicles for the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, said last March, while maintaining that a strong case would still need to be made for the model’s U.S. arrival, “ authentic capability to go off-road — even if the customer only wants to go off-road once a year.”

Nissan has since changed its tune on the Terra’s prospects. “Currently, that is out of our scope,” Hironori Awano, chief vehicle engineer of the Terra, said during a briefing at Nissan’s global technical center last week. “The U.S. market is one of the toughest, not just because of crash tests but also because of customer expectations.”

According to Automotive News, the SUV doesn’t adhere to the stringent safety standards imposed by the United States. It also may lack the fit and finish that North American customers are accustomed to.

From Automotive News:

The Terra’s lead designer, Masato Takahashi, said his team all but ignored North American sensibilities when designing the vehicle; emerging market tastes were top of mind.

Still the vehicle’s introduction fired speculation about a debut in the U.S., where it might slot into the lineup as a midsize sibling to the full-size body-on-frame Armada SUV.

It’s beginning to sound like the Terra might not be a quality item. Having already launched in China, Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the SUV comes with diesel options most Americans wouldn’t want or the same 2.5-liter gasoline engine found in the smaller Nissan Rogue.

However, other explanations exist as to why it won’t make its way stateside. Production of the Terra is currently limited to Zhengzhou, China and Samut Prakan, Thailand. Selling it within the United States would require domestic assembly or some kind of miracle that resulted in the complete elimination of automotive tariffs and relaxed safety standards. Neither prospect is something we’re willing to hold our breath on. But if the SUV is as TERRAble as it sounds, then the only people really missing out are those who wanted a secondhand model for trail work and untold levels of off-road abuse.

Let us know if you happen to be particularly broken up about the news.

[Images: Nissan]