Ace of Base: 2019 Nissan Frontier King Cab S 4×2

The old adage of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” applies to household plumbing, your kid’s Lego creations, and the squeaking ventilation fan in my Dodge Charger. It also applies to the Nissan Frontier pickup, apparently.

Seriously. Even though this thing is almost old enough to vote, Nissan is selling them by the boatload.

Compared to this time last year, sales are up 5.4 percent through the end of November. And this isn’t a case of miniscule numbers skewing the percentages, either. Nissan found 72,154 buyers for the Frontier in the first eleven months of this year. That’s more than their own Versa; more than the Pathfinder, too. It’s within a shout of the Murano, fer chrissakes.

For 2019, the Frontier actually gains equipment while keeping its price at a rock-bottom $18,990. As we learned last week with the Ford Fiesta, one of the cadre of sedans Ford is soon taking to the woodshed, long-in-the-tooth models sometimes benefit in the kit department thanks to a company eager to get just that much more life out of the thing. Or they’ve an abundance of said item in the parts bin.

Whatever the reason, it’s the customers who come up all aces. This year, Nissan’s small pickup earns the 7.0-inch color audio display touchscreen, a unit once reserved for snazzy machines in the company’s showroom. They’ve also expanded the availability of the Cayenne Red shade shown here, so one can drive a base Frontier without looking like they work for Herb’s Drywall.

It is a rear-wheel drive truck at this price, of course, powered by a 2.5-liter inline-four making 152 horsepower and 171 lb-ft of torque. Stirring the pot is a five-speed manual, whose baseball bat of a shifter sticks up out of the floor just like it did in the venerable Hardbody. In fact, Nissan is one of the few manufacturers to endow their pickups with a manual transmission pretty much across the entire range, with both King and Crew Cabs in trims ranging from S to Pro-4X allowing drivers to row their own gears.

Air conditioning is standard on the base truck, if you’re wondering, as is Bluetooth gear and cruise control. I’d check the latter with my own two eyes at the dealer, just to be sure, as manual transmission models are sometime exempt from controlling the cruise. No asterisks appear next to this feature on Nissan’s website, so I’ll assume it is present on all models, including this base truck.

Whenever a manufacturer introduces a new or refreshed pickup, there is guaranteed to be carping from the peanut gallery about how trucks are so big these days and why doesn’t anyone make trucks like they used to?

Newsflash: someone does. You’re looking at it in today’s Ace of Base.

[Image: Nissan]

Not every base model has aced it. The ones which have? They help make the automotive landscape a lot better. Any others you can think of, B&B? Let us know in the comments and feel free to eviscerate our selections.

The model above is shown with American options and priced in American Dollars. Your dealer may sell for less.