a New Frontier

For Suzuki, It’s a New Frontier

2009 Suzuki Equator.

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The Suzuki Equator is a rebadged version of the Nissan Frontier.

WHAT IS IT? Four-door midsize pickup.

HOW MUCH? $23,985 base; $25,150 as tested with $1,165 Sport package (alloy wheels, cruise control, power windows, power locks). A Crew Cab Sport with 4-wheel drive starts at $28,095.

WHAT MAKES IT RUN? Four-liter V-6 rated at 261 horsepower and 281 pound-feet of torque; 5-speed automatic transmission.

IS IT THIRSTY? The federal mileage rating is 15 m.p.g. city, 20 highway with 2-wheel drive. Highway rating is 19 with 4-wheel drive.

SUZUKI’S advertising copy for the Equator pickup boasts, “Nobody builds a more powerful V-6 pickup.” This is true, but the key word is “more,” because someone happens to build a V-6 pickup exactly as powerful as this one.

This rival not only matches the Equator’s 261 horsepower, its dimensions are virtually identical. Both are built in Tennessee — in the same town. If you didn’t know better, you’d think the Suzuki Equator and the Nissan Frontier were the same truck.

After digging deeply and conducting many off-the-record interviews with shadowy informants on both sides of the Pacific, I’ve established that the Equator and Frontier are, in fact, the same truck. The ruse is up.

It’s a common practice in the auto industry for companies to share vehicles as an easy route to increased sales. This habit is particularly popular in the realm of small pickups, where it seems as if every company has a truck for sale but only two or three actually build one.

The Equator is a rebadged Frontier. The Mitsubishi Raider springs from the loins of theDodge Dakota. Mazda’s B-Series is a Ford Ranger. The 2008 Isuzu i-Series was a rebadged Chevy Colorado, but Isuzu canceled it for 2009, hewing to its plan to continue the slowest, most wretched retreat in the history of the American auto market.

The Equator range begins at $17,995 for a 4-cylinder, 2-wheel-drive extended cab and can top $31,000 for a loaded, 4-wheel-drive RMZ-4 off-road model. But if you don’t really need a 4-by-4, the 2-wheel-drive Equator is happy to stand in. The 2-by-4 Crew Cab that I tested looked so jacked up that I crawled under it to double-check that there were no driveshafts on the front end. With 8.6 inches of ground clearance, the two-wheel-drive Equator is only 0.3 inch lower than its 4-wheel-drive counterpart.

Despite the lofty ride height and rear leaf springs, the Equator handles with lively precision for a body-on-frame pickup. That seems to be a Nissan truck hallmark, as even the full-size Titan steers with a nimbleness that belies its sun-blotting mass.

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Adding some credibility to the “Sport” label, the V-6 engine has enough torque to throw you back in the seat without having to rev it to the redline. Which is fortunate, because at redline this engine is as sonically gratifying as a Fran Drescher-Gilbert Gottfried rendition of “I Got You Babe.”

So the Equator is an agreeable truck and a worthy alternative to the Toyota Tacoma, which defines the midsize truck market the way the BMW 3 Series serves as the benchmark among entry-level luxury cars. But why should you opt for the spinoff version of a vehicle instead of the original? In the case of the Equator, it comes down to the warranty.

The Frontier’s powertrain warranty runs five years or 60,000 miles. But the Equator’s powertrain warranty lasts seven years or 100,000 miles. Whether there’s much price difference probably hinges on your appetite for arguing with dealers. Depending on options, one truck may cost more than the other throughout the range, but the prices track each other closely.

So I’d say that if you plan to drive your truck until it crumbles to dust, buy the Equator to get the longer warranty. But if you want a manual transmission with a V-6 (or the off-road-package with 2-wheel-drive, even though those two things go together like babies and unicycles) you’ll have to buy the Nissan.

But perhaps you own a Suzuki A.T.V. and you’re so anal-retentive that you need your tow vehicle to match your recreational toys. That might sway you toward the Suzuki. Then again, maybe you prefer a nameplate that evokes a wild spirit of adventure over one that connotes a bounty of direct sunlight. I could go on. What I’m saying is, warranty aside, you can flip a coin.

While you’re at it, you might want to flip a coin between the midsize trucks and the big boys. The Equator Crew Cab is actually longer than the regular-cab Chevy Silverado. And the combined mileage rating of the Equator with a V-6 and 4-wheel drive is 16 m.p.g., exactly the same as a Silverado 4-by-4 with a 5.3-liter V-8. Among 2-wheel-drive models, both Chevy and Ford have full-size V-8 trucks that get better highway mileage than the Frontier/Equator V-6.

The domestic companies, though on the ropes, still lavish a lot of attention on full-size trucks. That hasn’t gone unnoticed by Nissan: under the skin, the next Titan will be a Dodge Ram.

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