April 04, 2005 - I almost had a heart attack the other day. Don't worry, my health is fine - thanks for the concern. No, my heart almost stopped due to shock. You see, I bore witness to something so amazing, and so incredibly rare, that my body couldn't cope with the stress. Luckily for me and my now-weakened heart, I probably won't witness such a spectacle ever again.

You see, I saw SUVs being driven off road.

Now, I'm not talking about some mall chick accidentally hopping her H2 over a curb in the parking lot of her yoga studio or anything like that. I'm talking about SUVs being punished by being driven up treacherous hills, through frame-twisting ruts and deep in muddy creeks.

I don't know if you realize how crazy this is. Here I was, just a few miles outside of Los Angeles, actually witnessing an SUV get dirty. Just as a reference: in my neck of the woods, a Michael Jackson sighting is a more common occurrence than a dirty SUV sighting.

Anyway, I actually shouldn't have been that surprised. Nissan invited me out to the boonies to take its new Xterra off-roading. I guess I should gone in expecting to see these rugged SUVs actually go off-road. Whatever, all that matters is that the Xterra is all-new for 2005 and continues its tradition of being a truly capable off-road ride.

As I said, the Xterra is all-new for '05. As such, everything from the frame, engine, body and more have been redesigned. Since horsepower numbers and engine size are sometimes used as pissing contests between truck owners, let's talk about what's under the Xterra's hood.

A new 4-liter V6 finds a home under the hood of every Xterra. Of course, this is based on the ever-so-famous VQ series of V6 engines that Nissan uses in every car. Car nerds will know that this engine powers everything from the Quest to the 350Z to the Infiniti G35. All you need to know is that this engine is super reliable and has won more awards than your mom.

But few people care to read about an engine's awards or reliability or things like that, so let's talk about the power. The new Xterra gets a significant power boost: the horsepower number is now at 265. Oh yeah, 285 lb.-ft. of torque is also available should an Xterra owner need to tow anything in the 5,000 lb. range.

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