2014 Nissan Titan Sl on 2040-cars

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Watch Formula Drift Championship leader Chris Forsberg drift a 1975 Datsun 280Z

Chris Forsberg won the Formula Drift Championship in 2009, was in the catbird seat to win it last year until the final race of the season and started this year's season with a win at Long Beach. That is how he can be provide the example for Clarion USA's tagline, "Dream like a champion."
In this three-minute video for the audio components manufacturer, Forsberg gives up the race suit for a corporate suit, then takes time out of his commute to think about what he'd rather be doing. In a 1975 Nissan 280Z with a turbocharged 2.0-liter Skyline RBDET20 engine. We're sure this has never happened to any of you before.
You can watch how dream begins - and suddenly ends - in the video below.

2014 Nissan Frontier Diesel Mule [w/poll]

Last August, Nissan shook the truck world when it officially announced plans to source a diesel option from Cummins for its long-overdue Titan replacement, its full-size pickup that's slated to drop this January at the Detroit Auto Show. The 5.0-liter V8 turbodiesel is expected to make somewhere around 300 horsepower and north of 500 pound-feet of torque. This combination of an all-new truck with this new powerplant promises to dramatically change the competitive landscape, splitting the difference between the heavy-duty goliaths from the Detroit Three and the Ram 1500 Ecodiesel. And the intrigue moved a step further when the Frontier Diesel Runner Concept showed up at February's Chicago Auto Show, as it displayed a growing relationship between Nissan and Cummins in a very interesting potential future product.
That concept would melt its clear acrylic hood if the engine ran too long, but this month, we got a chance to test drive a production mule, an otherwise normal Frontier with a Cummins 2.8-liter diesel four-pot under the hood and a ZF eight-speed automatic changing gears. The powertrain figures to be a direct competitor to the 2.8-liter Duramax promised for General Motors' Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon twins, but will Nissan build it? All signs point to probably. Officially, Nissan is taking no position on the future of this program, but a concept followed by putting journalists into a test mule suggests the company is considering the option very seriously. Here's what we gleaned from a brief drive around the posh suburbs of Nashville:
Before we get too deep into this Quick Spin, realize this Frontier is absolutely a mule, not a prototype. More or less cobbled together with duct tape and baling wire, it's not meant to be representative of a finished product, or even a started product. The transmission and shifter is straight out of a Chrysler 300 and the shifter surround is cut out of a panel of plastic. The "Low Sulfur Diesel Only" sticker is, well, just stuck on. We're looking at a "What if?" mockup.

2015 Nissan Murano could have been a lot more boring to look at

When it debuted at the 2014 New York Auto Show, the third-generation Nissan Murano wowed us more than just about any other car on hand (that's sort of why we handed it an Editors' Choice for the NYIAS). It's sharp, aggressive design was a dramatic departure from the smoother styling of the second-gen CUV, although it wasn't too polarizing. Most importantly, though, it was a vehicle with actual design presence - you want to see it from every angle, all of which draw your eye with something new.
Of course, settling on the design for a new vehicle is far from a straightforward process. While a design might take shape on a designer's drafting table, there are a huge number of steps it needs to get through before making it to an auto show stage or to your local dealer. According to Nissan engineer Chris Reed, those steps very nearly curtailed the Murano's design before the first die was even cast.
Reed has a full account of this sharp design's trials and tribulations in a must-read story from Ward's.