Before the Ward Wagon and the Wardmobile, I had a 2011 Nissan Xterra. That car was the first car I bought simply because I wanted a new vehicle. It was a few years into my professional career after years of fast food management. While I loved my Aztek that I had at the time, I wanted something a little more nondescript, and something that didn’t have the lingering odor of fast food grease.

Way back in the early aughts, Mom rented me an Xterra to use in the lead up to my first wedding. I fell in love with that truck, and desperately wanted one when I was looking for a new vehicle before purchasing the Aztek. I just couldn’t afford them at the time. However, after being gainfully employed at the current day job for a few years, I was financially able to pick up my Xterra.

I loved that truck – even more after I upgraded the stereo to Carplay and added the backup camera. Yet, once we were all sent on telework, it just didn’t get driven much. So, it was traded in along with The Wife’s car at the time for the Ward Wagon.

Now, I find out that Nissan is reintroducing the Xterra after more than a decade. Well, sorta. They’re introducing a new SUV with the Xterra badge.

What It Is A reincarnation of the 2000–2015 Xterra as a tidy, off-road-focused hybrid SUV, as confirmed to Bloomberg by Nissan Americas chairman Christian Meunier. Leading up to the announcement, Nissan filed a trademark application for the Xterra name in the U.S. and a teaser photo of upcoming Nissans included a boxy SUV with prominent roof rails, a silhouette familiar to Xterra fans (and on which our speculative renderings are based). Meunier also confirmed the new Xterra will be built starting in 2028 at Nissan’s Canton, Mississippi, plant in order to take advantage of available capacity at the facility.

Why It Matters Nissan’s product lineup needs a few more injections of “interesting,” and with several off-road-focused SUVs now popular in the market—think Ford Bronco and Toyota Land Cruiser—it makes sense Nissan would greenlight an Xterra reincarnation. The first generation of this SUV won MotorTrend’s Truck of the Year award in 2000 and performed rather well within its segment.

I dunno. I look at the new Xterra and I don’t get the same rush I did from the original. It just seems like a semi-modded version of a standard mid-sized SUV. As of right now, nothing that would make me want to change from the Ward Wagon or Ward Mobile.