Crossing fingers. This needs to happen.
So I take it your ready to see an Xterra badge on a crossover with independent suspension on all corners, part time PTO driven AWD without a transfer case, a complex and impossible to modify suspension, less ground clearance, smaller tires, more plastic, feminine styling, and no guts? They haven't done that before, right? (Pathfinder, cough cough.)
I hope you are right, and Nissan proves me wrong, I really really do. But if I've learned anything from Ford and Jeep, it's that a redesign of any 4x4 is not something that needs to happen. Not until CAFE is figured out by the masses to be the joke it is. I believe we had it as good as it was going to get with the Xterra in the 2nd Generation. If they redesign it, and I do mean that as an "if" statement, I have a bad feeling we won't like what comes out of it.
I know we say it will be built on a Frontier platform, but they could just as easily design something on a Rogue platform and slap a Xterra nameplate on it. After all, how many people in Honda Elements, Ford Escape, Jeep Compass, Subaru Forresters, and Hyundai Santa Fe
think they have an "adventurous" vehicle? As long as people think AWD means the same as 4X4, (and honestly there is no official naming convention that determines exactly what 4x4 or AWD really means when it's slapped on a body panel as a shiny chrome badge) they think it will go anywhere, and in all reality, given most people buy it for feel good security when it snows, it will serve them well in that capacity. But it won't be what us true 4x4 enthusiasts want.