Events
The Two Titans – A Day with the 2020 Titan and Titan XD
Recently I was able to attend an event with Nissan to drive their new 2020 Titan and Titan XD. This event was held at TexPlex Park, a huge off-roading park in Midlothian, Texas. This was a great venue and I had a ton of fun at the event. We’re about to jump into it but I also wanted to shout out Nolan from Prime Autotainment. He’s a fellow YouTube automotive reviewer that lives not too far from me and we’ve chatted a few times online but finally got to meet up at this event. I’ll leave a link in the description to his channel if you’re interested in checking out his work.
The Titan
Let’s start off with the Titan Pro-4X that we had the chance to drive out on the streets around Midlothian and Grand Prairie, and we’ll start by talking about the powertrain here.
You only get one engine option for the 2020 Titan at this time and that engine is the 5.6-liter Endurance V8 Engine. This has best-in-class: 400-hp (so long as you use premium fuel) and best in class standard torque at – 413-lb.ft. of torque. This is matched up with a new 9-speed automatic transmission.
Power-wise this truck feels strong and sounds good. Tolling around town you definitely have no need for extra power but towing on the other hand, well, we’ll get into that in just a few.
You do get a lot of great safety features that I didn’t really get to test out but I’ve used in other Nissan vehicles.
Some of those safety features include:
- Automatic emergency braking
- Rear automatic braking
- High beam assist
- Lane departure warning
- Blindspot warning
- and – Rear cross-traffic alert
Tech-wise you get an 8-inch touchscreen display with Apple CarPlay and android auto integrations. You can also get niceties like heated leather seats and a panoramic sunroof. The interior of the Pro-4x and Platinum Reserve, the 2 trims we got to drive, were incredibly nice.
At the end of the day, we were able to take the Pro-4X off-road in a nice course setup at the TexPlex Park. The off-roading wasn’t too technical or too difficult for what this truck could actually do but it was a good showcase for us to see how well the Titan handles being in touchy situations. It was technical enough that a few trucks did take a beating.
Obviously the Pro-4X comes standard with Nissan’s 4×4 system. You also get an electronic locking rear differential, a hill descent control, Bilstein shocks, and get a special skid plate. You get LED headlights and an all-new lava red badge and tow hooks. The Pro-4x also comes with 18” painted dark-finish wheels and all-terrain off-road tires.
The Titan XD
Alright, so let’s jump into the XD. So the Titan XD is really a whole other truck on its own longer and stronger platform. The XD is 14.6-inches longer than the regular titan and is 3-inches taller than the Titan. This is the truck you’ll want to be looking at if you’re planning on doing some serious towing or serious work with your truck.
Most everything else is the same as the non-XD though. The exterior styling is pretty close to that of the Titan. The trims offered are basically the same. The one powertrain offered is the same. And of course, the interior is basically the same, although a bit more spacious.
So with that, the Titan XD has a max towing number of 11,000-lbs. and a payload of 2,450-lbs. In contrast, the non-XD Titan tows 9,370-lbs (still not that shabby at all) and has a payload of 1,680-lbs.
So I’m not much of a tower, I’ll readily admit that. The only towing I’ve ever done is during events and manufacturer drives much like this one. That being said, driving this Titan XD with a load behind me was done without much sweat. The 400-hp and 412-lb ft. of torque from this engine handled towing just fine. The guys from Nissan already had the brake controller set up for us and the truck has a trailer sway control, and a tow/haul mode with downhill speed control so the truck is really doing the brunt of the work.
With that, I hope you enjoy the video. Be sure to let us know your thoughts on the new Nissan Titan and Titan XD.
