Nissan, the last of the auto makers to remake a flagship full-size pickup, assigned senior design manager Diane Allen (DA) to the task. Effusive of speech and passionate about her work, she oversaw the Titan redesign over the past three years with a pair of Canadians alongside.
Project lead Randy Rodriguez (RR) of Surrey, B.C., primarily handled the exterior, sourcing his visual inspiration in both Greek mythology and tools of today's trades. Designer Stephen Moneypenny (SM) of Brampton, Ont., brought Rodriguez's concepts into the interior.
Seated at a table in the Nissan Design America conference room, the trio provided The Globe and Mail with exclusive insight into the collaborative thinking that went into the redesign. The interview is condensed; type in italics is ours.
The Titan XD crew cab with the all-new Cummins 310-horsepower V-8 turbo diesel engine will be in showrooms later this year. Roll-out of the full lineup, including gasoline-powered models, will continue into the spring of 2016.
DA: I think in December of 2011, we got the green light. They wanted to go for an all-new truck – new sheet metal, new interior – and when we got that go, we were pretty excited. Because we're not just a truck studio, we came to the program with a fresh set of eyes, and it allowed us to move the dial a bit for Nissan, for the truck. We're like method actors; we go and talk to truck people, we research it, we see what the competitors are doing, and it just brings a real freshness to it.
RR: The Titan had been around a long time [since 2004]. It had legs because it was a good design. But we were excited to catch up and try to pass some competitors with a super-capable truck that still has that Japanese DNA.
DA: We were kind of the 'weekend warrior,' not the real work truck but more car-like in a lot of truck-people's minds. So we knew we wanted to go more toward the other side of the spectrum – more masculine, tough and rugged. When we partnered with Cummins, the engine became substantially bigger than in today's truck. Our nose had to grow out and up. What we agreed on early was that we are not 'cowboy,' not 'ranch-hand,' Titan is warrior. Randy started putting up pictures of Atlas.
The Cummins engine combines a graphite iron cylinder block, forged steel crankshaft, aluminum alloy heads, dual overhead cam shafts and composite valve covers with the aim of combining power and fuel efficiency. The logo, and shape of the front end was inspired by ancient warrior helmets, the rugged stance shaped by the sheet metal around the voluminous engine bay.
RR: Spartacus, 300, those kinds of movies get me fired up. When you look at the cover of one of those things, you see the gladiator face. That shape became the face of the truck. It embodies the spirit of what this truck is supposed to be about.
DA: It's a future god, though. He's more modern. You can see the way the face is put together; it's like plates of armour and hardware hooked in. The mask was really fun because it even inspired the interior.
SM: I was on another program and started doodling on the side, pulling cues from the grille and the headlamps to make this iconic, kind of bigger-than-life centre stack. I had never worked on a truck … and was shocked by the volume, with so much real estate to play with. It's a small group here and we sit side-by-side – I watched all the 300s and Spartacus' in my peripheral vision. We would bounce ideas off each other and they became this one entity. So you'll see a lot of the same imagery from that helmet sprinkled around the interior.
RR: A lot of the shapes were pulled from the headlights. Here's the eye, here's the cheek. And we were using [images of the] tools that the trades use and kind of blending them with the helmet imagery.
DA: We kept going back to the grille.There's kind of a honeycomb shape we liked so much because it wasn't a standard rectangle, square or circle, and it started showing up in a lot of patterns everywhere.
RR: The bars on the front grille were much thicker before but with that Cummins engine and having to cool it, the engineering department said we'd have to open it more. We went to this mesh for cooling. I thought about adding more holes in the front to look like some of the old Nissan trucks. You would think adding more holes would increase the cooling but actually in testing it takes the air out. Things like that, the engineering and aerodynamics, make you come up with another solution.
A three-piece front bumper is replaced by an integrated design that is flush with the fascia. The sides are shaped opposed to slabbed, the presence anchored by mechanical-appearing wheels. Wrenches inspired the look of the wheels.
RR: Every tool guy has a box with wrenches, screwdrivers, et cetera. We actually have two different wheel designs where it was like a wrench turning a bolt basically.
DA: Not just the interior and exterior, but every part, every wheel, every part of the headlamp. When you look at our base headlamp, you'll see the little bulb shield is tightly embossed on it. The hardware duality is this really modern way of tuning into other things. When you look at the front, it's this whole assemblage of hardware and tooling.
SM: Tools tend to be very engineering-driven, function-driven, and at least in the interior we wanted to stay away from … well, some of our competition gets a little decorative, a little fancy and that's not the mindset we wanted to get into for this truck. We wanted to keep things logical, easy to understand, very clean but tough and strong.
DA: We got some really nice form language over the wheel wells. They're kind of athletic and directional, and that's what we're trying to capture – that god, where he's got these bulging muscles. The stance of this thing is very confident.
As a condition of going forward with a redesign of the pickup truck in the highly competitive full-size segment, the company mandated that the Titan must appeal to a wide range of consumers. The truck will be available in crew, king and standard cab configurations, two chassis sizes, three powertrains, five trim levels and several bed lengths.
DA: The highlight of the cabin, the first door, has to make [aesthetic] sense with every one of those beds. When you cut off things and shorten, it's a real task to get that to work in all different configurations.
RR: Shockingly difficult, actually. We got it to work. It was just real time-consuming.
DA: We had six clay models because we were milling and checking everything. For a long time we had the fender coming into the door too far so we took it outside and worked with clay. We realized it was making the single cab very small looking. The fender was actually bigger than the cab so it was a matter of getting the proportion right, the volume right, the character right. Some hot days we'd be out there taping it, and it would get mushy so we had to stop, bring it in and cool it off, because literally your finger was going right into the clay.
The XD has a maximum payload of greater than 2,000 pounds and towing rating above 12,000 pounds. The wheel base on the XD is 20 inches longer than other Titans. A double wishbone front suspension with stabilizer bar is meant to maximize stability and handling. The bed has flush-mounted LED lighting, a waterproof and drainable storage box, damped tailgate, sprayed-on bedliner and a gooseneck hitch integrated into the frame.
RR: Between the current Titan and this version, there's so much more volume, and that's why it was a task to convince our upper management that this is the direction we need to go in. Now that it's out, it feels appropriate.
Badges are displayed prominently on the exterior and interior of the car, somewhat counter to the Japanese auto maker's conservative tendencies.
DA: We have 'Titan' everywhere ... We decided to be Titan proud.
RR: There's a liberal application When we started benchmarking the competition, we saw they put badges on everything. The truck is a really strong personality. When we started to emulate that, we went outside the mould of the normal way we do things.
DA: We made some waves, I'll tell you. We heard, 'We don't do that'. No [we said], 'Truck does that'. Trust us. Truck does that.
RR: We had to sell it with examples from America. We said, people love their football teams and wear the jerseys and are really proud of that -- kind of like truck buyers are really proud of their trucks.
DA: I work with Randy a lot. He almost pushes me to the edge and then I see his vision. For example that over-fender, it has an arbitrary notch design in it. It doesn't do anything but it's really cool looking. The more you look at it, it grows on you and we started making it show up in other places, in small detailing.
In the interior, the quilting inside a hunting jacket inspired black-and-tan leather seating. Colours are drawn from a Montana lodge. A large centre console, designed to be a mobile work station, accommodates a 15-inch laptop. The centre shift lever on the current Titan was moved to the steering column to free up space..
DA: We knew had to really own the space. The way Steve designed the pad to just kind of sit on top of there – it's very
masculine and at the same time very premium. And that was our goal. We didn't want to look like a junk truck; we wanted it to have game.
SM: Since the last Titan, the market has moved on quite a bit; everybody has reiterated at least once. We knew we had to keep it functional, so it was striking that balance of putting materials and shapes in places to telegraph the width and strength but also working really close with engineers to make sure it functioned. We tried for this balance, that it could be practical and also luxurious.
DA: We feel proud that the vehicle has this continuity. Nothing got watered down. Usually we give up a project after we win the design and then another group will take it over and finish it. We got to finish every detail, every part. Our attention was on it the whole ride.
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