We are close to buying a 2002 or 2003 XTerra. How do the brakes hold up with towing? We have a small popup camper with no brakes of its own. It weighs about 940-980 lbs dry, depending on what stats I read, and maybe will be 1300lbs loaded. I don't want to add brakes to the trailer since it's 20 years old and doesn't seem worth it. Generally we will not do any extreme towing, mostly <500km round trips on relatively flat terrain. However we are planning a 6 week road trip in the fall from Ontario, through California, the Grand Canyon area, to New Orleans and back. Of course there will some mountains to descend. I estimate the whole trip will be 10,000-15,000km; 6k-9k miles. Will the brakes hold up? How about emergency braking?

Can't speak for towing, but I've hauled around 800 to 900 lb. of landscape blocks in the back of my Xterra and there seemed to be plenty of braking power available for that load.

You should be fine with a trailer that light. If you don't mind driving a stick, that might be even better as you can use engine compression braking a little more effectively on those long downhill hauls.

If you're looking for a supercharged model, the 2002 is the only one available with a stick. The 2003's only come with automatics.

We towed my wife's car up here when we moved and it did fine. Total trip was only about 2500 miles, but the truck did great and braking was no problem.

I like the brakes on the trailer I pull. The X stops better with the trailer than it does alone. <2k# I wouldn't sweat the brakes, but this trailer weighs in at the limit of the X's towing limit ~5k#. I'm impressed by the Xterra every time I pull that thing and so are a lot of others that ask how the "little thing" does pulling that...

I have a 2000-2500 lb boat that I tow in the summer, and I didn't change out my breaks until @ 55,000 miles. The pads were right at the end of their life. You shouldn't have any problems.

I've read here on XOC Canadians (he is shown as one)can still get a 2003SC with a 5 speed. The auto is rated at more towing capacity as I understand however. My 2003 with auto, not SC tows great and stops well....Boats, utility trailers loaded with seveal thousand pounds. I was very surprised how well my X tows and so will you be. It's almost as good as the 1987 4Runner I had with the 22R 4 cylinder and 5 speed that I used to pass Chevys/Fords going up fairly large hills towing inboard/outboard boats in Austin.