In my search for my Night Armor X, I have found several identical X's, but with (obviously) different VINs. I'm interested in getting the "newest" '05, so my questions are as follows:

1. Is there any way to look up (or decode) the VIN on Nissan's website to find the date of manufacture?

2. Where in the vehicle is the manufacture date listed? I looked where it's listed in my Jeep (inside the driver's door), but found nothing other than that sweet, sweet new X smell.

Looking forward to finally post to the "Inventory of Owners" thread.....

1-The tenth digit of the VIN indicates year it was built.
2-On my truck the manufacturing date is printed on a laminated white paper/tag either on the drivers side of door or on the body where the door meets the truck below the locking mechanism. Hope I U got the picture of what Im trying to describe.

Tierra's right about only the year being in the VIN.
Here's link to everything you'd ever wanna know about decoding the VIN. Well almost, doesn't have the 05 info, but still worthy of reposting...

Nissan VIN info

This link is on CourtesyParts.com main page - maybe they'll update it some day...

[edit - fixed link]

Incredibly useful link--thanks. So would it be reasonable to assume that the higher the serial number, the newer the vehicle?

You're right to avoid the early ones. Mines close to the worst put together vehicle I have ever experienced. And I've owned some pretty crappy ones over the years. Nissan's fit and finish are slipping, not only with trucks. Their minivans and cars are not as well regarded from a quality standpoint as they once were. A shame, they finally seem to have hit the mark from a styling and engineering standpoint... but I suppose to get to market at a reasonable price something has to give.

Mine was made in January 2005 - I was one of the early owners back in February. I've had no problems, and I think some of the people who complained of rattles, etc actually got theirs well after mine...
So I'm not convinced the early production ones are necessarily gonna be more likely to have problems than the later ones.
Maybe it's the Monday/Friday assembly thing???

I think the best you can do, is take a thorough test drive of the actual vehicle your going to buy to make sure there's nothing weird, but in the end there will always be a few lemons from every manufactorer, and some unlucky buyers are gonna get stuck with them.

Maybe you are one of the unlucky ones that got the 4:00PM Friday truck. Meaning, it was made on Friday when people don't care and are just looking forward to the weekend.