It's this kind of garbage that brings these discussions to the basement. All you can do is view this from an crumudginy view of an old school vs. new school thing. "When I owned an X you couldn't just turn a knob to shift into 4-lo! You had to jerk a stick!!"" Great.

Let's put this into the perspective of a new X buyer. At first glance, a new buyer wouldn't be able to tell much of a difference between the two, aside from the front grill. I couldn't. I'd seen them around alot, but anyone who's ever bought a new car (and isn't already a car-person) will know that you don't notice little things about models until you own one. Then the new driver would drive both, and would be hard pressed to enjoy the older over the 2005 in terms of power. The s/c version would come closer, until the new X driver discovered that they'd have to pay for premium gas for a car that's a step slower. I would be very surprised to find a person, new to the X, who would choose an older model over an '05 if the price were the same. I'm not bashing the older models though, I'm just trying to look at this from a different perspective. I love the old X...the "basicness" of it. The utility of it.

But most of the negative arguments I'm reading in this thread are from people who seem to think that Nissan should have made NO improvements in the X, for infinity. They should keep everything the same, year to year. They should not listen to their die-hard customers who want lockers, skid plates, and better shocks built-in. They shouldn't listen to their customers, and the market, by introducing a stronger, smoother, and faster engine or a smoother on-road ride.

Get real.