Uploaded June 2011 | Updated September 2026, 3 days ago
In the early 21st century Nissan got the idea of jumping up their small pickup truck by putting a supercharger on it, instead of just putting a bigger engine in.
With a supercharger, the 3.3L Nissan VQ engine made 210HP. Nissan offered it in limited quantities for some reason, it's unclear if it was unpopular or if Nissan just didn't offer many.
3 years later (2004), Nissan redid the truck and dropped the supercharger, instead putting in the largest displacement VQ engine ever made, a 4.0L making 265HP. So much for that experiment.
The supercharged engine had the same fuel economy as the non-supercharged Frontier, although the later, more powerful 4.0L V6 made significantly better mpg (and more power) than either of them.
A decade later, supercharging (including turbocharging) is now bursting out all over the place, including in trucks (but not gasoline Nissans, at least not yet).
This spot aired on FOX during a showing of Malcolm in the Middle on Sunday January 14th, 2001.
In the early 21st century Nissan got the idea of jumping up their small pickup truck by putting a supercharger on it, instead of just putting a bigger engine in.
With a supercharger, the 3.3L Nissan VQ engine made 210HP. Nissan offered it in limited quantities for some reason, it's unclear if it was unpopular or if Nissan just didn't offer many.
3 years later (2004), Nissan redid the truck and dropped the supercharger, instead putting in the largest displacement VQ engine ever made, a 4.0L making 265HP. So much for that experiment.
The supercharged engine had the same fuel economy as the non-supercharged Frontier, although the later, more powerful 4.0L V6 made significantly better mpg (and more power) than either of them.
A decade later, supercharging (including turbocharging) is now bursting out all over the place, including in trucks (but not gasoline Nissans, at least not yet).
This spot aired on FOX during a showing of Malcolm in the Middle on Sunday January 14th, 2001.
