There’s a whole category of vehicles that doesn’t seem to exist in most of the country: two-wheel-drive SUVs. Yes, believe it or not, 4WD was an option on almost every SUV on the market. If you didn’t live in a snowy place, and had no intention of off-roading, you could save yourself some money and maintenance by skipping the front driveline altogether. Today, we’re going to look at a couple of them, for sale in a place where they actually make some sense: Las Vegas.
Friday was Boxing Day, and we celebrated by looking at two boxy vehicles with boxer engines. I knew going in that the Subaru was going to lose. Unlike the SUVs we’re about to look at, the main point of buying a Subaru is to get one with four-wheel-drive. Otherwise, it’s just a weird car with middling reliability. The VW Vanagon absolutely clobbered it in the vote.
Personally, I don’t have much use for either of these, but if I was going to pick one, it would be the Vanagon. They’re going up in value, and there’s a possibility this one could actually be sold at a profit after some sprucing up. The old Subaru wagon would just irritate me. The only Subaru I’d really be interested in owning is a Brat.
I grew up in the Chicago area, and spent my twenties in Minnesota. The SUV boom hit big in both places, and lots of friends and family quickly swapped out their station wagons for new, taller station wagons – with four-wheel-drive. Nobody in Minnesota would ever dream of buying an SUV driven only by its rear wheels. I mean, 4WD isn’t absolutely a necessity for snow; millions of people get around just fine without it, but if you’re going to get an SUV anyway, you might as well get one that’s snow-ready.
It wasn’t until I headed west that I realized just how many SUVs were available in two-wheel-drive form. Even Ford Bronco IIs and Jeep Cherokees could be ordered without a driven front axle. And they were surprisingly common in California; in fact, when I met my wife, she was driving a 2WD Toyota 4Runner – which I had no idea even existed. We’ve owned two other 2WD SUVs since then, one of them almost identical to one of today’s choices. They make a lot of sense as cheap beaters in places where you don’t encounter snow, like Fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada, where these two are for sale. Let’s check them out.
1995 Nissan Pathfinder XE – $2,650
Engine/drivetrain: 3.0-liter OHC V6, five-speed manual, RWD
Location: Las Vegas, NV
Odometer reading: 92,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
The Nissan Pathfinder entered the US market in 1987, as a two-door SUV based on the D21 Hardbody trucks. This four-door model came along in 1990 – the same year that Chevy added a four-door S-10 Blazer and Ford replaced the Bronco II with the Explorer – and replaced the two-door entirely. SUVs were taking over suburbia, and climbing into the back seat of a two-door SUV was, and is, a real pain in the ass. Nobody buying an SUV for a family car wanted a two-door. This 1995 Pathfinder is the last year for the original bodystyle, and it’s the same configuration as a 1991 model that I once knew very well.
This Pathfinder is powered by Nissan’s VG30E V6 and a five-speed manual transmission. You could theoretically get a Pathfinder with a four-cylinder engine, but I’ve never actually seen one. Based on the performance of the V6 version, I don’t think you’d want any less power. This car was donated to a charity, and they put some effort into fixing it up to sell. It has rebuilt heads, a new water pump, a new fuel pump, and a new power steering line, which is a repair I remember doing to the one we had. With only 92,000 miles, it should have a lot of life left. The one we had was still running fine at a whopping 365,000 miles, but we gave up and sold it due to electrical issues.
The Pathfinder got an updated interior in ’94, along with the Hardbody pickups, with a new dashboard and a driver’s side airbag. We only get this one photo of the interior, but it looks pretty good. And the seller says the air conditioning works fine.
Outside, it has some dings and scrapes, but I think in an SUV this age you just call those “character.” Being from the desert, it shouldn’t have any rust underneath. I still like the styling of these old Pathfinders, both two- and four-door models. It looks purposeful, but not tough for tough’s sake.
2002 Ford Explorer XLS – $2,800
Engine/drivetrain: 4.0-liter OHC V6, five-speed automatic, RWD
Location: Henderson, NV
Odometer reading: 104,000 miles
Operational status: Runs and drives well
Tell someone to picture an SUV, and chances are it will be some flavor of Ford Explorer. Since its introduction in 1990, the Explorer has been a fixture on the roads. These days, since it has replaced the Crown Victoria as the de facto cop car in much of the country, it’s not a car you always want to see on the road, especially in your rearview mirror. But a beige one like this, from a couple generations back, doesn’t scare anybody.
The third-generation Explorer was an all-new design, larger than its predecessor, and featuring an independent rear suspension for a more comfortable ride. The base engine, a single overhead-cam version of the 4.0-liter Cologne V6, and the 5R55 automatic transmission, were carried over from the previous generation. Unfortunately, the SOHC Cologne engine uses a stupid and failure-prone timing chain arrangement, and as far as I can tell, these transmissions are made of Silly Putty and good intentions. This one runs and drives well at the moment, according to the seller, and it has only a little over 100,000 miles on it. It should have some life left in it. And some of these never have timing chain or transmission problems at all.
It’s the basic XLS model, so it’s a little utilitarian inside, but it’s in good shape. It does have power windows and locks and all that good stuff, as well as air conditioning, which works. A lot of these had three rows of seats; I don’t know if this one does or not. If it does, the third row is folded down in the photos.
It’s really clean outside as well, though it looks like there’s a little damage to the quarter panel behind the right rear wheel. Since it’s the base model, it has plain gray plastic bumpers and black door handles, and it’s lacking that cool keypad on the driver’s door to unlock it. That’s a feature that you never think you’re going to use until you have it, and then when you no longer have it, you miss it.
Obviously, since they’re only two-wheel-drive, neither one of these is going to be suitable for hitting the trails. But only a tiny percentage of SUVs ever see any terrain more rugged than a gravel parking lot anyway, and if it doesn’t snow where you live, why deal with the extra maintenance and mileage penalty of 4WD? These will both do everything any other SUV will do – haul, tow, and eat up highway miles – as long as you don’t drive on anything too slippery. And they’re significantly cheaper than their 4WD counterparts. Which one would you pick?
This is a day where I could be fine with either one. When we moved from Cleveland to Seattle, the TV station I went to work for had at least four of the Pathfinders, but in V6/AT configuration. I too loved the styling of these, and they put up with a lot of miles and presumably, some abuse by some of my colleagues at the time. They were great in the snow.
When we moved there (summer of ’94), we had ’93 Jeep GC with AWD and the V8 that my wife and I cross-shopped against a ’93 Explorer the previous summer. I let her make the choice since I had a company car and a ’90 Toyota V6 5M 4WD XtraCab. I really wanted the Explorer Eddie Bauer edition because it had the most comfortable seats I have ever sat on. But it handled like a pig, and my wife liked the GC’s V8 power. She had a pretty heavy foot back then. And boy, was that thing thirsty! During out last weekend trip when my wife was eight months along and we drove very gently to Windsor, Ontario was the only time I saw a 2 as the first digit of the mpg.
Other than a lot of component infant mortality failures (all repaired under warranty) it settled down and turned out to be decent and easily pulled a U-Haul trailer with all the stuff she needed to take care of him in his first few weeks over the Rockies and Cascades when we relocated to Seattle. I drove three and half days straight as long as I could. She flew, our son flew and the cat flew. I had to fly back to pick up the shifts I had traded just to make the trip possible and then pack up the rest of our stuff for the moving company.
I actually stopped, signed and faxed some real estate papers at Wall Drug Store in Wall, SD.
A couple of weeks later, I loaded the Toyota’s bed with the heaviest stuff we had (the movers charged by the pound), threw a blue tarp over that stuff and headed west again. I took my time and got there in five days but saw a few things along the way.
The Toyota’s engine was a disappointment going up grades. But I already knew it would be since I bought it in Sacramento and was surprised how often I had to downshift going up into the Sierras.
I have a ’17 Accord V6 6AT and have had to make trips back and forth from Tacoma over the Siskiyous down to the Sacramento on I-5 area every other week all summer and fall to help my brother with our declining mother. Siskiyou Pass, a few miles north of the CA-OR border, is the highest point on I-5 at 4310 feet. So, altitude isn’t really a problem with that NA engine. It has VTEC, but I never see (or hear) the revs get up to where that would kick in. The newer TC engines would probably compensate better.
There are a number of 6% grades up and down in either direction and yes, the Honda has to occasionally downshift a gear to keep the set speed on the steeper parts uphill, but if you are using CC, it also downshifts (sometimes two gears) to make it a lot easier on brake pads. I have never seen worse that 35 mpg for the duration of these trips. And that’s at my usual limit +5
There are runaway truck ramps in both directions, but I’ve never seen any rig in them. Truck brakes have gotten better over time.
Oh, and a heads up for those that might be making a trip down I-5, just before about a mile north of Exit 566/College City there is a pothole I hit at 70+ that bottomed out the right front strut. It had to be at least 6″ deep but I didn’t see it in the twilight until it was too late. I need to search to see if CalTrans has a way to report that. At the next rest stop, I got out to take a look and neither the tire nor the goofy alloy wheel that Honda puts on the EX-Ls of that era appeared to have sustained any damage. But I will take it to check the allignment when time permits.
Pathfinder FTW on this one.. I am a bit biased, as my first car was a mid-90s Pathfinder SE V6 with the amazing 62147B alloys. It might not have won any drag races, but it was a sturdy workhorse and a fantastic first car.
Those WERE great-looking wheels!
I’m nearing 8 years of fault free vintage Nissan driving myself. Never experiienced that with any Ford. So there.
As the fleet currently contains an Explorer (a few years newer, with the 4.6), we’ll take the Pathfinder.
Despite the fact that I am stuck with AWD on my Mercedes wagon as that was the only way you could get an S212 in the US, I need AWD like a need a couple of ex-wives here in SW FL. So of this two, I always liked the look of this gen Pathfinder, and it being a stick is the cherry on top. I would totally rock that.
It also seem to be benefiting a hopefully legit charity.
All other things being equal, stick wins. A 5R55 is not remotely equal to, say, a 4L60e, let alone a manual. Nissan wins.
I used to live out there and let me tell you if you get up in the elevation you get ise and snow. Left my house in BHC AZ heading east on 163. I was warm in my shorts and tshirt but once I got some elevation it started getting cold and had some snow on the ground. About halfway to Kingman. Fortunately going south to Needles California, Snoopys brother Spike lives there, it warmed back up.
Back in the day I sold a lot of Pathfinders. I should really say that they sold themselves. This one brings back good memories so that’s my choice. My nephew owned an Explorer of that vintage. You’re being very, very kind about that back-stabbing-mother-humping-lint-licking transmission.
The 5R55 transmission never had any ‘good intentions’ involved with its assembly.
Into it went all the bitterness, anger, and apathy of the Ford Motor Company along with the Silly Putty.
Budget at least twice the cost of the Explorer for a rebuild. Then the engine will fail for good measure.
Pathfinder from peak Nissan era for me.
The Pathfinder is a tin can with a spare that says “Steal Me”.
And the Explorer is just so – Basic. (Are those Firestones?)
I can’t be motivated to vote today.
This is difficult for me. I’ve always had a thing for that era of Pathfinder for many reasons but I’ve come to appreciate that era of Ford. Their drivability is still impressive especially compared to most stuff out there now. If one was 4×4 it could give it the edge. But manual 95 Pathfinder all the way. I doubt it’s sticking around that seems like a decent price for something in that condition and looks very honest.
Strangely difficult choice. I’ve always liked those 90s Pathfinders but the cosmetic condition of the Explorer is impressive, particularly for a CL ad. And it will be much nicer to drive. That Pathfinder is looking a bit rough on the inside, seems like a lot of sun damage.
How common were the timing chain and transmission issues on the Ford?
My understanding is that the Cologne 4.0 was converted from OHV to OHC. Ford accomplished the kludge by putting 2 “cassettes” containing timing chains/gears/tensioners fore and aft on the engine. The front cassette is serviceable with the engine in (although a PITA), the rear service requires an engine pull.
The other issue is that the timing chain pretensioners used a spring to tension the chain on startup prior to hydraulic pressure (via engine oil) building to keep the chains taut. Excessive slack from weak springs caused slack and excessive wear on the plastic guides.. and predictable results.
The 5R55 is known to be a weak transmission. It often loses the overdrive (5th) gear range. My (so far) happy story is that I bought a 2004 Exploder in 2008, proactively replaced the pretensioners with revised units, and have never touched the transmission. Going on 22 years and 200k miles even with moderate towing duties… as they say, YMMV.
Any vehicle out there is either sun damage clear coat or sand blasted to the primer.
I remember renting a Pathfinder of that vintage for a ski trip and all of us agreeing it was a POS. Despite my Nissan is Never the Answer policy, I’m picking it for the 5 speed. That gen Explorer does absolutely nothing for me.
My 2WD 92 F-250 was a used car bargain here in New England. Easily 1/3 the cost of a 4WD and little rust since it’s so horrible in the snow. I only use it as a 3rd vehicle when I need to haul something so it’s fine for me.
I’m actually in the market for a cheap beater (preferably a 4 cyl), as dailying a full size truck has become a bit of a headache and I can say if this Pathfinder was closer I’d give it a hard look. The repairs done to it should give it plenty of trouble free miles, although I’m a bit suspicious on the quality of these since they might probably exceed what they’re asking for the vehicle. Maybe they were also a goodwill to the charity?
I miss having a manual and I don’t need 4×4.
If this Explorer was one of the rare ones with the 5 speed manual I’d jump on it as the overall condition seems better. I’m not scared of the 4.0 SOHC woes but I wouldn’t touch a 5R55 vehicle with a ten ft pole…
Tough call. Being the resident Ford Explorer apologist, one would think it would be an automatic win for the Ford for me, but I think I’d prefer the Pathfinder. I hated wrenching on the VG30 in the tight engine bay of my 300ZX, but it isn’t bad in the Pathfinder. The Explorer is fine, but a 2002 XLS is the least desirable model of the third gens, and at this point the timing chain guides on the 4.0L V6 are a dice roll into the unknown – the mileage would indicate they should be good, but amount of time and quality of maintenance of past owners may make that assumption a poor one. Luckily, while the 5R55W is failure prone behind the V8, it does pretty well behind the V6 and is just as likely to make it 200,000 miles without a rebuild as it is to fail at 100,000 miles. Were this an Eddie Bauer or Limited model, I’d be all for it (I loved my third gen Eddie Bauer in blue and tan), but as an XLS I’d rather row my own with the Nissan.
My wife and I test drove a ’93 EB edition of the Explorer and other than handling like crap, it was handsome. Best seats EVER.
I drove and eventually managed a fleet of 1990-era Exploders at a TV station along with some first-gen Taurasi and I don’t recall them being particularly troublesome. Certainly, much better than the Dodge Diplomat and K-Car Aries wagons they were replacing. The Diplomats were horrible to drive. The Aries? Eh. Not horrible. The first gen Tauras was very comfortable to drive. It was kind of the poor-man’s Audi 5000. And we were pretty on top of routine maintenance. Which goes a long way to minimizing issues.
I went back out in the field as a photographer a few years later at a station that had a fleet of late 80s Olds 88s with the 3800 engine and that was probably the best news car I ever drove. The smart thing they did is they let the photographers take home their personally assigned vehicles and they could tell who was respecting them and who wasn’t. (They fired a guy who managed to roll one, but that opened up a spot for me who had gotten tired of the middle-management thing. Different station, but same market.)
But they had plenty of acceleration if and when you need it and then got low to mid-30s mpgs on the freeway. Which impressed me back in that era. And they rode nicely and could actually go around a corner without falling over.
Pathfinder 100%. And then immediately begin researching how to convert to 4WD.
Tough choice. I genuinely like the Pathfinder and don’t particularly like the Explorer. However, the Ford is newer and in substantially better condition. It is hard to imagine finding a better transportation appliance for $2800 in 2025.
If these were 4wd, I’d go with my heart and vote for the Pathfinder. Since these are 2wd and thus relegated to the “transportation appliance” category of automobiles, I’m going with the boring & ugly but newer & nicer option. The Ford gets my vote today.
Seems pretty logical to me. The last news car I had was a Chevy Tahoe. Compared to the Pathfinders that were starting to age out, most days, working in town (Seattle-Tacoma) I think I preferred the Nissan, just because it was easier to find a parking space it would fit in. With the Tahoe, I often had to park blocks away and then schlep 60+ pounds of gear, sometime up some pretty steep hills.
That was long ago. I went over to the software side for the TV news biz in ’99 and installing or upgrading the newsroom computer systems where all the scripts are written, the stories in the shows sequenced and then links to the video clips and graphics are embedded. And the software and hardware from multiple vendors that we all tried to play with nicely. It was interesting to travel the Americas; US, CA and LATAM to see how they were all doing what I used to do.
Saw a lot of Subies and CR-Vs in my travels.
i think the coolest thing I ever saw was in Mexico City; a couple of BMW motorcycles equipped with microwave transmission gear (which is how we used to do live shots unless we were somewhere it required a ~ $2M satellite uplink truck and buying time on a satellite transponder) and swiveling and telescoping antenna. Which is, as you can imagine, a very congested vehicular environment. Typing that, I thought about how impractical that would be in the wintertime in the northern US and Canada.
I’m fully retired now, but a lot of the live shots you see now (if you’re watching news) is the photographer wearing a backpack with four cellular modems. It’s pretty remarkable technology. Something in the backpack is splitting up a HD video stream and audio four ways, transmitting it and then it gets automagically reassembled at the station/network. It’s not quite a Star Trek transporter, but it’s closer than I ever imagined in the day.
It works remarkably well, but if the cellular network they’re using is saturated, there will be moments that it doesn’t. Usually, it just gets pixelated, but if it’s bad enough, it’s total loss of signal. We used to have to run coaxial cable and audio cables, sometimes a long way (could be 200′) out to a van on the street and then secure it all down with high-viz yellow and black tape so nobody trips over them. And, unless you’re out in the sticks somewhere, the cellular networks have gotten so dense and have so much bandwidth, it doesn’t happen often. It used to, a lot, in the early days of that technology, but 5G makes that a pretty rare occurrence.
So, don’t feel sorry for the shooter with the backpack. Feel sorry for the people I worked with, starting in 1980, whose backs are totally messed up from when a TV camera weighed 35-50 pounds. And we carried a separate 10-25 pound tape deck hanging of their left shoulder. A light kit. A tripod that could weigh 20 pounds. I’m one of them. And now an iPhone or Galaxy or a Pixel can shoot better video than the $60K cameras I was using back then and fits in your hand. And stabilizes to the point you rarely need a tripod. And Sony or Panasonic make hand-holdable camcorders or even a GoPro shoots higher quality video.
I started as a still photographer. Not an Ansel Adams quality guy, but I did alright at a small-town newspaper before lateraling over into TV news, because the newspaper industry was in collapse in 1980 when I did that. But wow. The quality of stills I can get out of my phone, or out of the original Canon R I can get compared to when I was shooting Tri-X and especially when I was shooting high school football games under inadequate lighting, blows my mind.
When I was shooting TV News and the reporter I was working, with wanted a coffee, I’d spot a still guy I knew, and he was just chillaxing and uploading all the files off his memory card. And the photo editor he was working with would pick what she looked the best and she’d say who are these people and they would collaborate on the caption, while I still had to go back to the station and have to work with videotape for an hour or so. “Must be nice to have that job,” I thought to myself.
I was lucky enough to spend more than a few hours flying in a couple of Bell JetRanger 206 turbine-powered helicopters at two different stations and that was so fun. Now, a cheap DGI drone can get as good or better video as what we got back then. They’re so small and can fit into places that we would never have survived trying to do.
I took a friend and her daughter up in an AS350 for a tour of Kauai in January, checks watch, still this year. And the looks on their faces made it totally worth it. Her daughter lived on Oahu, and I used some of my bazillion points and a 2-4-1 ticket through Alaska Airlines credit card program to get there, meet up, have great times and then stay at a nice place on Marriott points, which I also amassed from my work travels.
The daughter had never been in a helicopter. Her mom had, but after a bad crash and was not conscious while in it. I live three blocks from a hospital where, if I am awake can hear an AirLiftNW EC-135 coming into a helipad where someone is having a worse day than I am.
Sorry, I’ve turned into one of those people who are barfing out their stories from when we were young, energetic and lucky enough to get to do some pretty cool stuff. And I have driven long days the last two to get down here through some interesting weather the last two trips, dealing with her Alzheimer’s, and I’m exhausted and don’t have much filtering left.
So yeah… The Piano’s Been Drinking. Tom Waits. So have I. And I’m shocked to read he is still alive! Good on you, Tom!
No complaints.
The Pathfinder wins by default
4-doors > 2-doors, so mathematically, it is the Ford.
The Pathfinder is also 4 doors. They just did a great job of making a 4 door look like a 2 door.
Well, my math doesn’t math! Pathfinder it is! But too late to change my vote.
I was going to comment that I loved how they kept the 2 door look on the Pathfinder. My buddy in high school had a Nissan Hardbody with a homebrew flatbed so there is a bit of a nostalgia vote for me today but clearly the Nissan is the way to go.
My first car was mid 90s Pathfinder SE V6 4 door, but I was secretly jealous of a buddy who had a late 80’s 2 door Pathfinder – sure 4 doors was more convenient, but the 2 door looked so cool.
I despise that generation of Explorer. After the previous generation’s design they really phoned it in on this one. One of the most disappointing design evolutions in my opinion. They can all be crushed for what I care.
Difficult choice. Neither is very exciting, and without 4WD, even tricky dirt roads might be off limits (which is the only reason I would own an SUV-type thing). The Explorer is even duller than the Pathfinder, and the potential mechanical issues aren’t fun to think about. The Nissan has the 5-speed and looks much better, IMO, but there’s something about it that tingles my Scooby-sense. Maybe it’s the Cali license plates on the Nevada vehicle? Maybe it’s a psychological thing regarding any vehicle that has info written on the windshield in white paint?
What the hell. I’ll go with the Pathfinder despite my intuition
Pathfinder for me.
It is known to be a solidly reliable design. And the manual is a nice bonus. The Ford on the other hand has the OHV-Converted-To-OHC V6… which was a problematic kludge of an engine that is best avoided.
The better Explorers to get from that era are the ones with the OHV V6 or the old 302 used-to-be-a-Mustang-Engine V8.