[TwoWheelsDown]

Four regular doors would be nice in itself.

That's the main reason why I chose the crew cab even as a single person. I had trucks with suicide doors and it sucked. They require a lot of space to open. Whereas with the crew cab, I can easily reach over and crack open the rear door to grab something without having to walk around the door.

If you have kids, Crew cab and make sure you get a truck with Utilitrac. The ability to tie down things using the rails trumps the extra foot the long bed gives you. I'll take a 5' bed with Utilitrac over an 8' bed with just the 4 corner tie downs any day.

I installed airplane-style L-track in my F-250's 8-foot bed. Nothing that an afternoon and a hundred bucks can't take care of. I got a short bed Frontier, but that's because it was a unicorn of a pre-owned truck other than the bed.

That being said, I opt to get the largest cab even if it means sacrificing bed length. It's easier to add cargo management than make the cab bigger. I'd make an exception if I had to regularly haul long items that I needed to keep locked. It all depends on your individual needs. One of my friends flies giant-scale R/C airplanes and drives a regular cab 8' bed with a camper shell in order to keep them enclosed in the bed and not have a truck that is the length of a bus.

The 5 foot bed is worthless to us, rather have a suv and a utility trailer.

I occasionally get asked why I didn't get an SUV and a utility trailer, or just a large SUV. I have a 5' bed with a shell, which gives me roughly 60cf of cargo volume. It pretty much comes down to three points:
-Convenience. Lets face it, towing a trailer isn't always convenient, and deadheading with an empty trailer is cumbersome compared to an empty pickup bed.
-Cargo separation and access. I can haul oversize items with the tailgate down and still have the cab and tool box locked up at stops. I have a camper shell with a tool box and side access doors. I can't exactly cut a win-door in the side of a Suburban to reach cargo near the back seat.
-Price. Large SUVs are typically for people with deep pockets who want all the luxury features. I need to haul cargo, not people in leather seats with 3 climate control zones and 22 cup holders.

why can't someone make a KC truck where the doors swing wider.

The Ford F-150 and Super Duty extended cab suicide doors open 170 degrees. I think I'd still opt for forward-hinged doors though. You need the space to swing the front door open and the rear door 170 degrees. Not a problem if you're parked in the way back of a parking lot, but might be a problem in your garage. Whereas forward-hinged rear doors can be opened a sliver, independent of the front doors.

The market seems to be going to that trend. The Toyota Tundra Double Cab was the first extended cab to have forward-hinged doors, followed by Chevrolet and Ram.

 

[TwoWheelsDown]

Go to a Nissan dealership, try sitting in the KC jump seats yourself.
Then proceed and buy a Crew Cab.

From what you originally said, you're shopping around for a 2020 Pro-4x Crew Cab.

... but then you're only considering an older 2019 model KC P4x because you can "get one for a steal" - not because it's necessarily the same vehicle you were shopping for.
So ask yourself if you really want a "2020 Pro4x Crew Cab" specifically, or if you're just second guessing yourself because you see a lower number on a price tag.

I agree with @raine 110%. If the KC and CC were the same price, which one would you go for? If you're only shopping for price and willing to compromise, it shouldn't be a question, get what you can afford and live with the compromises. If you want a CC, get the CC. Otherwise if you get the KC, you might be shopping for a CC in a few months.

If you're like me, you won't be considering the "deal" you got when you inconvenience yourself by having the KC. Instead you'll probably be thinking about how you coulda/shoulda/woulda gotten the CC.

As for the CCLB folks, I'd struggle to consider purchasing one. Maybe if it was really cheap. But a basic full-size late-model pickup is maybe a foot longer, has a way more roomier cab, seats, and deeper bed, and turns tighter.

 

[TwoWheelsDown]

But it won’t be a Nissan that their actually interested in.

If you're dead-set on a Frontier, then I suppose that's why they offer the option. I have a thing for Fords, but otherwise lack brand loyalty. That's why I'm here!

Modern full size pickups are still a heck of a lot bigger than a cc long wheel base frontier. It’s still a mid size truck. Nissan shoulda just offered a 68” long bed with the crew cab and called it day.

A CCLB Frontier is 219.4" Over-All Length versus a SuperCrew 5.5' bed F-150 at 231.9" OAL, a difference of 12.5". Granted the Frontier has a narrower body width and shorter doors, so it'll be easier to get in and out in tight spaces. It also comes ahead on price. All depends on what a person's individual needs and wants are.

 

[TwoWheelsDown]

They stopped it in 2010 as I ordered mine and they built it.

Clint

I'm surprised more manufacturers don't allow custom orders for anything that's not physically-impossible. Must be too cost-prohibitive to schedule one-off jobs. One of my coworkers ordered an F-150 King Ranch with a bench seat. It looks a little odd to have a non-color-matched jump seat in the middle, but hey, that's what he wanted. He also got the black rubber floor. The dark brown King Ranch carpet only comes cut for the center console. Figured the black rubber floor would look better than black carpet and dark brown seats.

 

[TwoWheelsDown]

you mean being able to pick your own specific combinations based on manufacturer available options

Exactly that. Ford says stuff like you can't get a bench seat on a trim higher than Lariat. Well, they had the parts, and it didn't require a custom wiring harness or anything. Ford has production allocation slots available for dealers to order whatever they want as long as it's not an impossible combination.

For example, now it's a hard "NO" if you want the same King Ranch with a bench seat. Heated rear seats became standard in 2020 in the King Ranch, and the buttons to turn them on and off are in the back of the center console. Without the console, there's no where to put the buttons without making something completely one-off like the leopard-print carpet you mentioned.

It's generally only possible if you want parts from a lower trim onto a higher trim. For example, you can order a King Ranch or above with a column shifter and instead have the center console with the storage compartment in lieu of the console shifter. They have the parts for that since the XLT 302A can have heated rear seats and a column shifter. But you cannot get the brushed-aluminum tailgate applique found on King Ranch and above put on a trim that is Lariat or lower. The applique are embossed with the name of the trim, and there is no tooling to emboss "Lariat", "XLT", or "XL" into the applique.

Nissan still offered the manual trans in certain trims, so I don't see why they couldn't slot in a manual trans in a custom order, even if it's not an available option for a specific trim or combination. As for mass manufacturing, each vehicle rolling down the assembly line is different from the vehicle ahead of it or behind it. They don't make all the white CCSB 4x4s SVs then start making all the silver KC S trim 2WD automatics.

A CCLB 4x4 manual trans is just a different allocation of parts that they still stocked and not some engineering impossibility, especially since it was offered in the past. Therefore it should be allowed to be ordered and slotted in, just like any other combination of parts needed to build any other Frontier.

 

[TwoWheelsDown]

If you let customers pick and choose options "a la carte" to create their "custom" vehicle, then you open the door to add hundreds (maybe thousands) of added custom configurations to that list. That slows down production because even if it's available options, the configuration is bespoke.
...
Also: just because they are "capable" of doing it with what is already available to them in the factory, that doesn't at all mean that they are obligated to offer it to customers as an available option from the factory floor. Everytime I bought a new vehicle, I would have loved to be able to choose each and every option I really wanted a la carte.
...
And funny you mentioned Ford... whenever I did some window shopping for a Ford, their available models and options and packages are always super confusing LOL

It's already like that for Ford. I forgot the specific number but I read in some media documentation that there are well over one million possible combinations for a Ford F-150 when you consider all of the available options. Cab, bed, drive type, engine, rear axle ratio, paint color, interior color, trim, grill choice, wheel choice, etc etc.

And yes, Nissan is free to do what they want. I appreciate how Nissan and Honda prepackage their options for the most part. If you want a feature, you generally need to get the trim that has that feature. Makes shopping for a car a lot easier when you can just check off "SV" or "LX" or whatever.

And yes, Ford's million-possible-combination trims get pretty confusing. Opposite of what I just said about Nissan and Honda, it's a bit tedious to find a specific combination, even new. Want an F-150 XLT? Okay, there's an XLT 300A (base), XLT 301A (mid), and XLT 302A (luxury). Within each trim, there are at least a dozen stand-alone options such as tow package (which is different than just the hitch!), the Extended Range fuel tank, and electronic locking rear axle.

There are so many combinations that there's a lot of overlap between trims. An F-150 XLT 302A (luxury) is basically an F-150 Lariat 400A (base), but without leather seats or ControlTrac 4WD. An F-150 King Ranch 500A (base) is basically an F-150 Lariat 401A (luxury, no mids on Lariat) with all of the options checked off.

I just bought a 2016 Crew Cab SV with all the extras and while the bed is shorter, it drives about the same as the 2010 (same wheelbase) but has usable rear seating that even I can sit in.

I rarely have passengers at all and I got a crew cab. It seems like the crew cab is the defacto extended cab and the extended cab is the defacto regular cab. I was thinking about getting a 3/4 ton truck to carry a slide-in truck camper. Slide-ins don't have much storage space compared to other RVs, so I'd want an extended cab for extra storage. But extended cabs are pretty rare, so I was soon down the wormhole of looking at really old or really expensive crew cab short bed trucks.

Out of curiosity, and I know this is a total shot-in-the-dark, but did you have a MazdaSpeed3? You write similar to how a dude with the same name wrote on the Mazda forums, and you also have the same name.

 

[TwoWheelsDown]

Fir family trips we ordinarily take her Mazda5.

Also a great car. Third row leg room is pretty good too. Had I known about them, I would've gotten one in lieu of the Mazda3 I picked up back in '08 or so.