I'd say whatever you get just make sure it's a 4x4, RWD pickups blow in the winter, they've got horrid ground clearance and 0 weight over the tires... I suppose you could throw a jersey barrier back there or something but then your hauling around useless weight all the time.
Auto or Stick doesn't matter much either. I prefer stick myself but when I was looking for a pickup it honestly didn't weight in my buying decision at all. Autos can take a whole lot more abuse, but depending on how it's setup you can loose power and fuel economy through an auto tranny, they also weight more (could be a good or bad thing depending on what you're using it for).
I'm partial to Toyota for obvious reasons, I have more faith in the reliability of an old Toyota over an old chevy or ford. Power is a big issue with most Japanese pickups though. The only problem I have with the Toyotas is older Toyota Pickups blow the head gasket after about 100K miles. I took me 8 months of looking at old toyota pickups to find a decent one WITHOUT a blown head gasket. Thankfully it was also a V6 so it had plenty of power. Most older Japanese pickups have I4s... which suck for power.
... you could always do an engine swap. I'm sure you could fit a small block in your Nissan. or maybe import an S13 front clip for a couple grand and swap it out with an SR20DET, I hear they drop right in (IMG:
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This post has been edited by twistedsymphony: May 22 2006, 02:33 PM
