Yikes! Thanks for that heads up!
NP! It's unfortunate it's a universal component between models so it's not like an engine where there are some good and bad, the
entire well is poisoned by one part. I just don't understand how they stopped making a perfectly good vehicle.
Nissan Frontiers are nice after 2008 EXCEPT FOR THE CLUTCH PLASTIC, this component wears out all of the time and you will do multiple replacements. I think a Tacoma is a better investment because the fuel economy makes it a cheaper vehicle after a few years. The "Tacoma tax" is real though and is only getting worse.
I don't know if you've looked at
www.carcomplaints.com but they aggregate NHTSA complaints and visually tabulate the data and break it down. Unfortunately they don't have a lot of detail on certain years and cars but overall it's decent. The big thing about this site is that NHTSA complaints themselves never tell the full story and you have to dig deeper. It's a decent starting point for research though. It's also worth noting that the comments that are on the site
aren't NHTSA complaints but rather
user reported so while some are useful they need to be taken with a grain of salt. When I'm curious about a vehicle I always jump into forums after reviewing basic data to understand what people "on the ground" are saying about the vehicles. This is actually what scared me from Suzuki Grand Vitaras, NHTSA seemed to check out great but there are crazy timing chain problems around 115k miles that aren't reflected at all in NHTSAs or on carcomplaints but everyone on Suzuki forums complains. Buying a car is a nightmare and I dodged a bullet because I saw one locally with around 105k and it visually etc had 0 problems.
Just my 2c.