Looking for best car up to 25k! Nissan Xterra or Jeep Wrangler

[CasperPL]

Hello everyone!

I have sold my previous Pathfinder and decided to find myself something more suitable for the sand. After reading lost of threads and articles I limited my choice to Xterra and Wrangler. The budget I set up for the car is 25k and I'm planning to use the car on the road as well.

What are your thoughts? Do you know any specific places I could find some good offers?

Or maybe you or someone you know is selling the car? If yes, then please give me a shout!

[Frederic]

1 hour ago, CasperPL said:

Hello everyone!

I have sold my previous Pathfinder and decided to find myself something more suitable for the sand. After reading lost of threads and articles I limited my choice to Xterra and Wrangler. The budget I set up for the car is 25k and I'm planning to use the car on the road as well.

What are your thoughts? Do you know any specific places I could find some good offers?

Or maybe you or someone you know is selling the car? If yes, then please give me a shout!

Hi @CasperPLfor that budget you would find the following:

1. 2008-2010 Nissan Xterra

2. 2006 Jeep Wrangler TJ

3. 2008 Jeep Wrangler JK with the 3.8 Engine

 

I have put the Nissan Xterra on top because it's a great on-road and off-road vehicle with plenty of boot space, and performs better than the Jeeps of this era and budget. The 4.0 engine is very powerful.

The Jeep TJ is very powerful as well, but i would not recommend to use this as on-road vehicle. 

The Jeep JK with the 3.8 engine is not bad as well, but you will have a hard time finding a clean one, and the performance is not on par with an Xterra (and not as reliable).

You will find Xterra for around 18-20kAED for the 2008 model, but to get it ready for the desert you will need to consider the following checkups:

* Plugs and coils

* Air filter and cabin filter

* Throttle body clean

* PCV valve

* Clean the MAF sensor

* Brake Fluids

* Check exhaust system for leaks / cracks

* Verify if catalytic converters are still installed.

* Drive shaft u-joints

* Boots on cv joints and grease

* front body mounts

* Engine mounts

* transmission mounts

* steering links and sway bars

* front diff bushings

* LCA UCA ball joints and leaf bushings

* radiator and coolant hoses condition

* Replace all fluids (engine, transmission, transfer case, differentials, coolant)

 

I recently purchased a 2008 Xterra which had a good engine and tranmission, but spent a lot of money getting it to the condition that i wanted, which included replacing almost all hoses, bushings, all shocks, engine and transmission mounts, etc... 

After that add a front skid plate, replaced the weak OEM tow points with reinforced ones, installed a flag holder and you are good to go !

If you are still reading at this point and did not run away, you probably have seen by now that with your budget of 25k it will be a bit tight to get the car 100% offroad ready. I ended up spending a lot more unfortunately, but you can be lucky to find one for 25k that was well maintained. Sourcing spare parts in the used market in Sharjah is also an option but i personally preferred all new OEM parts. (cry once...)

PS The offroad version would be great to have as it has rear locking differentials. But i've heard from many Xterra owners that the rear differentials cannot be found in the market secondhand (very rare) so if you need to replace the rear diff in the future that might be a big issue. 

There are plenty of Xterra owners here and will happily pitch in to help further !

Dubizzle and other online car sites will probably be the best source. I would avoid buying an Xterra that has been modified too much. There are still stock models for sale that haven’t seen  a lot of off-road abuse. That’s the one you need.

 

[Frederic]

One more thing, you will find the USA import models to be at least 3000kAED cheaper. I am personally not a fan, but it could be an option to consider. I think they are virtually the same as the GCC models (even same radiators i think).

They might have a history of accidents in the US (write-off) but then again even a GCC 2008 without accidents would be a unicorn in my opinion.

 Mine is a GCC with some accident history but nothing serious.

[CasperPL]

Thanks for the reply. I'm shifting more and more towards Xterra. Any recommendations on where to find a good deal? I'm searching dubbizle and facebook market, but both are full of dealers. Maybe you know some places where I can find more private offers?

[Frederic]

2 minutes ago, CasperPL said:

Thanks for the reply. I'm shifting more and more towards Xterra. Any recommendations on where to find a good deal? I'm searching dubbizle and facebook market, but both are full of dealers. Maybe you know some places where I can find more private offers?

These cars have finally become quite recognized by the offroad community, and the clean examples exchange ownership pretty fast. Both places you mentioned are indeed the main sources, but be aware that often you will see them being advertised for 30kAED while the owner might be open for some haggling to bring it down to a more realistic offer (this is very common here). 

Take your time and if possible try to stretch your budget a bit if you manage to find a clean example that's well maintained with good service history and not abused offroad.

When i purchased mine earlier this year there was a very clean 2013 model for sale for around 40kAED which i found to be way over budget, but after replacing so many parts on our 2008 model, perhaps in the long end that 2013 would have been a better option  

[Benjamin]

@Frederic left some great points @CasperPL 

As most points have been met I’m not going to regurgitate everything that has been said. 
 

my advice is to continue to check dubizzle and Facebook marketplace for the car your going to settle with. 
 

But most of all the most important thing you’ve got to do when looking at used cars is to check the VIN number every car has one it’ll essentially tell you any accidents the car has been in and where. This is especially the case when buying a car from America or even Sharjah. You’d be surprised how good some of these cars look but underneath are barely holding together 😂 

[Chaitanya D]

Hi @CasperPL, i can see in your profile that you have a 2006 pathfinder which by itself is a great car ( I believe with the same 4.0 V6, not sure if there is a diff lock option). Just the diff lock is not a deal breaker if you are thinking so - as long as you are driving with a group.

I suppose you can prep your present car itself which can easily meet your needs for off roading.  Unless there is something major which might be super expensive. Members here have driven on all levels with this car 

As a Xterra owner myself - two of them  - it is a great car which will never fail you and over time you learn how to play around to at least get out of desert in any issue, but getting proper parts - especially OEM/genuine is a bit of wait /pain at times. This might be an issue with all other older model cars. Another advantage with the xterra is there is a amazing support group of xterra owners available here with tons of advise. 

[Rizwanm2]

Dear @CasperPL  im another happy xterra owner. i got mine about 3 years back. i got it from sharjah car market. it was zero accident super clean car. yes its hard to believe. apart from dubizzle and FB when you have time please rip through car market as well, you will find some good examples. 

wish you good luck for your search. 👍

 

[Krishna R]

Hello @CasperPL I was in the market for quite sometime to get a 4x4 that was more of an off roader than my Infiniti QX.

I had wrangler, FJ and Xterra in mind. They were finalized as these cars have been tried and tested in the desert and they have huge online communities to help with mods, repairs, questions etc.

My budget was 25K for the car and 5K to get it desert ready (maintenance, skid plates, bushings etc)

After 3 months of researching and test driving, the below was my analysis. Please note It's my personal opinion only and not some expert recommendation based on technical research.

Wrangler:

• Great car for the desert.
• Market is overloaded with used jeeps within the budget mentioned above.
• Finding a clean stock one was just impossible. Even the advertised "clean, lady driven" ones had leaks and overheating issues.
• Reliability isn't their main forte. I have seen almost new jeeps failing in the desert and we couldn't figure out the issue and fix it. 
• Based on my research, many jeep owners complained of leaks, over heating and transmission issues.
• Took it off my list due to long term peace of mind. 

FJ:

• One of the best cars for the desert. It's rare to find any desert drive without an FJ in the convoy. That shows how good and reliable these cars are, for dune bashing.
• Hard to find GCC FJs in decent condition within 30K aed. In this budget, mostly you will find US spec, 300k+ ODO or heavily abused cars.
• With difflock, crawl control, a trac and 2 fuel tanks (In most of the models), you have a desert ready car in stock condition.
• Reliability is gold standard and you wont have any issues if its maintained periodically. Spares are aplenty and labour is cheap as well.
• Only con is would say is visibility from the drivers seat but that doesn't seem to put off many happy FJ owners.
• Took it off my list as a clean one was above my budget.

Xterra:

• One of the few budget friendly offroad cars which is reliable with great performance as well.
• Market is flooded with used Xterras but finding a clean one takes time but not that hard. I test drove 20 xterras before buying mine.
• Again, try to get one in stock that hasn't been abused before. They are available, we need to look hard.

Pros:

• Performance - the torquey 4.0 V6 is good for 260 HP in stock which is more than enough even for intermediate drives. 
• Reliability - It takes a lot of work to destroy this car mechanically. Even so, spares and labour are cheap. Yes, sometimes spares aren't available in nissan spare parts but we can get genuine spares within a day. If not, sajja is loaded with xterra parts.
• The offroad model comes with rear difflock and a slightly better suspension. TBH, mine is an offroad model but I have hardly used the difflock twice in 20 drives. 
• Visibility is decent.
• The car can be abused to a certain extent as compared to American makes.
   

Do note that you will find models with 200K+ on the ODO under 20K aed, but as long as its maintained well, it is safe to buy them and make them roar for another 100K kms. 

I bought my Xterra from a marshall and it was already modified and was certainly abused, however, the engine still purrs like a cat on highways and roars when climbing dunes. 

Also, some pre 2009 models were affected by SMOD (Google: Xterra + SMOD) but I haven't heard this issue from Xterra owners in the GCC.

As always, whichever car you buy, check for off road abuse and try to get a stock one as much as possible.

The offroad season is almost over, so don't go by the price on dubizzle/fb marketplace, you can negotiate and reduce the price by ~30% from the listed price.

If you need any additional info on Xterra, please share here!