the titan was the same way. same design for many many years with no updates.
a buddy bought the new frontier and loves it. his old frontier is still in the driveway and has 850k miles on that little 3.3 v6. mine had 325k when i sold it two years ago and i would have no issues driving it across the usa (well, minus the gas mileage for such a small engine).
i have a new generation titan and this ranger. i like that titan, except its huge, like all the other monster sized half tons out there now. its get really decent mileage for not having any cylinder deactivation or any of that junk manufacturers use to try and save money. its a 5.6 that makes 396 or something hp and 398 pounds of torque and gets 18-20 on the highway and 14 in town. pretty good to me for a 6k pound vehicle.
anyways, the only negative on the first gen frontiers was the torsion bars. the second gen they swapped to coil springs and fixed. third gen is coils also. and my ranger has the same stupid torsion bar set up