02/07/2008 13:05. When Kathy Vogel started shopping for a car recently, she figured she'd go for basic black--a professional look that suited her career as a corporate attorney. But during a visit to her parents in Cleveland, she saw a new "solar yellow'' Xterra SUV at a Nissan dealership. "It was 'Wow, gotta have it','' says Vogel, who says she draws a lot of looks these days tooling around in her Xterra on the streets near her home in Pittsburgh.

Come again? A gotta-have-it Nissan? This, after all, is an automaker that mastered the art of bland jelly-bean car styling with forgettable models like the Altima and Sentra, and was in such poor financial shape recently that it had to put itself on the auction block. But the surprising success of the distinctive Xterra, which looks like a backpack on wheels,... // Newsweek