The Hardbody is the Nissan truck people draw from memory. Square flanks, a flat face, and a name that stuck for forty years. Nissan Philippines has now used it as the template for a one-off show build, handing a new Navara Pro plug-in hybrid to Overland Kings and asking for the 1980s, applied over the top of a thoroughly modern truck.
Nothing mechanical changed. The powertrain, the cabin, and the chassis are the stock Navara Pro PHEV items, and Nissan is not selling the result. The Hardbody gear is a costume, built for exactly one truck.
The costume starts at the grille
Up front, a blacked-out grille panel replaces the stock face and is cut to carry a pair of PIAA driving lights. The front bumper is modified to hold a second pair of PIAAs below it. Four auxiliary lamps across the nose is the most 1985 sentence in this entire piece, and it is also the change that sells the tribute hardest, because it alters the truck’s whole expression in a single panel.
The rest of the kit is just as literal. A black stripe crosses the tailgate, red graphics run down the flanks, and the wheels are 12-hole steel-look units wrapped in all-terrain tires. A tubular sports bar stands over the bed. Item by item, it is the old truck’s wardrobe, tailored to a bigger body.
The base truck was already halfway there. Its three central front lights quote the D21 Hardbody’s three-slot hood opening directly, and the upright, squared-off stance does the rest. Overland Kings did not have to invent the resemblance. They just finished it.
Not one body panel was cut or reshaped to do it. Everything on the list is bolt-on or stick-on: a grille panel, a bumper, lamps, stripes, wheels, a bar. Even the paint plays along, since the launch color is called Retro Yellow Pearl. That is the design lesson in the build. The D21 look was never in the sheetmetal. It was in the graphics, the stance, and the hardware hung off the nose.
Underneath, everything is new
The hardware could not be further from 1985. A 1.5-liter turbocharged gasoline engine works with a generator motor and an electric drive motor, through a four-speed dedicated hybrid transmission. Combined output is 350 horsepower and 487 lb-ft of torque, fed by a 20.24 kWh battery. An electric motor does the driving, with the engine backing it up and joining in through the hybrid gearbox. The D21 made its name on simplicity. Its tribute runs on arithmetic.
On battery alone it covers about 46 miles on the NEDC cycle. Add the 17.7-gallon fuel tank and Nissan rates the total at about 600 miles. A Type 2 plug takes the battery from 20 to 100 percent in about three hours.
Four-wheel drive comes with 2H, AUTO, 4H, and 4L modes, an electronic locking rear differential, and a multi-link rear suspension. It tows 7,716 pounds and carries 1,907, with 9.1 inches of ground clearance and a 27.6-inch wading depth. The numbers are work-truck serious, whatever the costume suggests.
Back to design, by way of the cabin
Open the door and the tribute stops. The cabin is pure 2026: a 14.6-inch infotainment screen, a 10-inch digital cluster, and two 220-volt sockets that run campsite gear straight off the drive battery. Nissan and Overland Kings left it all alone, which was the right call. The contrast is the concept. Step in from the 1980s, sit down in the present.
The canvas is big: about 216 inches long on a 130-inch wheelbase. The production truck underneath is the part anyone can actually buy, priced from about $38,700 in the Philippines and about $48,300 in Mexico, where it wears a Frontier PRO badge.
The Philippines gets two trims, VL and LE, both four-wheel drive, and the LE lands at about $41,900. Mexico’s range tops out with a Platinum at about $52,100. Against those numbers, the Hardbody treatment is the cheapest possible halo: one truck, one kit, and every photograph does the marketing.
Editor’s take
Nissan keeps coming back to the D21 because it was the last Nissan truck with a face anyone can still draw. This build works because it never fights the new truck to get there. The lamps, the stripe, and the steel-look wheels sit on proportions that already quote the original, so the tribute feels like recognition, not nostalgia. Build a production special edition exactly like this, Nissan. It would not sit unsold.
