Ascender

This nameplate was introduced for the 2003 model year as part of the brand’s North American SUV push, with sales beginning in late 2002. It was a GM-supplied, body-on-frame midsize SUV that shared its basic architecture with the TrailBlazer/Envoy family, allowing the Japanese maker to keep a presence in the U.S. SUV market after its own domestic passenger-car business had largely faded there. The original launch was the seven-passenger version, aimed squarely at the mainstream family SUV segment, and a five-passenger variant followed for 2004 to broaden its appeal. In the late years of the run, it sat among the company’s last U.S. passenger vehicles and became increasingly significant as a badge-engineered stopgap rather than a volume leader. Production and sales ended after the 2008 model year, when the company withdrew from the U.S. SUV new-vehicle business and the model was dropped without a successor.