mmarshall

http://www.nissanusa.com/murano/

In a Nutshell: A jelly-bean-shaped Highlander / Pilot with more show than go.


I had not planned on reviewing this vehicle, at least this year, but I received a special request from a well-respected CL member ........so, for him and anyone else interested in this vehicle, here you are.
The Murano is a rather unconventionally-styled, mid-size, car-based SUV that was introduced to the American market for the 2003 model year as not only competition for the growing list of car-based SUV's available, but also to target the popular Toyota Highlander and the then-upcoming Honda pilot in this category. Nissan, up to this point, had marketed mostly trucks and truck-based SUV's specifically designed for off-roading...vehicles such as the XTerra, Pathfinder, Frontier, etc.... Brief attempts by Nissan in the late 1980's and early 90's to market car-based AWD vehicles such as the ill-fated tall Sentra AWD wagon and the Axxess ended up as complete flops....and, along with the demise of the wonderful 300ZX sports car, helped push Nissan further down the road to oblivion and bankrupcy.
Then, of course, along came Carlos Ghosn and Renault, with money and new ownership, and his now-famous Nissan-Infiniti cost-cutting program which gave us vehicles with Cracker-Jack-box cardboard interiors and goofy, Renault-like exteriors ( is anyone surprised? ). His legacy, of course, is too well-known and has been discussed too much here at CAR CHAT for me to re-hash all the details...and that is not the purpose of this review.
So.....the Murano. Well, it was obvious, from the growing popularity of mid-size, car-based SUV's that the Nissan engineers and marketers had to rethink their earlier objectives and come up with a GOOD car-based SUV that worked and that would sell. And it had to have a ride, that, unlike the bucking-bronco XTerra, did not toss you all over the road every time you ran over a cigarette butt. Off-road capability was not much of a concern....Nissan and Infiniti already had that covered with other vehicles. So...the engineers, just like Toyota did with the Highlander / Camry and Honda did with the Pilot / Accord, started with the most obvious base for a platform......the mid-sized Altima, which had just been redone with a new V6 engine option in the SE sedan ( but unfortunately had one of the worst of Ghosn's Cracker-Jack interiors ). So...a couple of waves of the magic wand, and......presto......out of the hat comes the all-new Murano, with carlike manners, a civilized ride, and ( like the Altima ) a rather cheap-looking but functional interior.

What is interesting, though, is that while the Murano was originally designed to go head-to-head with the Highlander and Pilot, for the 2006 model year and for the forseeable future it actually is much closer to the new upcoming Mazda CX7 and Saturn Pre-Vue in looks...unless the Murano is extensively redesigned soon, these two new vehicles will probably be its closest ( and primary ) competitors, not the Highlander or Pilot.

OK.....so much for the Murano's history. Now let's take a look at the vehicle itself. It is available in three trim levels.....S, SL, and SE, and with either front or all-wheel-drive. Only one engine currently is available..the ubiquitous 3.5L V6 used in many other Nissan and Infiniti products but here in a rather detuned 245 HP form, and one transmission...a CVT ( Continiously-Variable-Transmission )
I chose an S AWD model to review because I thought that for the money, it was the best value, the most sensibly-priced model for the equipment offered, reasonably-well equpped, and would make the best investment as an all-weather daily driver if you are willing to forgo ( as I am ) leather seats and some other frills.


Model Tested: 2006 Nissan Murano S AWD
Exterior color: Super Black ( KH3)
Interior: Beige ( Caffe Latte ) cloth with matching cloth door trim.

Base price: $29,200
Major option: Convienence package, $800, which is basically power-adjustable pedals and a 10-way power driver's bucket seat.

List Price: $30,995

Drivetrain: 3.5L V6, 245 HP @ 5,800 RPM, 246 ft.-lbs. torque @ 4,400 RPM
CVT ( Continuously Variable Transmission ) with dual gear ranges
All-Wheel-Drive with center differential, no Low range.




PLUSSES:


Smooth, quiet ( but not powerful ) engine

Smooth, quiet, seamless CVT operation

Very quiet ride, especially by SUV standards.....good isolation from road and wind noise.

Classy, chrome grille

Improved fit-and-finish over the initial 2003-2004 models......but still not first-class.

Clever, extremely well-designed rear-seat releases inside of hatchback at the rear.

Easy-to-reach spare tire inside under rear floor.

Power-adjustable pedals ( an option ) allows use by many different driver physiques.

Solid-feeling door handles with well-applied chrome.

5-Star safety side-impact rating.

Better-than-average brakes for an SUV.

Quite roomy front AND rear seats despite the curvy, jelly-bean styling.




MINUSES:


Engine overburdened by the almost 4000-lb. curb weight and AWD despite the efficient CVT.

Brake pedal too close to accelerator for big feet ( like my size 15's ) despite the power adjustments.

Numb, overboosted power steering....one of the car's worst features.

Relatively high center-of-gravity causes slight porpoise-like ride motions ( common with SUV's ).

Not enough underhood space for the engine.........crammed in too tight.

Orange-peel black paint ( but not the worst I've seen ).

Awkward location of power mirror controls on console.

Flimsy, wobbly, poorly-designed Mickey-Mouse-ear-shaped gauge pod in front of the steering wheel......another one of the car's worst features.

Cheap-looking and feeling radio controls.

(Once again, typical of so many vehicles today ) Funeral-home paint colors, except for the Sunset Red.




This is NOT your typical two or three-box design SUV, and you are well-reminded of that the first time you walk up to it and inspect it. As I mentioned in my opening comments, the first impression you get is that of a big jelly-bean, front and rear, with a big, Renault-style triangular rear D-Pillar ( no surprise there ) and, I'll admit, a classy-looking chrome grille, though the styling in general is far from my cup of tea. There is plenty of ground clearance for mud, snow, and minor, light-duty off-roading, though, as I mentioned earlier, this vehicle was not designed for heavy-duty off-road stuff........leave that to the XTerra and Pathfinder.

Under the hood, the engineers may have goofed....the jelly-bean curves of the front end wrap around the engine VERY closely and leave virtually no space at all for air to circulate or to do any work underhood at all...and matters are not helped any either by the huge plastic engine cover that blocks almost everything of any consequence except for the oil dipstick and filler cap. However, to be fair, despite the fit of the size-20 engine in the size-10 hood, I am not aware of any problems with this engine overheating from lack of air space or of any Nissan recalls or service bulletins covering it....but it will be interesting to see if this lack of air circulation still adds enough extra heat to compromise the engine's service life and deteriorate the oil quicker.......most Nissan V6's go well over 150,000 miles with no problems.

Once your eyes recover from the rather radical bodywork and styling, time to get in. ( and it took me a while to get it ready for a test-drive......all four tires were at a rock-hard 50 PSI instead of the recommended 32 and it was out of gas....me and the salesman had to go get a big jugful of gas from the dealer's pumps and pour it in the tank just to get it off the lot )
OK.......get in, close the OK-sounding but not bank-vault-solid doors with the classy chrome door handles, and get everything adjusted up. The interior is surprisingly roomy, with loads of room in both the front and rear seats, even for my BIG frame. I could sit in the rear seat with my knees clearing the front seatback even when the front seat was adjusted for a tall person, which for me is unusual. Headroom is ( surprisingly ) NOT compromised by the jelly-bean roof styling....the rear does not sweep down enough to hit the top of most people's heads. I could sit in the driver's seat with my traditional baseball cap and still have room to spare....even with the seat not adjusted all the way down. The power-adjustable foot pedals are useful for drivers of varying sizes, but lifting off the gas, my big, size-15 shoes tended to get hung up under the brake pedal regardless of adjustment.
The rest of the interior is a curious mixture from brilliant all the way to downright ridiculous. Open the rear hatchback and a pair of clever, solid-feeling handles built into the rear sides of the hatch, right in front of you, releases each rear 50 / 50 seat half so that it folds down for cargo. There is no third-row seat option that I could find in the Nissan literature....that would probably be impractical with the rear-end styling of this vehicle and apparantly is left to the larger Pathfinder and Armada. The upholstery is a nice, luxurious-feeling soft cloth with matching door panel inserts. There is front and rear air-conditioning, dual left-right climate controls in front, good outward visibility except for the rear D-pillars earlier mentioned, and the controls generally have a good, solid look and feel except for the cheap-looking and cheap-feeling, flimsy, matte-black radio. The gauges, like on some Infinitis, are silver-gray with orange markings. The power-mirror controls, while solid-feeling, are awkwardly located on the front part of the console.
The primary gauge panel, though, in front of the driver, with the speedometer and tach is nothing short of ludicrous. Three medium-sized, F-L-I-M-S-Y, Mickey-Mouse-ear-shaped rings stick up out of the dash, and they wobble back and forth like they were attached with chewing gum. This would have been unacceptable, IMO, in a 1980's-vintage Hyundai or Kia, much less a modern state-of-the-art vehicle from Nissan. Mr. Ghosn......THIS kind of cost-cutting is ridiculous.


OK........start up the engine ( no button here...you do it the old-fashioned way with a key ) and the 3.5L V6 starts up SO smoothly and quietly it is stunning. This engine has a reputation for refinement, and the idle is clearly in the Lexus ES330 class.
Unfortunately, the engineers saw fit to put in a detuned 245 HP version of this powerplant.....a long way from the 290-300 HP versions we are now seeing in other Nissan and Infiniti products.......and it shows. While smooth and quiet as butter, it is clearly overburdened by the vehicle's 4000-lb.weight and the drag of AWD, despite the ultra-efficient CVT transmission. In this way, it reminds one of the Ford Five Hundred / Freestyle AWD vehicles with their CVT's and V6's as well....and they are no powerhouses either. There is enough power and acceleration for normal driving in fairly level areas, but you will not have much reserve power for full loads, for upgrades, of if you need to pass an 18-wheeler quickly on a two-lane road.
The CVT, like the engine, is smooth, quiet, and seamless.....as is the AWD system. Two gear ranges are provided, along with a manual-shift Sport feature. But, the long-term durability of this transmission to some extent is a question mark.......CVT's have been used with small engines for years but are relatively recent to V6's. However, Nissan's rather generous 5-year / 60,000 mile drivetrain warranty ( typical of lower-price Japanese-brand vehicles ) will cover it for a while....and will also give peace of mind with the complex AWD system required by the sideways-mounted V6.

The ride is fairly soft by SUV standards, although there is a small amount of fore-and-aft porpoising typical of high center-of-gravity SUV's, and extremely quiet, again by SUV standards...the engineers here have really done a good job with noise isolation. This is one of the car's outstanding features......like with the super-smooth and quiet engine idle, you almost think you are in Lexus RX300. This is a good vehicle for long-distance highway cruising...or for going to Grandma's house.

But....when it comes time to do some cornering, it seems that the engineers had Grandma and her arthritis more in mind than any semblance at all of road feel when they designed the grossly overboosted power steering system. The power steering has enough novacain shot through it to supply every dentist in Chicago. Guiding this car around corners is like trying to turn a skateboard on glare ice....you move the wheel and judge what the front end is doing by turn rate alone rather than with any road feel at all.....and the civilized ride manners, of course, produce less-than-perfectly-flat cornering, with significant body roll. Spend a couple more dollars on a new power-steering pump, please, Mr. Ghosn.

OK...the brakes at least partly make up for the lousy steering feel........completely the opposite of the Mush-O-Matic, Push-and-Pray brakes in the big GM SUV's. A nice, firm pedal, linear response, lack of fade, and standard-equipment Brake Assist and Electronic Brake Force distribution for safety are standard, which shows Mr. Ghosn is not a complete miser and DID spend some money here. . however, I am not a big fan of Brake Assist...a technology first pioneered ( like so many others ) by Mercedes-Benz. BA is fine if you have to make a panic stop, but what about the fellow BEHIND you....especially if HE doesn't have BA or some kind of automatic stopping device? You could very quickly be on rear-bumper terms with him.

Well, there you have it. My overall assessment of this vehicle? Radically-styled, roomy, refined, basically competent, reasonable price ( in the S version ) for a mid-sized SUV with AWD, good for long-distance travel and arrow-straight roads, good brakes, but grossly lacking in steering feel, mildly lacking in acceleration, and with an insultingly cheap primary-instrument gauge pod.

doug_999

Thanks mmarshal!!!

Great review.

mmarshall

Interesting...I was reading Road and Track's write-up on the Mazda CX-7 this evening and they came to the same conclusion I did earlier today...despite the CX-7's turbo 4 vs. the Murano's normally-aspirated V6, they consider the Murano to be the CX-7's closest competitor, not the Highlander or Pilot. ( the two engines have very similiar HP and torque ratings ) The CX-7 and Murano are styled very similiarly on the outside ( though the CX-7 has better visibility out the back from more sensibly designed D-pillars ) but inside are quite different.

<VENOM>

Next up the 07 Altima and Maxima will have a standard CVT, wonder if that will effect sales especially with the Altima going against the new Camry

Lexmex

I like the design of the Murano but the power needs to be kicked up no doubt.

However, I hope what I consider some design flaws have been fixed. One of my friends in Mexico had her 2003 Murano AWD with CVT brought down from the U.S. (CVT doesn't exist in most of the Muranos sold south of the border as I found out) have the gear in her transfer case break some of the grooves. She has the 18 inch tires but I also think the transfer case was too small. Nissan has a TSB for it, but that did not make sense on a vehicle with under 35K miles and thoroughly maintained by Nissan.

Down here, I see the Murano actually eating the Pathfinder sales and I also don't see it comparing against the Pilot at all. We don't have the Highlander down here, something Toyota does need to bring unless they are planning to launch Lexus soon.

mmarshall

Yes...that is interesting that the Murano would outsell the Pathfinder in Mexico, especially with Mexico's vast areas of either true off-road or off-road-like conditions and the poor condition of many of the paved roads.
How well does the Murano handle the low-octane gas sold there, shoe-horn fit of the engine under the hood, and of course, the fierce summer heat which adds to engine temperature and increases octane requirements even more? Does the spark retarder do its job adjusting the timing to prevent detonation? (which, of course, takes even more power out of the engine). I know, though, that where you are in Mexico City it is at a higher elevation and somewhat cooler.

Lexmex

I should mention she is also from Virginia (DC area) and had driven there for about a year before moving down here.

She actually runs the 87 octane Magna, that has the higher sulfur content and the only advantage is that the engine seems to run a little cooler than with the Premium. We also have the unfortunate situation of being at high altitude 7,000 to 8,000 feet in Mexico City which makes that heat that much worse with less oxygen.

I asked her once about her own spark plugs after I switched to some Torquemasters in my RX300, but she said she didn't notice any knocking or pinging, even when she tried Premium a few times.

I see plenty of Armadas being sold but hardly the regular Pathfinder. We also have the XTerra (doesn't sell) and the Xtrail (never got to the U.S.) that you see everywhere.

mmarshall

Yes.....like you, my guess is that this vehicle wouldn't cut it at 7000-8000 feet, especially with a load. It has barely adequate power at sea level.

LexFather

I actually like how the Murano looks, different.

Another great review.

Lexmex

Stock it is better than my RX stock in the power department, but the tables turned big time after my modifications. The poor Murano is like a put-put cartoon car at this altitude now just like my RX used to be up here.

However, the Murano is a great looking vehicle. I just hope that Nissan fixes its problems.

mmarshall

The fix for this problem may or may not be a big deal. Nissan and Infiniti already use versions of this 3.5L engine with more spunk in vehicles like the M35, 350Z, G35 coupe, etc......

Perhaps, though the lack of underhood space due to the Murano's front-end styling is a factor. This engine, ( as you'll recall from my review ), unlike the one in some other Nissan / Infiniti products, has very little space around it in the Murano for cooling air to circulate.......it is literally shoehorned in...... and that may be the reason why Nissan engineers did not put the 290 HP version in the Murano. The extra power it produces means even more heat....with no room for that heat to dissipate, for an extra cooling fan, or for a larger radiator.

doug_999

I'm bettting it is because of the CVT - something tells me it can't handle all that power. My experience in the Murano was from the passenger seat and the driver was coming out of a 1995 Protege and let me tell you, the car was plenty fast for her - I had to tell her twice to slow it down (as my daughter was holding on like crazy in back).

I also will comment on how different the car looks in the upgraded trim (touring edition or SE I think). They add some chrome around the bumper and it really makes the car look good - especially in a darker color. The S model and non touring editions were not as flashy. However, at a MSRP of $37K (which turned out to go for $33,800 + tax out the door), I was very impressed with what the car offered including keyless ignition, backup camera, LED taillights, stability control, traction control, tire pressure monitor and a host of other goodies. Here is a pic of the chrome treatment on a red one.

Lexmex

I took a peek on one of the Murano forums and they also talked about this and I hardly saw anything resembling modified for power Muranos. Looking at my friend's engine bay, it was hard to imagine a turbocharger or supercharger in there.

At least with the RX300, they do have a TTE Kompressor that can fit perfectly due to the fact that the engine is recessed in the engine bay.

mmarshall

Then you agree with me that the underhood space in the Murano is not big enough for this engine? IMO it's not just a issue of lack of turbo or supercharger space....just doing relatively simple things like changing spark plugs, oil filter, alternator, etc......becomes a real nuisance.

F23A4

I own an 05 Murano SL AWD and can state firmly that the power is there. It is the CVT that makes the power delivery seem sluggish. (NOTE: I also have an 02 Maxima with the same motor so, I do have some solid perspective here.)

After driving to Florida and back to NJ, I am fairly confident that few other crossover SUV have the Murano's performance (Highlander and Pilot included), particularly when it comes to handling. While the Murano (for us) was a compromise purchase between the wife and I (she wanted an RX330 , I wanted an Infiniti FX), it has been an enjoyable ownership experience thus far.

Sidenote: Had the RX350 been available at the time, we probably would have gone that route.