Review: 2009 Nissan Murano LE

Reply Subscribe

Thread Tools

Search this Thread

07-15-09, 01:06 PM

#31

mmarshall

Lexus Fanatic

Thread Starter

Join Date: Oct 2003

Location: Virginia/D.C. suburbs

Posts: 91,073

Likes: 43

Received 87 Likes on 86 Posts

Quote:

Originally Posted by Orzel

First of all we traveled about 670 miles in total which included a lot of mountain driving, a number of passes, also some canyon carving, as well as low speed driving for scenery viewing.

Glad you enjoyed your trip. Not everyone gets to take one with a new vehicle.

Quote:

Our fuel mileage was in excess of 25, both calculated and per the fuel economy read out (25.1 going and 25.6 returning).

Not bad for an AWD V6 SUV without a lot of break-in-miles on it.

Quote:

We found that the readout and the hand calculating method to be within less than .1 MPG of each other, pretty accurate it seems, although time will tell.

That's more accurate than average for a trip-computer function. The one in my Subaru is often off as much as 2 MPG....optimistic.

Quote:

Also found that the speedo error is really small, as I compared it to my Garmin readout, we brought the Garmin along to compare against car systems including the nav, finding the on-board systems to be surprisingly accurate. The speedo error looks to be within less than 1% and it showed on the slow side.

Keep the wheels/tires it came with; don't screw around with different-size aftermarkets, and the low speedometer/odometer error will probably stay that way.

Quote:

The seats, although very comfortable, could sure use some more side bolstering, they are relatively flat. When we were doing some spirited canyon driving lack of more side bolstering was very evident.

I made a note of that in my review. On those twisty roads, you probably noticed the slow steering response too.

Quote:

XM radio may be great in the plains states, but it sucks in the mountains, even trees seem to be able to block the signal.

Satellites use line-of-sight FM signals. That's why there are some 21 GPS satellites, so signals can be received no matter where you are. That's not necessarily the case, though, with XM and Sirius, especially in hilly terrain or around other obstacles. I don't think there are that many XM sattelites to cover everywhere.

Quote:

The Bose radio system is good, certainly better sound quality than the standard Lexus system we had on our RX.

Perhaps it depends on which specific RX stereo unit. Lexus does some of the best stereos in the industry, especially the Mark Levinson units, which are insanely good.

Quote:

And yes, I did get the oil changed, and compared with Lexus, the cost was quite a shock - $35 vs. $135 –

$35 is about average for non-synthetic oil, outside of luxury-car dealerships. If you plan to convert to synthetic, wait till you have about about 4000-5000 total miles on the engine....then switch. In most places, though, IMO, synthetic oil is not needed, despite its admitted better protection. The added expense does not justify it.

The only places, in North America, where you might want to consider it is if you do a lot of driving in a Southwestern summer or an upper Midwest/Canadian/interior Alaskan winter.

Last edited by mmarshall; 07-15-09 at 01:19 PM.