The styling continues to grow on me, but there are better choices
Written: Dec 08 '03 (Updated Jun 20 '05)
Product Rating:
Pros: Exterior styling, handling, comfort
Cons: Interior styling, minivan-like dash, no third row, price too high
The Bottom Line: If you are absolutely in love with the Murano's styling, then feel free to buy one. But I prefer the Pacifica among luxury-oriented SUVs and the FX among performance-oriented SUVs.
A few years back BMW introduced the X5, the first SUV with handling that could be likened to that of a sport sedan with a straight face. I personally had trouble understanding the appeal of an SUV with limited utility—the X5 doesn’t offer much in the way of cargo space—but many people found this package appealing. I suspect that BMW could sell hundreds of thousands of X5s but for the price, which starts at around forty large and rises quickly with options.
Many other car-based SUVs have appeared over the past few years that claim to offer sporty handling. Aside from the X5 I haven’t been impressed. At best, the others drive like a minivan. People seeking a sharp handling SUV at a mass market price have been out of luck.
For 2003 Nissan introduced the Altima-based Murano, the first somewhat affordable SUV in the X5 mold. (I have a little trouble calling a vehicle that starts near thirty “affordable.”) Muranos are available in both SL and SE trim. The latter adds a slightly stiffer suspension, a manual shift mode to the CVT (a new feature for 2004), xenon headlamps, and slightly different wheels and trim.
Last year I drove and reviewed the SL, which is far more common. This year I sampled as SE. Is the SE worth the extra cash?
Nissan Murano Reliability
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Styling and Accommodations
Nissan’s comeback has been based on distinctive styling. When I first saw photos of the Murano I felt it was ugly. Especially the Gremlinesqe upswept rear beltline. Now that I’ve seen them on the road, I’ve changed my mind. It’s a strange design, yet it works. It certainly stands out in traffic. I especially like the somewhat retro shoulder that arcs down at the front and rear to include the vertical lamps. I’m still not crazy about that rear side window, but find the overall design fresh and appealing.
Large wheels help the Murano’s looks. Every Murano comes with large, 18-inch alloys that easily fill out the wheel wells. Auto designers are always pushing for larger and larger wheels. Those at Nissan must be happy these days. The wheels on both the SL and SE are attractive designs. They actually aren’t that different in character; both look equally sporty. The difference in wheels certainly doesn’t help justify the higher price of the SL.
Such distinctive styling comes with a risk. My mother thinks it's ugly. Others might as well. Initially hits for my Murano review were weak, but they've picked up considerably. So it seems most people like myself find the unusual lines attractive.
I have more persisting issues with the interior styling. The instrument cluster, like that in the 350Z, is styled to resemble that of a sport bike. It doesn’t look so good in this application. “Cheap” and “tacked on” come to mind. The center stack of the instrument panel contributes to the disjointed look of the interior, and it does not flow into the center console.
Like those in the Altima, the instrument panel and door panels look too plasticky. The massive amount of aluminum trim doesn’t help. Attractive in many applications, this fad is beginning to age. Nissan in particular has taken it too far, using it extensively in just about every car it sells. Much of the aluminum trim in the Murano might be real, yet it still makes the interior look more cheap than sporty. Something about it recalls an old TI calculator.
My biggest interior gripe concerns the driving position. The steeply raked windshield yields a very deep dash. (Perhaps an effect of sharing some engineering with the 2004 Quest minivan?) I couldn’t help feeling like I was in a minivan. Not very sporty. The seating position is SUV high, and the view forward is very open. To the sides and rear the styling cuts down on visibility a bit.
Too often in recent cars the seats feel undersized. Not these. Beyond their generous size, they have a softness to them that feels plush. The seats front and rear are roomy, supportive, and very comfortable. For 2004 the driver’s seat’s lumbar adjustment changes from manual to power. I again drove a Murano with the optional leather, very attractive in beige (“cream,” if you prefer), but the standard suedish cloth also looks and feels rich. A shame the dash and door panels do not similarly contribute to a sense of luxury, as the Murano has real potential in this direction. (After this second test drive I came away thing of it as more of a versatile, luxurious family vehicle than a sporty vehicle.)
For a more avant-garde internet try the orangish “cabernet” shade. After so much gray and beige, I find this appealing, especially in a vehicle with avant-garde styling like the Murano. This interior looks particularly good with the brown and copper exteriors. At least I think so. The friend I was helping shop for a car last year disagreed. He preferred the blue exterior with beige interior.
As in the BMW X5, if to a lesser extent, cargo space behind the rear seat has been shortchanged in favor of tidy proportions and a sporty roofline. With the rear seat folded, cargo room is competitive with the Toyota Highlander and just short of the midsize SUV average. The center console contains a generous two level storage compartment beneath the telescoping armrest.
On the Road
The Murano shares a basic engineering platform with much of Nissan’s line, including the Altima, Maxima, and Quest. It also shares a powerful 3.5-liter V6 with these vehicles. In this application the engine produces 245 horsepower.
In the transmission department the Murano’s engineering resembles its styling. A CVT (continuously variable transmission) is the only transmission offered. A CVT lacks the gears of a conventional transmission. Instead, it has two pulleys connected by a steel belt. The pulleys are each split into two halves with beveled inner faces. By varying the distance between the pulley halves, the belt is forced higher or lower on the pulley, effectively varying the gear ratio. Think of bicycle gears, but with infinite variation between the extremes instead of steps.
CVTs promise both better performance and fuel economy. They offer the former by permitting the engine to be held at or near its power peak when maximum acceleration is called for. With a conventional transmission, an engine spends most of its time away from the power peak, falling well away with each upshift. CVTs permit marginally better fuel economy than conventional automatics (roughly ten percent) by offering taller gearing than those with fewer than six speeds and by eliminating the torque converter.
With such benefits, why aren’t CVTs more common? For decades CVTs lacked the torque capacity to manage more than seventy or so horsepower. Manufacturers put much effort into increasing their capacity, but only lately have these efforts been successful. For the 2002 model year Audi introduced a modified CVT (the belt is pulled as in a bicycle rather than pushed as in other CVTs) that could handle its 220-horsepower 3.0-liter six. So far this transmission is only available with front-wheel-drive A4s and A6s. With the Murano Nissan trumps Audi. Not only is Nissan’s CVT offered with a more powerful engine, but it is offered in both front-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive Muranos.
The Murano’s all-wheel-drive system resembles that in many SUVs based on front-wheel-drive cars. Normally all torque is routed through the front wheels. When more traction is called for, some torque is automatically routed to the rear. A button on the dash allows the torque split to be locked at 50-50. I remember reading that the all-wheel-drive system was altered for 2004, but have been unable to learn the details and noticed no significant difference in the 2004’s behavior.
So, does the Murano’s performance match up to its looks? Mostly. Even motivating two tons the 3.5 liter six feels plenty strong. The CVT helps, keeping RPM high at full throttle. The Murano is easily a match for a six-cylinder X5, and feels quicker than a Toyota Highlander or Honda Pilot. Sadly, as elsewhere the 3.5-liter six doesn’t sound as sweet as previous, smaller versions of this engine. Nothing bad, just an ordinary, somewhat American-sounding growl.
CVTs in the past just did not feel normal. With no linear gain to engine RPM, it often sounded and felt as if the transmission was slipping. I found the new Audi unit much improved in this regard, and the Nissan CVT powertrain similarly avoids feeling inordinately strange. In the Nissan case, the size and smoothness of the engine helps. When a CVT is paired with a small, low-powered, unrefined four (as in the Honda and Toyota hybrids), high revs are called for often and the engine frequently sounds as if it is being thrashed to within an inch of its life. Even lugging a heavy vehicle the big Nissan six never feels or sounds so winded, and it’s much smoother than any four. Consequently, the nonlinear nature of the CVT is less obvious.
The cure for those who find the remaining nonlinearity annoying is the SE’s manual-shift feature. As in the Audi, this feature allows you to force the CVT to maintain a fixed ratio, in this case one of five. (You can choose from six ratios in the Audi.) Shifting between ratios in this mode is accomplished by tipping the shifter back and forth. Usually I don’t think I’d use the manual shift feature on an automatic much, but with a CVT I just might, especially if driving a curvy, hilly road.
Some reviews have complained that the Murano feels sluggish at low speeds. While I had no such issue with it, a cause might be the CVT’s ratio spread. At 5.4 it is not as broad as the over 6.0 of the Audi unit, and for this and other reasons the initial ratio is not as short. Also, unlike with a conventional automatic there is no torque converter to provide torque multiplication at low speeds.
SE or SL—I noticed little difference—the Murano leans little in hard turns for a tall vehicle and generally feels very balanced and stable. Many people evaluate handling on highway on-ramps, and here the Murano excels. Along a curvy road, the Murano’s chassis feels fairly agile for a vehicle of its size, much less ponderous than a Honda Pilot and more tied down than a Toyota Highlander. Still, I did not find the Murano very fun to drive. The Murano is too tall, heavy, and tuned for the mainstream for that.
My largest issue with the handling involved the steering. I enjoyed the heft of the steering, but would have appreciated more feedback. Even the Toyota’s steering communicates more about what is going on where the rubber meets the road, not to mention the X5’s. (The Pilot’s is downright numb.) Most of all, I would have appreciated more even steering effort. When the Murano is driven aggressively, the steering effort sometimes dances all over the map, with sudden changes. I’ve noticed similar behavior in some other Honda and Nissan variable-effort systems. I never like it. Most people will never drive the Murano aggressively enough to notice, but an SUV with such sporty pretensions deserves better engineering in this area.
At least torque steer was largely absent. Judging from its presence in the Altima and Maxima, the all-wheel-drive might have helped here. The front-drive Murano might not fare so well.
To truly enjoy driving an SUV as you would a sport sedan you’ll have to step up to a rear-drive-based alternative like the Infiniti FX or Cadillac SRX. These, and especially the Infiniti, feel more like a cross between a sport sedan and an SUV. But they’ll cost you.
Even with the stiffer SE suspension, the Murano rode fairly well during my test drive. I wouldn’t call it luxurious, but it certainly was not as harsh as some reviews led me to expect. The Infiniti FX rides much more harshly. Still, if you live in an area with less than smooth roads, pay close attention to the Murano’s ride during the test drive. It couldn’t hurt to compare both trim lines, though as far as I could tell from test drives seven months apart in two different states the SL and SE simply do not ride very differently. I tested the SE on Michigan’s rougher roads, which if anything would have exaggerated the difference.
I did not measure fuel economy. I notice that owners are complaining about fuel economy in the high teens in their reviews. Given the power and weight of the Murano, this is what I'd personally expect, at best, despite the EPA ratings of 20/24 (20/25 with front-wheel-drive).
Safety
Like many recent Nissans and Infinitis, the Murano comes standard or is available with most of the latest safety featues. These include side airbags, curtain airbags, and stability control. Combined with the Murano's mass, these features should make the Nissan crossover a safe vehicle.
Pricing
For quick, up-to-date pricing, and especially user-specified price comparisons, check out the website I created: www.truedelta.com. Why yet another vehicle pricing website? Well, I personally lacked the patience to keep using the others. They were too slow and required too much effort, especially when trying to compare prices. So I taught myself some programming and created a site where there is no need to dig through option packages, prerequisites, and the like one by one -- the TrueDelta algorithm figures these out for you in one swift pass.
The rest of this section dates from when the review was first written.
The all-wheel-drive Murano SE I drove, with the $4,000 “Touring Package” (heated leather, sunroof, power passenger’s seat, power adjustable pedals, Bose audio, CD changer, and roof rails) and $750 “Dynamic Control Package” (traction control, stability control) listed for $36,120. A similarly equipped front-drive Murano runs $1,600 less, a bit below average for this feature. Edmunds suggests no discounting, but this might just be because it’s very early in the model year and their data are sparse.
The price difference between the SL and SE is $950 (up from $800 last year). An analysis of option package pricing determines that the xenon lamps run $300, implying that as before the sport suspension adds about $500, with the manual-shift feature for the CVT costing the remaining $150. The latter is easily worth $150, but I’m not seeing $500 in the sportier suspension tuning. The difference between the SL and SE tuning is just not that significant.
The main options missing on the Murano I drove were the $1,999 navigation system and the $1,720 entertainment system. The latter is especially overpriced for what you get. The screen is not mounted on the ceiling but low on the center console. I recently bought a portable DVD player with the same size screen and a case to hang it between the seats with for $250. Paying seven times this price for just a bit more functionality (cordless headphones) seems a bit steep.
There are so many possible alternatives that even in this lengthy section I cannot cover them all.
The most comparable vehicle is likely BMW’s upcoming X3. Although the X3’s price starts just a bit over 30, by the time you’ve added the larger six, an automatic transmission, leather, and so forth it’s into the low 40s. As with other BMWs it’s among the most expensive vehicles in its class.
Many features available on the Murano—including a sunroof and stability control—are not available on the Honda Pilot. To get these, you must spring for the Acura MDX. An MDX with Touring Package lists for $39,000, and Edmunds suggests no discounting. The MDX is a bit more luxurious than the Nissan and rides better, but does not handle as well and certainly is no match in the styling department.
The Toyota Highlander Limited equipped like the above Murano—with the notable exception of its new-for-2004 third row seat—lists for $35,510. The typical dealer discount reduces this to about $32,900. The Highlander looks a bit better this year owing to new larger alloys, but it clearly is not in the Murano’s league. So, how much are you willing to pay in cash, refinement, and passenger capacity for the Murano’s looks, handling, and xenon headlamps? If your answer is three grand or more, the Murano is the better choice for you. For most people the Toyota is the better value.
A similarly-equipped Mitsubishi Endeavor Limited lists for $33,792, and the typical discount and a $2,000 rebate take this down to about $30,100. The Endeavor doesn’t yet offer curtain xenon headlamps, airbags, stability control, or traction control, which account for about $1,600 of the difference. Like the Murano, the two-row Endeavor strives to get noticed. Unlike the Murano, it does this not through a thoroughly original theme that actually works but through various tacky details. So do you just want to get noticed, or do you also want people to think you have taste? Aside from its styling and handling that isn’t as sharp as the Murano’s the Mitsubishi isn’t a bad vehicle. And it’s about five grand less expensive.
A Chrysler Pacifica equipped like the Murano (but lacking stability control and including a third row seat) lists for $37,020. After the typical dealer discount and the newly available $3,000 rebate the cost of the Chrysler drops to about $31,800. The Pacifica weighs more than the Murano and its conventional automatic has only four speeds, yielding slower acceleration. These disadvantages notwithstanding, I personally find the Pacifica a more appealing vehicle in terms of comfort, styling, and interior quality. In my view it is probably the best buy here except for those whose top priority is performance.
A VW Touareg V6 equipped like the Murano comes in just a bit higher, at $37,715. Edmunds suggests minimal discounting. The VW has a nicer interior and is much more capable off the pavement, but is considerably slower than the Murano. To match the Nissan in performance it is necessary to spring for the V8, which adds $3,600 to the price. Is the Touareg V8 worth five grand more than the Murano? How much do you value the VW’s nicer interior, smoother ride (especially with the air suspension, not included in the above prices), and greater off-road abilities?
A Lexus RX 330 with similar equipment lists for $39,950. I have not included the $5,455 “Performance Package” in this price because it includes much additional equipment yet does not yield a sporty handling vehicle. Edmunds suggests minimal discounting for the Lexus as well. Compared to the Murano, the Lexus has a much higher quality interior and rides better but does not handle as well. It’s the one to get in this price range for the most luxurious interior.
More compact alternatives to the Murano are significantly less expensive. A similarly-equipped Saturn VUE lists for $27,970, and currently tends to sell for that price according to Edmunds. The VUE lacks side airbags (but has side curtains), stability control, and traction control. Even accounting for these features it costs about seven grand less than the Murano. The downside: it’s inferior to the Murano is nearly every area: seat comfort, roominess, handling, overall refinement. With a 250-horsepower Honda-supplied V6, the 2004 VUE is very quick. A Ford Escape or Hyundai Santa Fe will cost you even less than the VUE, but somehow as I write this they seem less comparable to the Murano.
Finally, we have the considerably more expensive Cadillac and Infiniti. Even with the V6—and with the SRX you really want the V8—the SRX lists for $47,725, and Edmunds suggests no discounting. It’s a very good SUV, but it’s also overpriced.
The Infiniti, the truest cross yet between a sports car and an SUV, is the only alternative that manages to almost make the Murano seem normal. Nothing else is like it in styling or packaging. Equipped with the Touring Package it lists for $39,295. Edmunds suggests not discounting. The Infiniti’s main weakenss is a busy ride. As compensation you get the sportiest handling of any SUV—and by a significant margin. Personally I’d pay the extra three grand for the Infiniti over the Nissan.
Ultimately the Murano seems priced about $3,000 too high to me. Directly comparable vehicles cost thousands less once discounts and incentives are figured in, while luxury brand SUVs with nicer interiors and greater refinement cost only a few thousand more.
Note on Reliability
The Murano I drove last year had a vibration in the drivetrain, leading me to wonder if there was a reliability problem with the CVT. Beyond the CVT, Nissan recently developed a large number of new vehicles in a short amount of time, and I wonder if this means corners were cut. Quite obviously recent Nissans lack the refinement of many competitors. But will the reliability of all Nissans also suffer down the road? It's too early to tell. Just be aware that this is a possibility, especially for the first year or two. The 2004 Murano felt more solid and refined than the 2003, and I suspect Nissan will be engaging in many running upgrades to compensate for its current line's rushed development.
Last Words
Still recommended with reservations. The exterior styling—undoubtedly the Murano’s strong suit—turns me on as much as ever, but much of the interior continues to turn me off. The seats look and feel so good, it’s a shame the rest of the interior does not measure up. Nissan will likely continue tweaking the vehicle, but it’s going to take much more than a tweak to eliminate the minivan-like instrument panel acreage. That would take a full redesign, which is likely at least five years off.
With regard to the Murano’s performance, I have fewer issues with the powertrain than many people seem to. Maybe my expectations of a CVT are lower because I’ve driven much worse. Maybe the total disconnect between road speed and engine speed only becomes annoying in certain situations that I haven’t encountered in my test drives. Maybe there is variation from vehicle to vehicle and I’ve gotten two that behave. Whatever the reason, be sure to thoroughly test drive this one before you buy it.
Also keep in mind that Nissan is the first to pair a CVT with such a torquey engine. Reliability could be an issue down the road, especially given how Nissan has rushed a huge amount of product to market in recent years.
I like how the Murano handles compared to other SUVs, but I still would not call it fun to drive. The Infiniti FX is considerably more entertaining. On the other hand, while others have criticized the ride quality of the Murano I have found it acceptable even in SE form. The FX rides much worse (though I have not driven the 2004 with its revised suspension tuning yet).
Last year there was little reason to spend the extra money for the SE. This year the manual-shift mode provides a good reason, but given the $650 premium the SE will remain relatively rare. Either Nissan needs to further differentiate the two trim lines, or it needs to make the manual-shift mode either standard or optional in the SL and eliminate the SE.
All in all, I believe many people will be drawn to this unique package. The ultimate problem is the price. Unless you really, really love the styling of the Murano, depending on your priorities I’d either save four grand with the luxurious Chrysler or spend another three grand for the sporty Infiniti. That is, unless you’re that very rare premium SUV buyer who plans on venturing off the road. Then the VW is the way to go.
To learn more about my reliability research and sign up to participate in it, visit www.truedelta.com.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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