ownersite
12-09-2002, 11:45 AM
My Wife and I each spent about 45 minutes behind the wheel of silver AWD SL on Sunday driving our local backroads and highway. The salesman was nice enough to let us strap our Son's carseat in the back and he fell asleep, so our test was as long as we wanted it to be.
First off, exterior styling is fantastic. I believe that this is simply a gorgeous vehicle. Whether it be a car, truck, SUV, whatever, it's exterior design is fantastic.
My initial walk-around impression last week was that the driver's area was cramped. While my view opinion changed slightly, I still believe this to be true.
After spending some time driving it, I believe that the guage pod is WAY too close to the steering wheel, almost uncomfortably so. It seems like it was almost an afterthought from the designers on how and where to place it. The sharp edges of the pod simply do not compliment (or even match) the rest of the vehicle.
The rest of the interior is nice, nothing really special or exciting though, IMO. The aluminum is a nice compliment to the rest of the interior. The controls were easy to reach and made sense very quickly. Unfortunately, the center pod butted up against my right leg because of my height. The dash is humungous. (sp?)
We drove a model with the charcoal interior and had the chance to sit in one with the cabernet (?) interior. With both, my Wife commented that she felt that the back seat area was "dark," that there was not a tremendous amount of light being let in. (both had sunroofs)
The overall ride and handling seemed pretty good. This is supposed to be an SUV, so I did not go into it thinking I was test driving a 911 Turbo. The performance of the CVT is underwhelming, as it probably should be. No harsh (or even noticable) shifts and fairly quiet. Under hard acceleration, the engine note sounded just like our Altima. Much to the chagrin of the saleman, I hit a couple potholes dead-center and it did not get rattled. I did hear a few creaks from the interior.
On the highway, the ride was quiet and quite comfortable. There is a nice view from up where you sit. Power was available immediately. You could drive the Murano with confidence on Atlanta highways. One oddity, the speedometer needle pinned itself at 60mph and refused to budge until I tapped on it a few times. Needless to say, that raised some quality control concerns for my Wife and I.
As is the norm for us, we try not to comment out loud during test drives so we can compare notes after we are done. We both came to almost the exact same conclusions:
1) It looks awesome on the outside
2) There were a few things that we both defined as items "we'd probably get used to." (like the overall interior design, the guage pod, darkness of the interior, depth of the dash)
3) In no way did it feel like we just stepped out of a near-$40,000 vehicle. ($37,885 + tax)
Perhaps it is because I wanted to like it so much, but overall I think I am a bit disappointed with the Murano. The styling is amazing, but as a driver you spend more time looking at the interior than the exterior and the interior just did not do it for us.
If we were looking at it from the $32,000 perspective maybe our opinion would be different. But from the $38,000 perspective...there were too many "we'd probably get used to its" than we had when buying our Altima...or my F150...or her Honda Civic EX...or my Sentra SE-R...etc.
First off, exterior styling is fantastic. I believe that this is simply a gorgeous vehicle. Whether it be a car, truck, SUV, whatever, it's exterior design is fantastic.
My initial walk-around impression last week was that the driver's area was cramped. While my view opinion changed slightly, I still believe this to be true.
After spending some time driving it, I believe that the guage pod is WAY too close to the steering wheel, almost uncomfortably so. It seems like it was almost an afterthought from the designers on how and where to place it. The sharp edges of the pod simply do not compliment (or even match) the rest of the vehicle.
The rest of the interior is nice, nothing really special or exciting though, IMO. The aluminum is a nice compliment to the rest of the interior. The controls were easy to reach and made sense very quickly. Unfortunately, the center pod butted up against my right leg because of my height. The dash is humungous. (sp?)
We drove a model with the charcoal interior and had the chance to sit in one with the cabernet (?) interior. With both, my Wife commented that she felt that the back seat area was "dark," that there was not a tremendous amount of light being let in. (both had sunroofs)
The overall ride and handling seemed pretty good. This is supposed to be an SUV, so I did not go into it thinking I was test driving a 911 Turbo. The performance of the CVT is underwhelming, as it probably should be. No harsh (or even noticable) shifts and fairly quiet. Under hard acceleration, the engine note sounded just like our Altima. Much to the chagrin of the saleman, I hit a couple potholes dead-center and it did not get rattled. I did hear a few creaks from the interior.
On the highway, the ride was quiet and quite comfortable. There is a nice view from up where you sit. Power was available immediately. You could drive the Murano with confidence on Atlanta highways. One oddity, the speedometer needle pinned itself at 60mph and refused to budge until I tapped on it a few times. Needless to say, that raised some quality control concerns for my Wife and I.
As is the norm for us, we try not to comment out loud during test drives so we can compare notes after we are done. We both came to almost the exact same conclusions:
1) It looks awesome on the outside
2) There were a few things that we both defined as items "we'd probably get used to." (like the overall interior design, the guage pod, darkness of the interior, depth of the dash)
3) In no way did it feel like we just stepped out of a near-$40,000 vehicle. ($37,885 + tax)
Perhaps it is because I wanted to like it so much, but overall I think I am a bit disappointed with the Murano. The styling is amazing, but as a driver you spend more time looking at the interior than the exterior and the interior just did not do it for us.
If we were looking at it from the $32,000 perspective maybe our opinion would be different. But from the $38,000 perspective...there were too many "we'd probably get used to its" than we had when buying our Altima...or my F150...or her Honda Civic EX...or my Sentra SE-R...etc.