[quantum duck]

Hi there, American cousins! We bought a new European edition Murano in late December 2005. It has now done 1500 miles including through snow and ice and its been off-road in the Highlands of Scotland. We live in Glasgow and the Mighty Mo is perfect for long distance motorway drives down to England and for negotiating twisty little one track roads in the Scottish Highlands. It manages fine round Glasgow where the streets are wide. It is more cumbersome in some of narrow streets of England, but never a problem. The sales are capped at 1000 a year here. As a result the Mighty Mo gets puzzled looks from the BMW, Volvo, VW 4WD set. The Landrover set never notice anything so I don’t count them! I have looked at the Canadian and US variants and the European model appears to be similar to the top end AWD versions. It has only one variant, but it comes with Bose 6CD, sat nav, xenons, leather, climate control, sunroof etc. We already love it to death! The CVT is superb. Some evidence of the bean counter touch however: no fogs, just holes-described by the Nissan dealer as air intakes! Crazy, we have more fog here than you would believe. I notice from the forum that there are occasional doubts about Mighty Mos going off-road. Well apart from the rather low ground clearance it does OK. In fact a UK car mag recently took one on a 8 mile off road test track for two hours where it astonished everyone by its good behaviour. There were great pics of this but I haven’t yet found good copies that I can post. We looked at VW Touareg, Volvo XC90 , BMW X5 and Lexus 300 before settling to our surprise on the Murano. Happy motoring guys! Hope we can share notes from time to time.

 

[njjoe]

quantum duck-

Good luck with your new MO! I must be nice to be driving a limited-edition (1000 units) automobile.

It would be great if you could post a link to the off-road test article. That would make for a good read.

By the way, don't forget to keep those "air intakes" clean. You wouldn't want to be fogging up the engine. :2:

-njjoe

 

[quantum duck]

njjoe-
The url for Car Magazine is : http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/nav?page=carmagazine; the February 2006 issue has the article: “Murano goes off road” by Andy Thomas on pp 144-145. The web site does not have pictures or text from the article. I will try and get permission to reproduce their pictures of the Murano, but legal beagles being what they are it’s a faint hope. However, you might be amused by Jeremy Clarkson’s review of the Murano in the UK at: http://driving.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,12529-1610992,00.html Clarkson writes for Top Gear magazine and presents the brilliant Top Gear programme on TV. He gave it a maximum score.

 

[njjoe]

quantum duck-

I enjoyed the TIMES article by Jeremy Clarkson. Mr. Clarkson is most definitely a very sarcastic individual. It made for a very good read.

Thanx.

-njjoe

 

[Eric L.]

Even though I live in the US, I've seen and read enough of Clarkson through Top Gear (the UK version, nto the diluted imported to US version) and his column that he has become my favorite auto journalist. His sarcasm is fantastic and for him to heap praises on the Murano (when it seems he hates every other car that doesn't have 500 horsepower) is high regards indeed!

 

[TOXIC]

AUSSIE 4X4 MAG OFF ROAD TEST

On the subject of OFF ROAD tests here is one from Australia's offroad 4X4 magazine December 2005. Here is a summary of the MO test against popular competitors. :29:


Murano versus Lexus RX330 and BMW X3