1 / 5

As the halo vehicle for Nissan’s wide range of bold crossovers and SUVs, Murano expresses Nissan’s advanced design direction – including its V-motion front end, LED signature boomerang lights and the unique “floating” roof. The stunning exterior design carries into the interior, which offers an engaging social lounge feel – including features such as advanced Zero Gravity front and outboard rear seating, and the airy atmosphere created by the large windows and oversized Power Panoramic Moonroof.

Nissan

2 / 5

As the halo vehicle for Nissan’s wide range of bold crossovers and SUVs, Murano expresses Nissan’s advanced design direction – including its V-motion front end, LED signature boomerang lights and the unique “floating” roof. The stunning exterior design carries into the interior, which offers an engaging social lounge feel – including features such as advanced Zero Gravity front and outboard rear seating, and the airy atmosphere created by the large windows and oversized Power Panoramic Moonroof.

Nissan

3 / 5

As the halo vehicle for Nissan’s wide range of bold crossovers and SUVs, Murano expresses Nissan’s advanced design direction – including its V-motion front end, LED signature boomerang lights and the unique “floating” roof. The stunning exterior design carries into the interior, which offers an engaging social lounge feel – including features such as advanced Zero Gravity front and outboard rear seating, and the airy atmosphere created by the large windows and oversized Power Panoramic Moonroof.

Nissan

4 / 5

As the halo vehicle for Nissan’s wide range of bold crossovers and SUVs, Murano expresses Nissan’s advanced design direction – including its V-motion front end, LED signature boomerang lights and the unique “floating” roof. The stunning exterior design carries into the interior, which offers an engaging social lounge feel – including features such as advanced Zero Gravity front and outboard rear seating, and the airy atmosphere created by the large windows and oversized Power Panoramic Moonroof.

Nissan

5 / 5

As the halo vehicle for Nissan’s wide range of bold crossovers and SUVs, Murano expresses Nissan’s advanced design direction – including its V-motion front end, LED signature boomerang lights and the unique “floating” roof. The stunning exterior design carries into the interior, which offers an engaging social lounge feel – including features such as advanced Zero Gravity front and outboard rear seating, and the airy atmosphere created by the large windows and oversized Power Panoramic Moonroof.

Nissan

❮ ❯

Whenever Nissan puts the word Platinum into the name of one of their vehicles we know that we will have the best of the best for the week, and have never been disappointed. So it was with this year’s version of the Murano, the mid-sized SUV has been designed with empty nesters just like us in mind as the designers have gone ‘all-in’ to make Murano and SUV that folks like us would enjoy being inside no matter what the occasion was.

The 2017 Murano really resonated with us in during the week we had it, must have been because we are really the target audience that Nissan has in mind with the Murrano. Be it good or bad now that we are empty nesters this is the type of vehicle that we would take a long hard look at, in fact being a Platinum edition it was really more like driving an Infiniti than a Nissan.

From our first adventure out, it was hard to not want to spend more and more time driving the Murano as Nissan has taken its design to exceptional new heights with all kinds of new twists and stretches on the sheet metal that forms the body. Starting up front with the ‘V-Motion’ grille that sweeps the eye up and around the vehicle, this grille co-exists perfectly with the ‘boomerang’ style headlamps that are accented with LED daytime running lights, producing look that is very refined but still extremely sporty.

The front windshield glass seems to go on forever as it sweeps towards a floating roof that is set off by chrome rails that run the length of the roof and make it appear to ‘float’ as our eyes continued towards the rear of the Murano. This is a very cool effect that Nissan has come up with making it stand alone among other choices in this segment.

In our humble opinion Nissan threw out the book on SUV design and put together a vehicle that would be pleasing to a large baby boomer population, banking on the fact that most folks that drive and SUV never really take it seriously off-roading, but for the most part just take the occasional dirt road up the canyon to see the sights that are easy to get to. However the new Murano can be had in two wheel or 4 wheel drive, we would recommend the AWD as it works very cohesively moving power between the front and rear wheels as needed.

Eye-catching as the Murano is there are other reasons for the new design, there is also some functionality built in as the co-efficient of drag is down considerably on the new Murano from .37 to .31, what this translates to is upping the mpg needle to 24 from 20 average mpg in the previous design, with highway going to 28 mpg. This is a dramatic increase that has helped Nissan have the largest increase in fuel economy among all car makers as they continue to eek out every mile per gallon possible with better materials and designs.

The power plant in the Murano is a 3.5 liter V6 engine that produces a very nice 260 horsepower and 240 ft.-pd. of torque, some might now say that doesn’t seem like a huge amount of power but lest we forget it was not designed for racing, although the exterior looks make be deceiving in that vein. We felt that there was always plenty of power, and after a week of city and highway driving we ended with a 26.5 mpg average pretty good for a V6.

The engine is again mated to a Xtronic CVT, (continuously variable transmission) which has never been a favorite transmission of ours, but this one ended up being one of the best we have seen yet from Nissan, in fact for the first couple of days we didn’t even notice. Being one of the first car makers to get into this world they have done a great job improving on the technology and making it seem more like a normal transmission, even offering a manual mode allowing the driver to shift using the gear lever on the center console. The new Murano never seemed to growl like some of the other CTV equipped vehicles we have driven and was more than up to the job even when we needed a quick acceleration!

The inside of the Murano was where we really felt at home and that Nissan has turned up the luxury knob by quite a bit. Starting with the NASA inspired zero-gravity seats that were included in the front and rear of the Murano at the end of the ride they were so comfortable that we didn’t want to get out of the car! Nissan says that zero-gravity means they have researched the effects of weightlessness on the human body and applied those effects to their seats, whatever the science is, it more than worked for us, and they were heated both front and back and also cooled in the front.

The dashboard has been designed with a very clean look that incorporates chrome, a very sleek and shiny black inset to the center control and video console with stitched leather soft touches in all the right places. Gone is any hint of any plastic looking parts in the cabin area. The touch screen in the center console has grown significantly larger to 8 inches, and is very easy to understand and use performing much like an iPad with pinch to zoom and swipe capability.

Also new is the 7 inch advanced drive assist LED display screen in the center of the gauge cluster that will display many different options from safety features to what’s playing on the sound system to turn by turn navigation when a destination has been set. The Murano also comes with Nissan all around view monitor showing all four sides of the vehicle as if from overhead when backing up, this is a great safety feature that we have come to really rely on when driving a Nissan, it can also be switched to monitor the front of the vehicle at very low speeds when parking going forward.

There was also plenty of cargo room with the rear seats down almost 70 cubic feet were available that would move most anything we would have the need to get from point a to b. The rear seats in our tester also dropped with the pull of a lever in the rear storage area and would come back up with a pull of the same lever.

Standard were all the great additions including Bluetooth audio and phone connections with voice recognition we have found to be one of the best out there. Pushbutton start with intelligent key, and a remote start, powered driver and passenger seats, heated mirrors, automatic lift gate, and front and rear USB ports that could both play to the audio system and now feature Apple Carplay.

On the safety side the Platinum comes standard with the rearview and all around view camera system as we mentioned along with blind spot monitoring, rear cross path detection, moving object detection and what Nissan refers to as Vehicle Dynamic Control that helps with over and under steer by reducing engine speed and apply brakes to individual wheels as needed, and in most situations should keep the vehicle on the road.

The only extra that was included in our tester was the addition of a Technology Package that gave us intelligent cruise control one of our very favorite options, along with predictive forward collision and emergency braking when a crash seems eminent. This $2,260 option also included a huge panoramic moon roof that seemed to envelope the entire roof but also had a closable shade if no sun was wanted in the interior.

The only problem we encountered during our week with the Murano was that it was way to short a time to have with such a great vehicle. See them today at Ken Garff Nissan in Orem, 285 West University Parkway, 866-448-0127, and at Tim Dahle Nissan Southtowne, 11155 Jordan Gateway, South Jordan, UT 84095 (801) 495-3800

Base Price: $40,780

Price as Driven: $44,165