Advertisement

Meet the next Nissan Murano

How to design a Nissan Murano: start with a sculpture, add wheels (Credit: CarBuyer 222)
How to design a Nissan Murano: start with a sculpture, add wheels (Credit: CarBuyer 222)

SINGAPORE — You’re looking at the new Nissan Murano, due here at the end of this year at the earliest, or early 2015.

The third-generation of Nissan’s big crossover model is lighter by 59kg, more fuel efficient by 20 percent, and will be available with a suite of safety systems designed to keep you from crashing.

If you like the looks, you can credit Nissan’s unusual design approach with the car. The Murano’s styling has its roots in three small clay sculptures that helped to set the design direction for the final car.

Most cars begin life as sketches and only become clay models at the end of the design process.

The sculpted shape is as slippery as it looks, with Nissan investing three times as much wind tunnel testing time than usual to reduce aerodynamic drag by 16 percent.

Pictured: A slippery character (Credit CarBuyer 222)
Pictured: A slippery character (Credit CarBuyer 222)

Nissan says the roof was inspired by a jet, and was deliberately made to look as if it were floating above the car’s main body. Designers used plenty of glass area to give the car a sense of lightness and downplay its large dimensions.

LED fetishists will be glad to know that LED headlamps are available, though daytime running lights illuminated by those coveted diodes are standard.

Inside, the Murano has been tidied up as well. There’s a new 8-inch touchscreen interface that cuts the number of buttons and switches for the audio and navigation systems from 25 to 10.

Down with buttons (Credit: CarBuyer 222)
Down with buttons (Credit: CarBuyer 222)

Slimmer front seats give rear passengers a bit more knee room, and the panoramic glass roof is 20 percent larger than before to flood the cabin with plenty of light (or water, if you accidentally leave it open during a thunderstorm).

Nissan says the boot is bigger than before, as well, by as much as 113 litres when the rear seats are folded flat.

Somewhere back there is a latch that lets you fold the rear seats flat (Credit: CarBuyer 222)
Somewhere back there is a latch that lets you fold the rear seats flat (Credit: CarBuyer 222)

Technical details are scant at the moment but the launch engine is likely to be a carry-over of the current 3.5-litre V6, with Nissan quoting 260 horsepower and 325Nm as the output figures.

Yet, it’s the Murano’s safety systems that should interest family types the most.

It uses up to four onboard cameras and three radar systems to build up an electronic picture of the world around it, enabling features like blind spot warning, a forward collision warning, automatic emergency braking and adaptive cruise control.

It also has cross traffic alert, a system that warns you if you’re about to reverse out of a parking spot and into cars moving across the rear of your Murano. There’s also a 360-degree camera that has moving object detection, the unspoken purpose of which is to make it that much harder for the Nissan to run over small children or pets in the driveway.

Ultimately, if the new Murano’s styling is fairly daring, the rest of the car plays it safe.

Hope you like the muscular rear bulges. Nissan says it was a headache to shape the metal there (Credit: CarBuyer 222)
Hope you like the muscular rear bulges. Nissan says it was a headache to shape the metal there (Credit: CarBuyer 222)