Back in 1989 I spent some time blasting along the unpaved roads of the Southwest in a 1988 Toyota Celica All-Trac Turbo. A frequent thought: “What this thing really needs is more ground clearance.” That same year Pontiac displayed a sports car / SUV crossover as a concept. The Stinger was never produced, but it lingered within memories at GM and eventually provided some inspiration for both the Vibe and Aztek. Neither came close to the Stinger. Both lacked the chassis dynamics to fulfill the mission I had in mind.
And so it fell to Nissan to field the first compact crossover with the spirit of a sports car. Is the JUKE worth the two-decade wait?

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The previous day’s usage had left me in a pickle. With the 12 miles left and only nine-and-a-half hours charging time at 120V. Of course if I constantly had to remind myself, if I had a 240V charging station at home this would be a non-issue as the Leaf would have been completely full. However, my situation as it was, the Leaf was perhaps a hair over 40% charged when I left for work with the range indicator displaying 59 miles, hopefully enough for my 57 mile drive.

Since I needed all the juice I could get to make it to Burlingame I decided to forgo the pre-heating and let the Leaf charge to the very last second. Fortunately this morning was a hair warmer than the day previous being a brisk 40 degrees. Unfortunately the temperatures and humidity conspired to fog the windscreen. Without sufficient power to make it to work and use the defogger, I chose to defog the old-fashioned way: windows open.

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Our second day with the Leaf gave us a chance to really dive into the charging realities of driving an electric vehicle. Most of us are used to filling up our car when the tank is empty or well on the way to empty. If you are shopping for an electric car, throw this mentality out with the oil changes. Think of your car like a 1990s cell phone: plug it in often if you want to be able to use it later.

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When I was a kid I was told that by the time I was 30 we would all be piloting nuclear powered flying cars. Reality, of course, has dictated that gasoline is still the most cost effective way of delivering what the average person considers a “normal driving experience.” In an attempt to change not just how we “fuel” a car, but the very way a car is integrated into our lives, Nissan has released the first volume produced electric car in North America. Yea, yea I know about the GM EV1, Toyota Rav4 EV and the Ford experiments, but let’s be real, Nissan has already sold more Leafs (Nissan tells me the plural is not Leaves) in the first few tsunami-effected months of this year than GM sold during the two years of EV1 production. How did they do it? We borrowed a white Leaf for just under three days to find out why 20,000 have already pre-ordered one of these pure-electric cars.

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If you want to become a leading player in a segment (say, minivans), you have a choice: Either do what everyone else is doing, only better, or do something entirely different, and hope that car buyers see the result as better. With the Mississippi-made 2004 Quest, Nissan attacked America’s minivan market using the latter strategy. The styling was bizarre, the suspension tuning was sporty, the seats were French-inspired, and the gauges were centrally located. And even after revisions relocated the gauges and improved the initially abysmal reliability, the gambit failed. That particular Quest came to a slightly premature end with the 2009 model year. Now, following a one-year hiatus, Nissan has launched another Quest. This iteration is very different from the 2004, but still manages to be very different from the competition. Prognosis?

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Given TTAC’s reputation for lack of restraint when it comes to criticism, I was more than a little surprised to see an invite to the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet launch in San Diego, California. Especially considering that our initial reaction to images of the world’s first soft-top CUV was

If you’ve ever been to a topless beach, you know the basic problem: you expect a bunch of topless Jags and Maseratis, but what you actually get is this, the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet. Four thousand pounds of roly-poly crossover blessed with the totally misguided belief that people want to see it with its top off. We’ll keep a corner of our eye on this as the LA Auto Show kicks off… but we’ll be sure to avoid eye contact.

On the other hand, strong initial reactions are exactly what this vehicle is all about. And like Nissan’s last controversial design, the Juke, the Murano CrossCabriolet can not be simply judged based on two-dimensional images. Besides, if even Nissan’s designers are willing to acknowledge that the Murano CC is “the answer to a question nobody asked,” surely there must be some kind of logic to this unexpected arrival. So, with an open mind, I dropped in on the strangest, most unique vehicle to launch in ages, hoping to make some kind of sense of something that, on its surface, has no business even existing.

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Because car enthusiasts tend to be more interested in cars themselves than the industry that creates them, critics and commentators tend to praise engineers while vilifying accountants, marketers and the countless other professions required to bring a new car to production. The assumption seems to be that engineers develop great cars which are then cheapened, blandified and otherwise screwed up by everyone else. Obviously this is an oversimplified perspective, but in certain cases it’s downright undeniable. Rarely has it been more true than with the Nissan Juke.
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Fifteen years ago, Nissan’s Maxima was one of a handful of genuinely sporting four-doors that wouldn’t saddle you with German car payments or reliability. After a decade of letting dozens of overpowered family haulers whittle away at the Maxima’s individualism, Nissan upped the game for 2009.

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Until recently, if you wanted a semi-practical sport coupe for less than $30,000, and pony cars weren’t your thing, you had to get one based on a front-drive sedan. Chevrolet offered the Monte Carlo, Honda offered the Accord Coupe, Toyota offered the Solara, and two years ago Nissan introduced an Altima Coupe. The Nissan was the sportiest of the bunch owing to a dramatically shorter wheelbase and the company’s usual emphasis of handling over ride quality. Then, for the 2010 model year, Hyundai changed the rules of the game by tossing the rear-drive Genesis Coupe into the mix. Given this new addition, the question has to be asked: why would anyone still opt for the Nissan, when the Genesis is the same price?

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