Nissan Cube, Murano CrossCabriolet To Die

by Derek Kreindler

Published: July 9th, 2014

nissan cube murano crosscabriolet to die

Nissan will kill off two of its quirkiest vehicles for 2015. Both the Cube and Murano CrossCabriolet will disappear in the coming model year.

The CrossCabriolet, which famously found a home among a dementia-stricken man, will die along with the current Murano, as Nissan prepares for the 2015 model year and the all-new Murano.

The Cube, which sold is small numbers, will presumably get the axe because everyone interested in a geometric-shaped Japanese car has already bought a Scion xB.

#Nissan #NissanCube #NissanMurano #NissanMuranoCrosscabriolet

Derek Kreindler

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11 of 54 comments

Rday on Jul 09, 2014

pricing was high and reliability was only so so according to CR. Too bad toyota screwed up on the second gen xb.

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Sector 5 on Jul 09, 2014

I recall Motorweek on PBS about a year or so ago seeing little point in the Mur-X-cab. I think FMCO have better sense of direction than Nissan NA. I was told at my dealer last Sat now they can't move the Note my neck of the woods. First gen Versa hatch did much better.

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Chicagoland on Jul 09, 2014

All this talk about Cube and Soul sales. Well who is supposedly buying these 'hot sellers'? Fleets. I see more Souls in the Rental Car lots at O'Hare International than anywhere else. They are getting dumped into fleets. No, I don't see any 25 y/o 'hipsters' driving them, only middle aged biz travelers forced into one, since a mid size car was not available. Hipsters get Jeeps, or bicycles. The Cube is a big seller, for medical Lab Testing companies delivering samples. Where employees have to go to get 'random' drug tests. Good riddance, Soul is next, which is the fate of most fleet queens.

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- Banger on Jul 09, 2014
  
  You'd be positively shocked to visit my tiny town of roughly 4,000 residents and witness just how many of those people are driving Souls. These are not fleet queens in my part of the country. Yes, they exist in rental fleets. Then again, so did cubes at one point. I know at least one cube owner who became a cube owner after her car got totaled when someone rear-ended it at a traffic light, and the rental company put her in a cube for a few days afterward. If anything, the fleet versions of the Soul are probably doing the same work for Kia, convincing people to give the funky Hamstermobile an honest look. In my neighborhood, the only medical lab fleet cars have been Chevy HHRs, and after they went out of production, the company moved to (brace yourself), VW Jetta wagons. Selling a comfortable margin more than 100,000 units a year, fleet or not, I don't expect the Soul to be leaving U.S. Kia dealerships anytime soon, friend.
  
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- Scoutdude on Jul 09, 2014
  
  Last time I went to rent a car the isle I could choose from at what my company would pay for had 4 or 5 200's and a Hamster car. It was a tough choice but I went for one of the 200's. However I see a lot of them that aren't rental cars but yeah they are not driven by young hipsters but older people just like the Xbox which was supposed to be bought by 20 somethings as well.
  
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- Vulpine on Jul 10, 2014
  
  Fleets may be buying some of them, but by no means all or even most, I'm sure. The Cube? Maybe. Where I live however, every Soul and Cube I see is individually owned and admittedly the Soul vastly outnumbers the Cube. My complaint with them, like many other front-drive vehicles, is that they're lucky if they have three inches of ground clearance at the rear axle. What I assume is the sway bar hangs so low between the wheels that even a squirrel or a rabbit gets hit where they used to be able to survive running under your car. Now imagine finding something like a piece of scrap metal or somebody's tow hitch and trying to straddle it...
  
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- Vulpine on Jul 10, 2014
  
  @Vulpine As far as light delivery vehicles? It's a pretty fair toss between the Caravan Cargo and the Scion xB.
  
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- Zamoti on Jul 10, 2014
  
  @Scoutdude Shoulda given the hamster a go, at least it would have been funny. I got stuck with a 200 for a week and boy howdy tell you what, is that thing a dog turd marinaded in cat piss. I know there are many that would say that there are no bad cars anymore, but I don't think they've driven a rental 200 yet. Ugly, slow, cheapo interior, mushy, the only thing it did well was take a beating when I launched it over speed bumps.
  
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- Sgeffe on Jul 12, 2014
  
  @zamoti Had a similar final-gen Dodge Avenger for a couple days from Enterprise. Worst car I've driven in my life!
  
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MRF 95 T-Bird on Jul 10, 2014

Maybe Juke sales were cutting into the Cube market since they are priced roughly the same. As far as the Cross Cab is concerned maybe it was just to weird for it's own good. Now the only convertible Nissan offers is the 2-seat 370Z. If you want a 4-seat FWD convertible you have the Beetle and Eos unless you go upmarket $10-15k to an Audi.

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- Banger on Jul 10, 2014
  
  This is a salient point, to which I'll add there's just enough quirky, weird styling commonality between the cube and the Juke that many cube owners are the same kind of buyer who might consider a Juke. I'd consider a Juke, but for three issues that turn me off of it: (1) Real-world transaction prices on Jukes have always been higher because dealers want to stock AWD/automatic Juke SLs and now, Juke NISMOs. The only way a Juke and a cube are really the same in price is if the Juke is a barebones stick-shift model and the cube is a mid-to-upper-level S or SL with a CVT. (2) Line of sight from the Juke's driver seat is horrible compared to the cube. Sight out the back half of the car is downright dangerous. Good thing most of them come with rearview cameras. (3) The high load floor makes zero sense. Especially on front-wheel drive Jukes, I wish Nissan would put a deep storage well back there the same way they do for the cube. Then maybe that little cargo area could prove a lot more useful. As it is, the higher load floor and sloping rear roofline conspire to limit its true cargo capacity much more than the cube's, despite the cube's bumper-to-back-of-seat distance being shorter.
  
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