DRIVE TEACHER

Nissan Murano Nissan Murano Nissan Muro
By Dan Neil / Los Angeles Times

To signal, I suppose, the model-year face-lift, Nissan designers gave the 2009 Murano a tensed chrome brow, a fierce furrowing that is, actually, quite a bit more aggressive than anything else in the Nissan garage. Compared with the new Murano, the lava-breathing GT-R has the countenance of the Buddha. I suppose my question is, does it convey aggression, really, or something akin to consternation, or constipation? This is the look I get when I listen to Kenny Chesney sing or when I eat heavy German food.

It was a problem that Alfred P. Sloan -- GM's empire builder and the man who practically invented stylistic obsolescence -- never contemplated: What if you design a car just right, so well-tempered to its mission and market that anything you do to it subsequently looks phony and trumped up? In other words, how do you market the new design when the old design is better?

The Murano inarguably got it right the first time. Introduced in 2003 as a 2004 model, the Murano was as smoothly contoured as the glass from which it took the name. Its fluid lines wasted no effort encapsulating the shape, a kind of high-sided, short-coupled wagon on big wheels: the crossover. The Murano was a huge hit for Nissan and -- along with the crazed FX35/45 performance utilities -- gave Nissan the hip, sassy-as-spit brand image it enjoys today. The Murano also kicked open the door for a crowd of slippery crossovers such as the Mazda CX-7, Buick Enclave and Hyundai Sante Fe. No good deed ever goes unpunished.

After a model-year hiatus (no 2008 model), the Murano comes back with a little more mustard on the ball, styling wise, but generally modest changes. The profile is about the same. The interior passenger room is about the same -- although rear cargo space is trimmed back a bit. The Murano is still based on the Nissan's midsize Altima platform, with routine model-freshening improvements in rigidity and quietness. It's still powered by Nissan's ever-present 3.5-liter V6, with a bump in output to 265 hp and 248 pound-feet of torque. And it's still routing power through a continuously variable transmission, although this generation of the device is much smarter and far more livable than the last. Compared with the earnestly plodding evolution in the rest of the Murano, the CVT retune is a thunderclap of innovation.

Here's a quick chalk talk on CVTs: A conventional geared transmission, whether manual or automatic, has only so many ratios to match engine speed (where output and fuel efficiency are maximized) and vehicle speed. Conventional transmissions, then, leave a lot of fuel efficiency on the table. A CVT, which uses a drive chain between two variable-diameter pulleys, essentially has an infinite range of gear ratios and so allows the engine to run at optimum speed for any given load.

The trouble with CVTs is their reaction time: You give the car the gas and there's this long moaning engine note as the CVT computer system slowly orients the pulleys to optimum ratios. A lot of cars with CVTs sound as if they are having a full-body massage, even though the CVT is operating as designed.

Nissan's new CVT software works a lot better. The step-off acceleration is respectable, and the passing-speed response is all but indistinguishable from an automatic's kick-down passing behavior. Once throttle demand slackens, the CVT quickly falls into a mellow overdrive mode.

The payoff for all this hot, gear-on-gear action is fuel economy: The Murano gets 18 miles per gallon city, 23 mpg highway. That's the same as the former, less-powerful Murano, and it's the same rating in both the front-wheel and all-wheel drive versions. Usually, AWD versions pay a fuel economy penalty. Under the circumstances -- which is to say, when gas costs more than reasonably priced Chablis -- 18/23 mpg isn't a marquee statistic. Still, it's better than a lot of Murano competitors with the same room and less power.

A couple housekeeping notes: The Murano comes in three trim levels (S, SL and LE) and two editions, front-wheel drive and AWD. The base FWD version retails for $26,330, and the utterly blissed-out LE AWD (with the 30 GB hard-drive-based navigation/audio head, rear-seat DVD, 20-inch rims and lots more) goes for about $39,000.

Nissan has gone to some trouble to refine and update the interior, drawing heavily from the Infiniti larder. The center-stack controls are direct lifts from the company's premium brand. There are grace notes here and there. The steering wheel is tilt and telescopic. The LCD display is handsome and intuitive. There's even a push-button start system, with which I managed to somehow kill the battery even though I had the key. Awesome.

If you've driven a Murano, you've driven this one. It's fairly well planted and agile, considering the bar-stool height. The brakes and steering do their thing without incident or complaint. But I must say -- as the spoiled owner of a late-model Honda Odyssey -- the body control could be better. The Murano floats and sways down the highway, and when it encounters broken pavement it takes two or three oscillations for the suspension to re-compose itself.


Here's what I like: I like the reclining rear seats, which make a fairly cramped compartment downright luxe. I like the rear seat lever releases along the rear bulkheads, which allow you to drop the seats easily while loading. I also like the power rear-seat return that raises the seats again, either from buttons in the rear or in the cockpit. These are all features that, while not unique in the market, more than earn their suburban keep.

Still, for me, the Murano is betwixt and between. If I've got to have a luxe crossover -- and I owned Nissan stock -- I'd go for the smaller but infinitely more charismatic Infiniti EX35. If I needed a kid-mobile, the Murano just doesn't have the ease of access or storage. If I needed a sporty crossover, I'd be sorely tempted to wait for the new FX35/45 twins, coming this summer.

Have Nissan product planners bracketed the Murano out of its reason for being? No wonder it has a headache.

Bentley Bentley Bentley Bentley Bentley
The Bentley Continental GT is the first completely new model made by Bentley since this mark belongs to the Volkswagen Group, and also the first new Bentley since 70 years ago.


Bentley Continental GT

The Bentley Continental GT is manufactured in the Bentley plant in Crewe (UK), including assembly of the engines. The designer of the bodywork is named Dirk van Braeckel, who has deliberately avoided a design 'retro'.


Bentley Continental GT

It is a coupe motor front, two doors and 2 +2 seats. Move the 12-cylinder engine in 'W' also have the Volkswagen Phaeton, but modified by Bentley. The cylinder capacity remains the same -5,998 cm ³ - but has two turbochargers KKK, with which the absolute maximum pressure supply is 1.7 bars.


Bentley Continental GT

What has succeeded Bentley Continental GT with these turbochargers blowing soft is a maximum power and maximum torque for its relatively low cylinder capacity: 560 hp and 650 Nm, but with a maximum torque virtually constant throughout the system useful engine. It and 650 Nm at 1,600 rpm and 644 Nm preserved when the engine turns regime maximum power, 6,100 rpm.

Bentley Continental GT

The Bentley Continental GT has some unusual features in very powerful turbo engines: its compression ratio is neither low (9 to 1), has a maximum production nor is low (6,300 rpm) and requires no gasoline for 98 NOT under any circumstances.

Bentley Continental GT

The Bentley Continental GT gearbox is ZF, and six-speed automatic with sequential controls on the steering wheel. According to Bentley, the Bentley Continental GT is the fastest four-seater in the world.

Bentley Continental GT

The Bentley Continental GT maximum speed is not self-limiting, and reaches 306 km / h, has a rear spoiler that deploys when the car was moving fast. It accelerates from 0 to 100 kph in 4.7 s (the Mercedes CL 65 AMG makes it in 4.5).

Bentley Continental GT

The description of the suspension is the same as that of a Phaeton, parallelogram deformable in the two axes. It also has pneumatic springs and a buffer electronically controlled continuously variable hardness (That does not mean it is the same). It has stability control, disconnect through a button on the dashboard. The series will tire of 19 "in diameter.

Bentley Continental GT

Although it has elements in common with the Volkswagen Phaeton is not exactly the same chassis, the Bentley Continental GT has less battle (2,745 mm to 2,881).
It is a four-seater designed for people of high stature, the trunk measured 370 l. Part of the internal volume steals a fuel tank of 90 litres.

Bentley Continental GT

The Bentley Continental GT rear seats are folding and offer the possibility of carrying long objects in the interior. The safety equipment is standard in a car together (eight airbags and tensors emergency in all places).

Bentley Continental GT

Among the equipment, in addition to the normal range in a car of this price, there are things like a Breitling watch, with the typography of the instrumentation that had the Bentley before World War II.

Bentley Continental GT

It will be up for sale gasoline and coupe body in the second half of 2003 for a price without taxes of € 137069. Until now, Bentley Continental GT has received 3,000 deposits account, of which 75 percent are for people who have never owned a Bentley.