The Best Years For The Nissan Murano, And Some To Avoid (According To Owners)

The pride and joy of the SUV lineup for the Nissan car company is easily the Nissan Rogue, which ranks among the ten best-selling vehicles in the United States in 2024. No other Nissan SUV can even crack the top 25, so one may easily forget that the Japanese automaker has a robust and interesting lineup of SUVs. Arguably, the one that gets most lost in the shuffle is the Nissan Murano. This mid-size SUV hit the market for the 2003 model year and has remained a steady presence, even if sales have been inconsistent, with barely 30,000 units sold in 2022 and 2023. However, Nissan still sees reason to keep it in production, even starting a new generation with the 2025 model year.

The Murano is a great, larger alternative to the Rogue, and the 2023 model is one of the most reliable Nissans on the market. Some people look for a used model though. If you want to get yourself a used Nissan Murano for your garage, you need to know the best and worst model years to choose from. In this article we'll highlight four of its best model years and four of its worst to help you choose. These recommendations come straight from actual drivers of the SUV giving their honest opinions to a variety of sources.

[Featured image by Gold Pony via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | CC BY 3.0]

The Nissan Murano goes all the way back to the 2003 model year, but many of those early years featured a ton of growing pains for the SUV. You need to go to the 2010 model year for our first recommendation, coming a few years into its second generation. It received high overall ratings from drivers along with a significant drop in the amount of complaints levied against the vehicle.

Customers rating the SUV on Cars.com gave this an overall average score of 4.6 out of 5 stars, praising the quality of the interior along with its standard issue antilock brakes and stability system. Drivers on Edmunds were similarly impressed with its interior, as well as its reliability and efficiency, for a 4.5-star average rating. The praise for the interior comfort continues with drivers surveyed by J.D. Power, giving it an overall average of 83 out of 100. Arguably more importantly, it earned a great 84 score for its quality and reliability from those drivers.

Over at CarComplaints, drivers have logged just 43 complaints with the vehicle, around one-third of the complaints given for the previous model year. Complaints made to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration were also way down from 629 to 184, year to year. With the 2010 Murano, Nissan finally delivered a very good example of what this SUV was meant to be.

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Fast forward three years to the 2013 Nissan Murano for the second entry on this list. This is also part of the vehicle's second generation, but by the time this penultimate year came around, Nissan had refined this version of the Murano exceptionally well. It has received some marks that are even higher than the 2010's, and with even less complaints logged by drivers.

While many of the elements drivers praise are similar to the previously mentioned model, this is one where there is a particular emphasis on the enjoyment of the 3.5L V6 engine under the hood. Drivers on both Cars.com and Edmunds both frequently specify this among their favorite things, contributing to the 4.7-star and 4.2-star customer review averages from the sites respectively. 

Drivers surveyed by J.D. Power are even more enthusiastic, rating it an 88 out of 100, overall. That is the highest of any Murano model year, and noted among its many positives are its transmission smoothness, climate system, and the functionality of the rear seating. Even more impressive is the quality and reliability score at 90.

The complaints — or lack of them — mirror that high score. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have only fielded 67 complaints for the vehicle and issued just a single recall. There are even less on CarComplaints with just 20. The 2010 model was very good, but the 2013 Nissan Murano is great.

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Drivers surveyed by Consumer Reports have not been particularly kind to the Nissan Murano, acting as outliers when it comes to both reliability and owner satisfaction scores. However, there was a big shift in their responses when the 2016 Nissan Murano arrived. For the first time, the vehicle was able to earn a "CR Recommended" badge from Consumer Reports thanks to its 63 out of 100 reliability score, 13 points higher than the second most reliable SUV of its class from that year. The drivers were very enthusiastic about the reliability of the engine, the climate system, and the transmission. Those surveyed by J.D. Power were even more in favor, giving it an overall average of 81 out of 100, and an 86 for driving experience. 

Along with those, drivers reviewing the 2016 Murano on both Kelley Blue Book and Cars.com had rating averages of 4.6 stars, praising its ride quality and luxurious interior. On CarComplaints, only 26 complaints have been submitted by drivers, nearly one-third of the previous year's model that kicked off the generation. The 2016 Nissan Murano was a great second year for the third generation.

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The 2020 Nissan Murano model may actually be the very best when all is said and done. Looking to our trusty star ratings from owners, we see a consensus of high scores. Edmunds drivers gave it an average of 4.4 out of 5 stars, emphasizing its fuel efficiency, safety, and handling among its positives. Cars.com drivers gave it a whopping 4.8-star average for many of the same reasons, along with its luxury feel.

This is the third model year to get the "CR Recommended" badge from Consumer Reports, and it has received the highest reliability rating of any Murano model from surveyed drivers with a score of 71 out of 100. Drivers surveyed by J.D. Power are also pleased with its quality and reliability, giving it an 82 out of 100 score, plus an 85 average for driving experience.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has only fielded a total of 34 complaints for the 2020 Murano, while drivers on CarComplaints have only submitted a total of three complaints. Clearly, the 2020 Nissan Murano is a worthwhile investment.

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It's pretty rare for an automaker to produce a vehicle that is close to perfect the first time out, even with all the testing and fine tuning that goes into it. For the first few years of the Nissan Murano, this was certainly the case — so you should definitely avoid the 2003 and 2004 model years on the used market.

Where you see this most clearly is in the number of complaints drivers have made against these model years. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, drivers are just one complaint away from hitting a total of 800 complaints for the 2003 model, making it one of Nissan's least reliable models period. People have encountered a wide variety of issues. Most commonly, there are problems with various electrical systems in the vehicle, particularly when it comes to controlling the speed. Another major issue is the driver's seat either shifting or breaking entirely.

The 2004 model isn't all that far behind on complaints to the NHTSA with a total of 677. There are still plenty of instances of electrical system failures and broken seats to be found here too. On CarComplaints, this year has the most complaints from drivers of any model year with broken door handles being the most common complaint. There's little reason to go to these first two years for a used Murano.

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Unfortunately, the reliability of the Nissan Murano may have gotten even worse for the 2005 and 2006 model years, which seems an impossible task. What is even more remarkable is that it is still many of the same problems drivers are encountering as they did with the earlier models.

For the 2005 model year, drivers have far surpassed the number of complaints made to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration than for the problematic 2003 model. Overall, 985 complaints have been made for the 2005, and even more shocking, over 450 of these complaints are just about malfunctioning or breaking seats. The drivers on CarComplaints concur with this, as it is also the most common complaint submitted there too. That is three years in a row where hundreds upon hundreds of people are dealing with broken seats, which shows little care for how these SUVs are built.

It's actually four years in a row of broken seats, because that is the biggest problem with the 2006 model as well. The NHTSA has received 802 complaints for this model year in total, and 402 of those have to do with the seats. This is why no Nissan Murano from the first generation made its way onto the positive side of this list.

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The 2007 model year wasn't all that great either, and for 2008, Nissan did not put out a new Murano. It would return for the 2009 model year, marking the first year of the SUV's second generation. Even with that time off and a desire to revamp the vehicle, this particular model year would not pass the smell test either. Luckily, there weren't broken seats, but there were still plenty of complaints drivers had.

On CarComplaints, the 2009 model year has the second most submitted complaints of any Murano model year with 132, just two behind the 2004 model. The most common complaint was a soft brake pedal, and the site estimates that the average cost to fix this is over $2,400. No one wants to spend that kind of money on a vehicle, especially when that number could be anywhere from one-third to one-half of the actual price of a used 2009 Murano.

The complaints made to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration totalled 629. Instead of the brake pedal, drivers here found that most of the problems came from the air bags, electrical systems, and powertrain. One of the four recalls issued for the vehicle was because of the passenger air bag not properly deploying. The 2010 model year was the first recommendation on this list and irons out much of what was wrong with this 2009 model.

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The 2015 Nissan Murano saw the third generation get off to a rocky start. The slump was not as big as any of the previously mentioned model years on the negative side of this list, but there was certainly a drop in quality. In the last decade and a half for the SUV, no model year has had more complaints levied against it on CarComplaints, which ranks this as the worst year for the SUV overall. This is because the number one issue found is with a jerking transmission, often leading to a complete transmission replacement that has an estimated cost of $6,300, which is a huge amount to pay for repairs on a used car.

There are only 187 complaints that have been made to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration by drivers for this model year, but when you consider that is about twice as much as the previously recommended 2016 model, there is clearly a better option to be found.

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Our list of the best and worst years for the Nissan Murano is solely reflecting the opinions of actual drivers of the SUV. We utilized a variety of different sources. First, there were the overall ratings and reviews that drivers submitted themselves to websites such as Kelley Blue Book, Edmunds, and Cars.com. Alongside those were sites like J.D. Power and Consumer Reports, which survey drivers on a variety of different elements of their vehicles to determine an overall average. The most important of these elements for the purpose of this piece was reliability, so that score took precedent. To pair with these reliability scores, the number of complaints issued by drivers, to places like the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and CarComplaints, were also very important factors to consider. Weighing all of these different sources, these eight Nissan Murano model years were chosen.

[Featured image by Bull-Doser via Wikimedia Commons | Cropped and scaled | Public Domain]