TESTED
While you weren’t paying attention, that sapling you planted matured
into a mighty oak, your kids slipped out of diapers into graduation
gowns almost overnight. The same thing happens to SUVs: Take your eyes
off them, and they grow. Case in point, the Nissan with the
swashbuckling name. Six years ago, the Rogue was born a Sentra
dressed in big kids’ clothes, and it quickly became the
second-bestselling badge in Nissan’s lineup. Sent back to finishing
school, given a fresh body and chassis, and relocated to Nissan’s
manufacturing plant in Smyrna, Tennessee, the Rogue is back to honor
that golden American idiom—bigger is better.
Bulking Up
The dimensional gains are actually modest—1.5 inches of width, 1.2
inches of height, a 0.6-inch-longer wheelbase—but the result is a new Rogue that’s as large as the mid-size Nissan Pathfinder, Ford Explorer, and Jeep Grand Cherokee
were a decade ago. Inflating the cabin stretches rear legroom by a
whopping 2.6 inches and rear shoulder room by nearly as much, as well as
allowing Nissan to squeeze in an optional third row of kid perches. The
32-cubic-foot cargo hold is 10 percent larger; with the rear seats
folded, a nearly level load floor offers an awesome 70 cubic feet for
Home Depot booty. To coddle soccer teams and growing families on road
trips, the second-row seats recline and slide fore-and-aft nine inches,
and every nook and cranny is equipped with a bottle holder, media
connector, or some gadget to play with. Small gripes: Thick rear roof
pillars restrict outward visibility, and the stowed side curtain airbags
crowd lateral headroom for outboard second-row passengers.
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The well-equipped Rogue SL we tested was armed with all-wheel drive, a
double-length sunroof, and a vast arsenal of lane-keeping, blind-spot,
and incoming-missile technologies, boosting the price to an ambitious
$32,395. The weight gain over the first-gen Rogue we tested six years
ago is a modest 160 pounds, thanks in part to a new aluminum hood and
plastic hatch. That’s important because the 2.5-liter four-cylinder
sitting transversely under the hood is for the most part carried over
from the previous model. The acceleration we measured—0 to 60 mph in 8.9
seconds, the quarter-mile in 17.0 seconds at 83 mph—is a touch slower
and reflects the new model’s less-favorable power-to-weight ratio.
No Shift, Sherlock
You can have any transmission you like in a Rogue as long as it’s a CVT.
The new and improved version here belies our well-documented loathing
of belt-and-pulley transmissions. Supplier JATCO, which is partly owned by Nissan, has implemented comprehensive improvements over the outgoing Rogue’s CVT.
Major reductions in friction and hydraulic losses contribute to gains in
EPA gas-mileage estimates. The thirstiest AWD version tested here
scored 25 mpg city, 32 highway, and 28 combined, gains of 3 to 5 mpg.
Offsetting the 2014 Rogue’s significantly larger frontal area is a
wealth of aerodynamic improvements that drop the drag coefficient 10
percent to a claimed 0.33.
The beauty of any CVT is its ability to sweep through wide-ranging drive
ratios with no hint of shift shock. During light throttle applications,
moving to a numerically low ratio drops the engine below 2000 rpm,
reducing noise and fuel consumption. Below 40 mph, there’s no obvious
ratio changing at all. Leg it above that speed, and there’s a gradual
climb to 6000 rpm followed by as many as seven ratio “shifts,” each of
which notches the revs back to 5300 rpm. Moving the shift lever to the L
position reverts to more-classic CVT action with rpm ranging between
4000 and 6200 rpm (depending on throttle position) and the engine
delivering all it’s got.
This is the mode we used to crack the nine-second 0-to-60-mph barrier.
Half-a-dozen Helmholtz resonators fitted to the engine’s intake tract do
an excellent job of muting the drone of the engine revving between its
power peak and redline. The third alternative is to tap the Sport button
left of the steering column. This reprograms the CVT to select
more-aggressive ratios. The silly paddle shifters fitted to first-gen
Rogues have thankfully been ditched. The only anomaly we observed was
the CVT’s inability to shift out of high gear following each of our
70-to-0-mph braking tests, resulting in a moment’s hesitation
immediately after each panic stop. Bottom line: Although we’d take any
manual over any automatic, the new Rogue’s CVT exorcises the truly
serious annoyances of the previous one.
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Driving Roguishly
The upgrades invested in this edition aren’t restricted to the
transmission. The AWD system powers the front wheels all the time, with
the rears kicking in only when necessary. Tapping the lock button gives
you maximum traction for departing slippery intersections or digging
through fresh snow, but this mode is restricted to speeds below 25 mph,
so don’t plan on entering the Rogue in the Baja 1000. And although the
electrically assisted power steering provides a satisfying effort build
off-center, feedback from the road is never part of the deal. The
suspension tuning traipses that narrow line between just enough control
to keep the tall body from teetering and not so much that you dread
every expansion joint in your path. The brakes stop this soft-roader in a
relatively short 170 feet from 70 mph to 0, but we wish the pedal felt
firmer underfoot and had less travel.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a sporting bone in the Rogue’s body. The
front bucket seats are thrones worthy of those in any German import, the
SL leather interior trim rivals that of any Infiniti, and the entire
cabin is designed with maximum utility as a priority. However, Nissan
engineers had their hands so full perfecting the optional seven-inch
touch screen, programming the hands-free text-messaging system, and
wiring the array of impending-doom warning systems—blind-spot,
lane-departure, forward-collision, moving-object detection; and a
bird’s-eye view of the outside world—that they never got around to
instilling the Rogue with driving enjoyment. Fret not: Before you know
it, there’ll be another redesign, possibly with that lapse addressed and
ready for a varsity skirmish.
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