Nissan Murano review: a comfortable used flagship Nissan quietly stopped selling
3.5/5motorssouq Editorial Team
Buy a well-documented, all-wheel-drive example if you find one and want a genuinely comfortable, distinctive-looking family crossover for less than an equivalent Toyota Highlander or Ford Explorer commands on the used market — the styling and ride quality still hold up. Go in knowing dealer support for this model is thin now that Nissan has moved on, and budget for CVT fluid services on schedule; skipping them is the single biggest cause of trouble on high-mileage examples.
Pros
- Smooth 3.5L V6-CVT pairing with genuine highway comfort and low road noise
- Distinctive styling that has aged better than boxier same-era rivals
- Available intelligent all-wheel drive for the rare wet Bahraini morning
- Priced below equivalent used Highlanders and Explorers for similar comfort
Cons
- Nissan quietly stopped selling it new in the region, thinning dealer parts support
- No low-range or locking differential — not a desert or towing vehicle despite AWD
- CVT reliability depends entirely on documented, on-schedule fluid changes
- Catalogued locally under the misspelled slug 'Morano', which confuses searches
Murano arrived in the Gulf as Nissan's answer to the mid-size crossover boom, and the third-generation Z52 — sold new in Bahrain through roughly 2022 before Nissan quietly stopped importing it to the region — is the version most likely to turn up on the used market today. A 3.5-litre V6 making around 260 hp drove through a CVT to the front wheels or, on higher grades, an intelligent all-wheel-drive system.
What it is actually good at
Murano was never sold as a desert vehicle, and it shows the moment you leave tarmac — there is no low-range, no locking differential, and ground clearance is set for speed bumps rather than dunes. What it does well is highway comfort: the ride absorbs the patched sections of Bahrain's older roads without transmitting them into the cabin, road noise at causeway speeds is well suppressed for the class, and the V6-CVT pairing is smoother than most four-cylinder-turbo rivals under steady throttle.
The styling — a sweeping roofline and a distinctive rear glasshouse that set it apart from the boxier Toyota and Ford competition — has aged better than most of its 2015-era rivals, and used examples still turn heads in a way a same-age Highlander does not.
Buying one now
The honest complication is Nissan's own decision to stop selling it here: dealer parts stock has thinned, and buyers increasingly rely on the same independent specialists who service Pathfinders and older X-Trails. The CVT is the component to interrogate hardest — a full, documented fluid-change history matters more on a used Murano than almost any other single factor, and a car without one should be priced accordingly low.