It’s no secret that I spent many years writing for Jalopnik, and I absolutely loved my time there. It was an incredible place to love cars for many, many years, and the thousands of articles I wrote over there were how I found my voice as an affable dipshit who writes about cars. Now, of course, I’ve moved on to co-found The Autopian, and I couldn’t be happier, but I’ll always be fond of my old home. That doesn’t mean I won’t call them out when they say something that needs calling-outing, however, because I will. And I am.
For this particular calling-out, I think the act is necessary because it feels, well, a little directed, since the article in question is about a car that we’ve been strongly associated with all year: the Nissan Murano CrossCab. Can I definitely say that Jalopnik published a CrossCab hit piece as a means of Autopian-directed goat-acquisition? Of course not. There are plenty of reasons they could have decided to take the piss out of a limited-production Nissan that’s been out of production for over 11 years.
I mean, we’re not the only ones to notice this, too:
But can I say they weren’t trying to do that, also? No. No, I cannot. And, besides, it’s more fun to at least pretend it was a little dig, because deep down we’re all really drama royals, and this is what keeps life fun. Hence this tweet:
https://t.co/Lc84xXuWpQ pic.twitter.com/boLtTRbg7y
— The Autopian (@the_autopian) December 1, 2025
We’re just having fun! And some Jalopnik writers seem to be having fun back. But all of this is just good-natured frippery compared to the real issue I have with this article, which is suggested in the headline: The Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet Failed Because It Should Have Never Happened.
The article itself is mostly a competent retelling of the story of the CrossCab, how it reportedly was birthed from a remark then-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn’s wife made about wanting a convertible Murano, how it is full of engineering and design compromises and some questionable ideas, and how wildly improbable it is that such a car exists at all. I can find no issue with any if those parts of the article: it absolutely is a strange car, with strange idiosyncratic origins, and it’s absolutely riddled with flaws. I’ve driven it enough to fully understand that it’s an awkwardly shaped, clumsy beast that handles like a yak on both Vicodin and roller skates and is shockingly space-inefficient. Also, that convertible top is a miserably-engineered time bomb whose only goal is biding its time to find the absolute worst time to get stuck open in the rain.
Even knowing all that, though, I would never, ever say “It Should Have Never Happened,” as Jalop’s headline states. Because I can’t think of a worse way to view the automotive world.
There’s actually not that much in article that really backs up the “should have never happened” claim, other than, say, all of the frankly accurate evidence of what a shit car the CrossCab technically is, but that stuff barely matters, because I absolutely, firmly, deliriously believe that it is wonderful that the CrossCab happened, and an automotive world where such things do not happen is the worst sort of dystopia I can imagine: a boring one.
The CrossCab came about as one person’s perhaps poorly-thought-out idea. There were no focus groups, no surveys, no market research. There were no deep, involved studies about the best way to accomplish the proposed goals of the project. And the lack of these things is why the CrossCab exists at all, because focus groups would have confirmed this was a vehicle no one really wanted, and the technical studies would have confirmed this was a vehicle that was too much trouble to produce. But since those things never happened, the CrossCab was made anyway.
And, again, that’s good.
An automotive world where there are no CrossCabs, no bad ideas realized, no strange thoughts that improbably make it to production, is an automotive world free of dreams, of imagination, of interest, of joy. It’s a rationalized world of profit and mass-market blandness, and we have plenty of that as it is. The automotive industry is one of the few global industries that is still largely driven by irrationality, and I never want to see that change.
Does the author of this post really want the carmaking world to be like, say, the file cabinet industry? Is that what they want? If so, do they have a pulse? Do they metabolize, desire, dream? I love that there are still cars in the world that are horribly conceived bad ideas, crazy idiosyncratic products of one loon’s deranged vision! That’s what makes this whole car-loving business worth it!
I want to live in a world of Volkswagen SP-2s, a sports car that looks like it could smoke a Lamborghini but is actually in danger of being outpaced by a determined jogger!
Or take the Cybertruck! Yes, personally, I think it’s sort of a steaming pile I’d never want to own, but I’m positively delighted that such a ridiculous machine exists! And for the people that love them, I hope they keep on loving them as long as possible!
The reason we love cars is because cars are not rational. They don’t always make sense, and I hope they never always make sense. That’s why the Nissan Murano Cross Cabriolet is so important: it’s wildly irrational, and it makes no sense at all, and that’s wonderful and beautiful and if Jalopnik is writing headlines that suggest that such things should never have happened then all I can offer them is my sympathy and hope that they end up happy in whatever metallic silver hellscape of indistinguishable crossovers the find themselves in as a result of this soulkilling concept.
Long live the CrossCab, and all of the other terrible cars born of wonderfully misguided ideas. I hope there are always some cars on the road that make zero sense. Always.
Weird and different cars, I’m all in man. The SVX, XR4Ti, Any pre-GM Saab, Subaru Baja, Hyundai Santa Cruz, Chevy Avalanche, Pontiac Aztec(ugly but let’s face it was ahead of its time), AMC Eagle. The list is nearly endless.
Poorly engineered and poorly built cars are not cool or endearing just because they also happen to be weird.
I still like to read Rob Emslie (nee Graverobber) in the mornings, and Amber DaSilva has a worthwhile hot take every now and again. But most of their posts read like SEO commodity content lately, and it is a bit sad.
We’re already living in the dystopia you dread, Jason – the only thing manufacturers are designing are different sizes and flavours of SUVs, terrified at the thought that anything that breaks that convention won’t sell in numbers large enough to justify the investment to the shareholders. Long gone are the days when they had money to burn and the balls to do something to show the world their engineering prowess or just for the sake of it and the market be damned.
The last time I looked at Jalopnik was when they did a similar puerile trashing of the Ford Festiva. I told them I thought it was bollocks, got pathetic snarky replies, and left never to return, making sure to let the screen door hit me in the ass on the way out.
https://www.jalopnik.com/the-ford-festiva-is-a-car-worth-forgetting-1849610322/
The CrossCab is like a newer Eagle SX-4 and that’s ok.
But let’s hear why the center caps are on there now and we’re not before?
Is it because perhaps a concern about corrosion on the lug nuts driving around in the maybe salty roads?
If so, that would be funny to be concerned about something like that, but not be concerned with the malfunctioning convertible top, knowing it’s going to the cold weather
In the midst of all these, remember that there was also a Range Rover Evoque Convertible that once existed.
Clearly there must have been some pretty heavy drugs going around the industry during the 2010s…
Well, not only that, but as of today, the ONLY cabrio you can buy from VW is the T-ROC cabrio.
Oooooof. I’m not even a convertible fan and I audibly oof’d at that fact.
I am normally of the opinion that a folding roof will make almost anything at least tolerable. But not this. There is not rational, and then there is a bad drug trip. This is a bad drug trip.
Jason I am sure you are just having fun. However Jalopnik veered from being a car sight before you and David Tracy left and they are not the same people you remember. They are same people that are like Ole Miss forgetting Lane Kimph rescued them from obscurity and now attacked him because he took a job pay Kabollions of dollars. Unfortunately no matter how much you love people some will attack you and hate you forgetting what you did for them and hating you for being more successful. Stay in contact with the people who are nice and block the attackers who say I am only joking. It isn’t right when abusers do it to women and it isn’t right if they do it for past compatriots. Jalopnik and the group went off the rails long ago and you can’t rescue them if they don’t want rescued. They attacked readers and anyone who wasn’t a car hating left leaning liberal. I know I was a regular reader until I was attacked every day. That was when I suggested you and DT leave and start your own site. Like a poor innocent girl abused by an uncle don’t feel that need to support really bad people.
I left after one of the authors there suggested train robbery was a good thing.
Honorable mention: an author drove w/ high beams only because he was too incompetent to fix it.
They made some very bad hires at the end (as far as I’m concerned Jalopnik stopped existing as soon as I stopped visiting because, yes, the world does revolve around me 😉 ). I regularly give thanks for the fact that none of those bylines have ever showed up on the Autopian.
Yeah that and the All cops are bad crap and then the bro writing articles about working on his bicycle.. a car enthusiast site with a NYC bike riding bro.
Got strange and angry political all the time.
Glad these guys started Autopian, brought the good folks with, and they’re killing it.
That is so wrong!
After all, everyone knows the B doesn’t stand for ‘bad’ in ACAB.
Anteaters Call Ants Breakfast
Cybertruck: great technology in a bad wrapper. Steer by wire with a yoke? Cool! And works well, by the way. Stainless steel construction that won’t seriously rust! Integrated motorized tonneau cover! Blind spots big enough to hide a F-150. The biggest dashboard possibly ever. That tonneau blocks the rear view mirror but the always on camera kinda sorta makes a half baked attempt at rear visibility. And a turn signal stalk is desperately needed. If it looked more conventional it would sell better.
I agree with the cybertruck comparison. I hate cybertrucks for many very good reasons, but I respect fully committing to standing out in a crowd and executing a unique aesthetic. If it was A: Built with any actual competence and B: Not associated with muskrat, I’d be on board.
I dunno, I’m still trying to imagine a Cybertruck that doesn’t make me want to give it the bird, and I come up empty.
One covered in Autopian stickers?
Unless they have new decals that make the door handles work for first responders. No.
They do! The Autopian stickers are just “That awesome”. Simply place a few layers of stickers over the door latch and first responders (and anyone else) can open the doors with ease.
Yeah, there’s a difference between “frivolous things that exist out of spite that bring joy” and “one very divorced man’s mid-spiral fascist vision of the future” for me. The CrossCabriolet brings joy. The Cybertruck, not so much. If anything, it’s a tragedy on wheels, and not so great that so many folks in the place I’ll claim as my home city (mainly for living there longer than anywhere else) got tied into that flop. It’s the visual manifestation of “holy crap, Tesla really needs an adult in charge.”
Nissan didn’t hype up the CrossCabriolet as a game-changing, segment-reinventing über-vehicle, after all. It was just the fun thing Ghosn’s wife reportedly wanted. Fun things are good! We need more fun oddballs on sale. The Cybertruck ain’t that.
Well yeah, but that’s kind of my point: Tesla is an awful company and the Cybertruck’s marketing (and execution) made it *the* symbol of everything that’s wrong with both it and its remaining rabid fans. But if it had been something like, Toyota made a reliable Tacoma-based EV truck that had dramatic minimalist polygonal styling and just said “check out our retro-futuristic EV truck thing, it looks cool and doesn’t catch on fire” then it would be fine.
True, true.
Agreed. I’d rather look at something that is interestingly-ugly, than yet another bland SUV/crossover.
From Peter Egan’s decades-old test on if your car has character, “If your car’s overall design represents the vision of just one man who is now dead, but who once struck terror, dread and/or awe into the hearts of his employees, give yourself 50 points.” Ghosn is still alive, but I think it applies enough in spirit to pick up at least some of those 50 points (also, some of the mechanical quirk and convertible top issues, and I think it’s at least spiritually French, like a more suburban cousin of the Renault Avantime).
If the top ever fails completely, you owe it to yourselves to give the Murano a Brooklands windscreen.
Did a real author write that for Jalopnik, or is it AI slop trained on stuff written here?
That is a valid question.
No, it really isn’t. The fact is that wasting tons of money developing and producing what was always destined to be a commercial failure based on the whims of an executive’s spouse is emblematic of the institutional failures that have allowed Nissan to be in the sorry state that it’s in today.
An automotive company that was competently run would have left this at the concept car stage.
Three iterations of the Ferrari Mondial cabriolet–the world’s only production four-seat mid-engine convertible, based on the universally panned Mondial 8–happened on Enzo’s watch. Does that support or refute your idea of “competently run?”
Edited to add: I don’t have strong feelings about your post or Nissan, but I can’t help but notice the applicability of the sentiment all over this page to my car. I’m not trying to start something!
Whether or not Enzo was running Ferrari competently is debatable, but it was his company to do with what he wanted. In the case of Ghosn, creating this or really any car because his wife thought it was a good idea and not following established protocols for developing a car is, in my opinion, a breach of his fiduciary duty to the shareholders and should have been grounds for firing him.
Also, I don’t care for the Crosscabriolet, but I agree with the sentiment that it’s good that it exists/existed.
The Ford vs Ferrari saga also comes to mind – how much money did Ford sink into beating Ferrari, seemingly just to do it? Despite all the various fairly tortured claims I might make, winning an endurance race with a prototype sportscar likely didn’t provide that much benefit to its overall products or operations, and certainly not from a consumer pov.
But damn if it’s not one of the coolest things about Ford; I will happily annoy friends and relatives by explaining what the Motorcraft logo actually is.
Enzo Ferrari’s main contribution to motoring was pissing off so many people, who all went out and built their own cars just to spite him.
Lamborghini and the GT40 are just the two most famous examples.
Woo-hoo! I got screen-shotted in an article! This may even be more prestigious than the highly coveted COTD!
Look they even gave you an up vote!
I daily a Mirage. I love weird underdogs that weren’t well thought out. If I were to win the lottery, I’d have a haven of misguided, unloved cars.
In a certain sense, I too am saddened by the death of automotive whimsy, but I also don’t really want to spend my money on a lot of this stuff either, because they’re often not very good vehicles.
Somebody once paid full price for many of these things. I just couldn’t bring myself to do that for something like a 2002 Ford Thunderbird or the Cross Cabriolet.
I understand my contradictions, but it doesn’t mean I like them.
I don’t think automotive whimsy is dead. The Cybertruck falls under than umbrella, as do some current Citroen/Ami/DS designs. The new Renault 5 is full of cute little touches.
I don’t want to go to that crappy site and read it, but the premise is right… they never should have made it. The Murano was already a bad car.
Once again, if I ever have to die on a hill, it will be the hill proclaiming that Canadian rapper (and douchebag and maybe prophet?), Chuggo, predicted the Nissan Murano Cross Cabriolet in his critically acclaimed hit “Ah C’mon”. You can see the proof at 2:38 in the music video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PMGjn_d130&rco=1
Well I’ll be damned. You are correct.
Also, Chuggo seems…not ok?
He’s fully not ok. As for myself, I will always be here, waiting for any chance to bring up the Nissan Murano Cross Cabriolet Chuggo prophecy.
Jesus that was a real adventure
Judging by the name on the Jalop article, it was just another one of their AI slop pieces, so there’s no need to take it personally. The robots don’t want your goat, just your clicks.
The fundamental problem with the crosscab is that it’s a murano. There, said it.
Meh. The CrossCab was no worse of an idea than the original Rabbit Cabrio or PT Cruiser convertible. All 3 were cars that were not originally designed nor intended to have the roof cut off. Two of them sold pretty well, although I think a lot of the PT convertibles went to rental fleets, but still. The idea isn’t bad, but Nissan’s execution and follow through wasn’t all that great.
I feel like most automakers have given up on the idea of building something “out there” and that makes me sad.
I always get mad when people bash on the concept of the CrossCab. I can tell you exactly who would want a vehicle like this: My mom, who wants a convertible, but also wants the height of a SUV. And she doesn’t want a tiny two-door sports car, either. Also, there’s no way someone like my mom could ever figure out how to operate the soft top and windows in a Wrangler or Bronco.
Too often we forget that not everyone is an enthusiast.
They did this hatchet job as an article and not part of a failed cars slideshow?
Generative AI has come a long way.
Jalopnik be like “Yo dog, I heard you like slideshows. So I made a slideshow featuring our top 30 slideshows of 2025.”
The CrossCab was a failure, but many vehicles fail. I appreciate it for failing while being completely whacky and unlike anything else on the market. The Titan also failed while bringing nothing revolutionary or even all that different to the full size truck market. It offered nothing that you couldn’t get from the competition. A midsize convertible crossover though? That took a specific vision to make something that did not exist at the time.
Nissan would probably agree it never should have been made because it was a poor use of their shrinking resources. That doesn’t mean anything today though, so keep on making that impractical mall crawler into the off-road beast nobody intended it to be!
My brother works for Nissan, and my dad had one of these new. It was pretty cool honestly, and he always said he wished he had bought it from the company lease and kept it. We would still have it today I’m sure after he passed. Instead I got saddled with his 69 Corvette 4-speed. (jk)