Yesterday, I teamed up with our excellent videographer, Griffin, to drive The Autopian‘s Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet some 3,400 miles to take part in a Lemons Rally in Texas. Somehow, our trip became a disaster before I even left Illinois, and then, things somehow got dumber once I got to sunny California. The Murano CrossCabriolet managed to break me after only 200 feet of driving. As a cruel twist, I think the CrossCab itself might also be broken now, too. This is Day 1 of the CrossCab CrossCountry CabCross CountryCab.
If you’re new to The Autopian‘s Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet antics, I’ll bring you up to speed. David Tracy, Jason Torchinsky, and Matt Hardigree came up with a bizarre plan to buy a somewhat cheap version of Nissan’s abysmal failure of a convertible crossover, the Murano CrossCabriolet. They then partnered up with our friends at XPEL to apply paint protection film to half of it. Our friends at Vredestein also dressed up the Murano’s Ford Mustang Tri-Bar wheels in chunky off-road tires. We’ve put the 103,000-mile Autopian CrossCab through a lot of abuse from failed cop slides, more than one keying, and dates with wayward shopping carts.
Yet, the hardest test for the CrossCab, I think, wasn’t going to be shopping carts or Jason in cop cosplay, but a grueling 3,400-mile road trip. Griffin and I will be attending the Texas Lone Star Lemons Rally this weekend, and the car needs to get from Los Angeles to be there. So, I was pinched as the driver for this epic road trip.
Now, a trip like this wouldn’t be a big deal for any well-maintained car. However, the Autopian CrossCab has a convertible top that has a mind of its own. Also, we can’t discount the lift kit and huge tires. The Autopian team and the team at Galpin aren’t entirely sure how the CVT or the rest of it will like darting across the country with its big wheels. That’s even before we get to our plans to take it off-road today.
Griffin and I completed our first 500 miles of our journey yesterday, and the trip was a disaster before it even started.
Chicago Beats Me
We planned to run this trip on a razor-thin budget. David booked me the cheapest flight he could find on Frontier Airlines. In theory, this was going to be perfect. I left home on Monday morning early enough that I would have gotten to the airport with two hours to spare. Unfortunately, I did not consider two factors. The first was that Chicagoland got its biggest single snowstorm in a decade during the weekend. Folks returning to work on Monday found themselves spinning out and crashing. We found ourselves stuck in traffic behind at least three crashes, which gobbled up about an hour of time.
The second issue was that so many flights were canceled during the snow event that basically everyone who wanted to leave Illinois right after Thanksgiving was now leaving that Monday morning. The days before and after Thanksgiving are already some of the busiest travel days in the year, and now it was made even worse. As such, I got stuck in epic traffic only three miles from the airport. Traffic moved so slowly that I could have walked those three miles faster. Alas, we were on an expressway, and that was an unsafe bet. It took another hour to get to O’Hare’s terminals.
Sadly, this series of unfortunate events ate my buffer, and I missed a flight for only the second time in my life. Another hit came from the fact that Frontier’s schedule out of both of Chicago’s international airports sucks. There were no more open Frontier flights headed to Los Angeles until Thursday, so rebooking wasn’t an option. I ended up spending $410 on a ticket at United Airlines. Admittedly, we probably should have just booked United to begin with. It wasn’t even much more expensive.
Amusingly, my bad luck continued when I boarded the plane, because the flight crew had an issue getting the cabin door to close properly. Thankfully, the maintenance crew eventually figured it out. On the plus side, the United jet was a slick Boeing 757! I love these lengthy hot rods.
What A Beast
Once I finally got to Los Angeles, I saw the CrossCab for the first time, and it was love at first sight. I love how the wheels contrast with the paint. I love how the lift kit and chunky tires make the CrossCab look mean. I love that this stupid car exists in the first place.
Now, the Autopian guys were a funny bunch and didn’t tell me much about the CrossCab’s condition, leaving me to figure things out on my own. I knew the roof had maybe only a couple of closes left in it, but nothing else. Well, the first thing I learned is that the CrossCab’s key fob didn’t work. The guys never bothered to troubleshoot this, so it could just be a dead battery.
The second problem was that the car’s battery was dead. Thankfully, we had a jump pack for that.
Then, I had to learn the car’s issues in a rapid-fire manner. The ominous red roof light of death was on constantly. I thought this was because the roof was slightly open, so I hit the close button on the roof. The windows automatically dropped, and then I heard a sad mechanical sound behind me, but the light did not turn off. Jason told me that the light is always on. Ah, okay.
The CrossCab Beats Me
Next, I walked around the car, drinking in its features. I thought the trunk was bizarre. When the roof opens, it occupies half of the trunk. Nissan decided to partition off half of the trunk with a movable cargo divider. The part that bugs me is that this is a somewhat large crossover, yet there’s only enough trunk space for a single bag. That ticked me off enough that I tried to outsmart the CrossCab by retracting the cargo blind and then slamming the trunk shut.
Once Griffin got his camera gear, we loaded up and took off. It took only 200 feet for the CrossCab to break me.
We were just barely out of the Galpin parking lot when the roof system’s alarm went off. This alarm was incessant and blared every time we were over a few mph. I pulled over and hit the roof close button. But this time, nothing happened but two angry beeps. I then hit the roof open button. Again, I got two pissed off beeps.
Admittedly, I didn’t read the manual, so I didn’t know what the beeps were about. I assumed that the car thought the roof was open, and that’s why it whined above a few mph. But why couldn’t I close the roof? It took me about ten minutes, but then I remembered the label I read when I opened the trunk. The roof will not operate if the cargo blind is not in place. Okay, that’s an easy fix! All I have to do is pop the trunk, place the blind, and then hit the roof close button until the noise goes away.
Ah yeah, but there was one tiny issue. Apparently, the CrossCab locks the trunk when it thinks the roof is open. I did not read James Gilboy’s piece on why the CrossCab’s roof was riddled with flaws. But he included this line:
Because the computer thinks the top is moving, it thinks the roof’s cover is open, and therefore in the path of the trunk lid. That disables the trunk’s electronic latch release, meaning the CrossCab’s trunk—along with the potentially offending cargo divider sensor—become inaccessible through normal means. They aren’t fully sealed off, but opening the trunk from here requires a method most CrossCab owners have never had to employ up to this point: A hidden physical key.
Since I didn’t read Gilboy’s piece, I did not know about the hidden keyhole in the trunk lid. It took me 10 minutes to find the hole. The whole ordeal took us about 20 minutes, and it almost broke me. I began picturing myself driving 3,400 miles with the beeper going off the whole way. I wondered if it was going to be wise to do this trip.
Thankfully, I was able to place the cargo blind, return the operation to the top, and spammed the roof close button enough times that the car shut up. But wow, there was a whole 20 minutes there where the roof system seemed to be soft-locked.
It’s So Thirsty
Once we finally got on the road, I got to learn the beautiful parts and the ugly parts about our CrossCab. On the one hand, it has a V6. On the other hand, between the CVT and the big tires, that V6 didn’t feel particularly potent. Other ugly parts included the interior noise, of which there is plenty, and the fuel economy, which is abysmal, at only 17 mpg.
Yet, at the same time, I found myself in love. I adored the pillarless doors and windows. I loved the comfortable seats. The Bose sound system, while not in my top 10 favorite sound systems, was still pretty good. Our modifications also hadn’t completely ruined the ride, either. Our CrossCab is a little bouncy, but overall, a good way to eat up 500 miles.
Once we finally got moving, it took us roughly eight hours to get from Los Angeles to Flagstaff, Arizona. That timing, to me, was honestly wild. As a lifelong resident of the Midwest, I had always pictured cities like Flagstaff and Phoenix being a day’s drive from Los Angeles, not mere hours.
Those eight hours gave me plenty of time to get acquainted with my steed for the next week. One of its quirks, at least to my ears, is that there’s some sort of faint rotational noise coming from the front wheels. When we were in Los Angeles, I chalked this up to the off-road tires.
What’s That Noise?
However, this noise became louder 500 miles later here in Arizona. The part that concerned me, specifically, was that the noise became quieter on right turns and louder on left turns. That’s the call of a bad right front wheel bearing. I asked David about the wheel noise, and he told me that the tires are quiet. So, there’s probably something unhappy in the front end. But there’s a twist, as Griffin says he does not hear any wheel noise. Wow, okay. Either there’s something broken, or I’m hearing things.
As of now, the wheels seem tight, so if a wheel bearing is dying, it’s probably in its very early stages. Either way, we didn’t bring the tools for such a repair job, so we’re playing it by ear for now.
Our plan for today is to have some fun going off-road. Apparently, we will not be wheeling in Flagstaff, but in Sedona. Some of you did email me, so I will attempt to coordinate a meet-up if we can figure that out. Our other goal is to drop the roof for the one and only time during this trip. We want to get footage of the CrossCab getting dirty with the top down! Hopefully, it’ll come back up, but we’ll burn that bridge when we get there.
But for now, I’m happy that we successfully got the first 500 miles down. It feels like the CrossCab broke me a little with its roof shenanigans. Then, maybe our chunky wheels took out a bearing, who knows. Either way, we have 2,900 miles to go!
Top graphic image: Griffin Riley
I had a noise on one of our Volvos that I was sure was a front wheel bearing, turned out to be a halfshaft support bearing. Took a while to chase that one down….
Nissans are pretty much the Japanese equivalent of a GM car. They run terribly longer than most cars run. That’s why there are so many trashed Altimas running around – their Achilles heel is the CVT; if that doesn’t fail, they just keep (barely) running.
I was honestly expecting worse. Like, you only made it 200 feet total kind of worse. Still, I love a classic misadventure.
I was in Chicago for Thanksgiving and got caught up in the snowstorm too (I didn’t realize until now it was such a big one, even for Chicago standards) and experienced my first ever flight cancellation, twice!
I was starting to have visions of being forced to share a hotel room with a shower curtain ring salesman.
Hey Mercedes! Since you’ve driven both, how does the CrossCab compare to, say, a similarly lifted Scion xB?
Having two sets of ears with weird noises is always helpful to track down where they might be coming from. I’ve had wheel bearings, in particular, throw me off because the sound seems to move when I’m in a different position. That leads to replacing a wheel bearing that you already replaced 4k miles ago and then having to go swap the other side because it really was the side you hadn’t done yet.
“That timing, to me, was honestly wild. As a lifelong resident of the Midwest, I had always pictured cities like Flagstaff and Phoenix being a day’s drive from Los Angeles, not mere hours.”
On my first solo cross-country drive I was kind of stunned that I drove from Rolla, MO to Tucumcari, NM in one one day.
I did Denver to Houston in one day once. Do not recommend.
Praise the highway system!
“As a lifelong resident of the Midwest, I had always pictured cities like Flagstaff and Phoenix being a day’s drive from Los Angeles, not mere hours.”
As a kid who watched Airwolf I marvelled how Dominick and SFH always seemed to get from LAX to Monument Valley in 5 minutes.
I’ve done Fort Wayne to Houston/Houston to Fort Wayne in one day several times. I decided this past Saturday when I hit Texarkana on the way back to Houston that I am too old for this shit and will be flying next time.
Ten years ago I did 31 hours straight from Fort Wayne to Phoenix. It was a worse idea than you probably think it is.
I’ve had wheel noises like that from the plate behind the brakes being slightly bent, and rubbing against things worse in a right turn than a left turn.
Ugh. Splash shields. Their main purposes in life seem to be, in no particular order, accumulating mud and ice and slush and muck in order to make strange noises from stuff rubbing on the brake discs, turning into the metallic equivalent of Swiss cheese because they accumulate ice and slush and muck, and getting inexplicably tweaked or bent so that they can make more noise by intermittently rubbing against the brake discs, while at the same time mightily resisting any attempt to tweak or bend them back into the correct shape so they stay quiet…
I think they often get bent by careless wheel installation/removal. I think that because I’ve done it when changing wheels in an awkward space and it’s not hard to do if you tip the wheel in and knock the plate. Easy to fix, at least.
Depending where you end up in sedona-
Gs burgers are great. BoSa donuts in oak creek rock. And my wife loves filibertos.
Best part of any new car, early part of a road trip, or at a critical point of travel are these two great conversation starters: “What’s that noise?” and “You smell something burning?”
Ooh, Sedona is a great place for trail driving. Watch out for the pink jeep tours!
Would you rather experience “what’s that noise?” or “what’s that smell?” while road-tripping?
I think I’d prefer a noise. Smells are usually more urgent.
Counterpoint: smells can come from outside the vehicle (e.g. from other cars) and may not mean anything is wrong with your vehicle
Smells can also come from inside the vehicle, and may not mean anything is wrong with your vehicle.
The degree of urgency related to said smell may vary.
Today is a good day for both!