Recently I was talking with a friend (lets call him Ndugu) and Ndugu mentioned that he had seen Kurt Vonnegut Jr. shilling for Nissan, after recovering from my initial shock I hypothesised that he may have seen an ad for the new 03 Nissan Murano. I must have mentioned that I kind of like the styling of the SUV because the next thing I knew Ndugu was giving me a “If you buy an SUV we will mock you mercilessly!” Now I knew my friend’s were anti-SUV but this was a bit much, so I started taking a closer look at this particular SUV. The Murano has two drivetrain, options all-wheel dirve (AWD) and front-wheel drive (FWD), both drivetrains are equipped with a continuous variable transmission (CVT) codenamed the Xtronic CVT.

Since the biggest problem my friends seem to have with SUVs is their poor fuel economy an SUV with a CVT could make for some interesting comparisons. Time for a little more research.