Nissan Murano
Problems & Worst Years

Two model years carry the Murano's complaint record in this data set, and they tell noticeably different stories. In 2011, the braking system draws the heaviest owner attention: reports of the brake pedal sinking to the floor with little stopping power appear twice among the top complaints, totaling roughly 32 occurrences, alongside a cluster of sunroof explosion reports and a transmission fluid leak severe enough to cause outright transmission failure. Engine hesitation and stalling at idle rounds out the list. None of these 2011 complaints carry a safety-severity tag in the data, but the volume around brakes is hard to ignore for a used-car shopper.

By 2017, the profile shifts toward electronics. The dominant complaint is a forward collision avoidance system malfunction, flagged at safety severity and reported 19 times, followed by owners describing an automatic braking system that fails outright and a batch of sunroof and glass issues also marked safety-severity. A power train complaint and a smaller cluster of keyless entry failures fill out the rest. This is the one year in the set tied to open recalls — 16V636, 18V601, and 19V807 — so a pre-purchase VIN check against those campaigns is worth doing before signing anything.

Taken together, the Murano's two documented years diverge: 2011 leans mechanical, with brakes and a transmission leak as the recurring themes, while 2017 leans electronic, with the collision-avoidance and auto-braking systems misbehaving on their own. Neither year shows an overwhelming complaint volume compared to the highest-reported vehicles on the road, but the safety-flagged clusters in 2017 warrant a closer look during inspection. It's also worth keeping in mind, generally, that newer model years simply haven't had as long to accumulate NHTSA filings as older ones. These figures reflect what owners chose to report rather than a measured failure rate, and a thorough pre-purchase inspection plus a full service history will tell you more about any individual Murano than the model year alone.