Nissan Murano SUV convertible rumoured

Nissan is thrashing ideas about as to how it can best resolve the age-old SUV convertible problem that doesn’t actually exist. And could apply its illogical thought to the Murano SUV by 2010.

Viewers of BBC Top Gear may have memories that stretch far enough back to recall the episode in which serial messers - Messrs. Clarkson, May and Hammond - re-defined a genre, by inventing the world’s first MPV convertible.

For the purpose of nothing more than a hearty belly-laugh, we bore witness to their school-boy adventures that within 20 minutes conclusively determining what the Renault Espace could – and more impertinently – couldn’t do on the road. Which was just about every basic question asked of the car.

Clearly having missed this episode of particular lunacy, Nissan has just announced that it’s beavering away on a new convertible of its own, which again challenges just about every law that governs what should, and what shouldn’t, go topless. Ever. And we’re confident that the Nissan Murano fits into the later category.

Nissan designers and engineers are working out a drop-top version of the next generation Nissan Murano SUV, which could in effect be inviting good-natured banter from onlookers from spring 2010, according to the grapevine.

The introduction of a Murano Convertible would steal some of the Jeep Wrangler Unlimited’s share of a market that only really belongs in a marketing mans dreams and would be targeted at the older generation who want one last hurrah before the nursing home beckons. And would be built in very limited numbers.

It would come with a conventional fabric-derived soft-top to suppress weight and would be powered by the existing Murano’s 265bhp 3.5-litre V6 engine, which would return about 21mpg.

Receiving quite a lot of mixed debate amongst car fans, the general opinion ranges from the fence-sitting, “That thing looks ridiculous” and “The only thing that could save this car was if Chuck Norris was driving it” to the slightly less tolerant, yet open to interpretation, “Kill with fire”.

Chrysler got a lot of that repressed stuff of its chest when it gave the world the hot-rod-inspired PT Cruiser. Although it requested its one way ticket to the asylum by going a step further, and flaunting its PT Cruiser convertible shortly afterwards. Like the grotesquely disfigured VW Beetle soft-top, the PT Cruiser convertible belonged in a Victorian freak show, destined to be pointed at and vomited over for the rest of its life.

Yet we have to rewind a few years to see who exactly thought it might be a good idea to hack the roof off an off-roader, and for the purposes of this ridicule, the much maligned Suzuki X-90. A car more confused with its identity than wee Jimmy Krankie. A car that never had a good day during the 24 months it was actually built.

As far as MT is aware, 1996 was the first recorded time any car manufacturer attempted to turn an already suspect SUV into an automotive disaster. By 1998 the folly had ended, and was never really spoken about again.