Nissan Rogue and Marketing

I recently returned from a trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, and while there rented a Nissan Rogue (which was an upgrade over the booked Nissan Sentra courtesy of my National Executive status). Over the 5+ days of the trip, I ended up driving the car 1,349 miles and ended up getting a pretty good feel for the car to the point I had to take a second to figure out how to drive my own car when I got back home from the trip.

The Rogue, in my opinion, is straight up awful, and essentially felt like a crossover SUV based on the Versa or Sentra. If you've driven either of those cars, you know that both of those cars are incredibly weak. A Versa starts at 109 horsepower, and a Rogue starts at 170 horsepower, which is not necessarily ideal for going through the mountains of a national park. Even National straight-up told me that the Pathfinder at 284 horsepower was a much better option.

Through those 1,349 miles there was many challenging points for the car. At its weak power it particularly struggled on hills. At about 6 degree incline the car maxed out at around 50 mph, and at a 10 degree incline the car would not travel above 38 mph (my car, with 228 horsepower on the base model, has no issues getting past 35 on a 24 degree incline near my place). Additionally, the car really struggled on turns, and in general the balance did not feel stable. The center of gravity felt way too high for a crossover, especially since I had previously driven a 2005/6-ish Honda Pilot when I had my permit (and when I initially had my license) and that felt incredibly stable compared to the Rogue. It also didn't help that any time a car passed in the opposite direction on those rural highways the hood would shake profusely as if it would become detached in the front and obscure the windshield.

Now, I understand that not everyone is looking to take this car through a mountain pass in the snow or drive it over uneven gravel to get to a river. However, these cars are marketed as such to the general public, when most of them will never need these cars for those purposes. Of course that's marketing at work.

Nissan Rogue Pitch (Click to Enlarge)

I believe that this kind of marketing is used to make people feel like their car can do anything; that it's some status symbol of some point (look at me, I'm outdoorsy!) that's easy to display. Obviously this seems to work, as the Rogue is still around and selling. However, the vehicle itself is next to useless in any challenging condition requiring anything beyond basic all-wheel drive functions. I'm not even sure the car would make it up my parent's driveway, which might be 25 degrees, during a snowstorm. While I think the Rogue is much better suited for city driving, advertising it as such isn't going to drive sales as much as advertising it an an outdoors car, which is too bad for consumers who don't look at all the specifications before buying a car.