2020 Nissan Rogue Sport Review

2020 Nissan Rogue Sport

Specs: 2.0 Liter 4 Cylinder / 141 HP

Price as tested: $32,000 (!)

—

Guy who did stuff: Yousef Alvi

Pictures: Manufacturer

This is the 2020 Nissan Rogue Sport.  Let me state for the record.  I grew up around Nissans my entire life.  My father has driven NOTHING BUT Nissans for the past 30 years!  So I grew up and admired the brand.  Admired.  Past tense.  Nissan now is nothing like Nissan in its past.  It’s just a mere shadow sullying it’s heritage and it makes me angry.  

Nissan used to be the BMW of Japanese auto companies.  Their lineup had verve, vigor and excitement throughout.  They were one of the first companies to go ‘hmmm this engine we have in our sports car is damn good.  I wonder if we can fit it into X?’.  So they did and back in the 90s and early 2000s…most of their lineup had the soul and excitement of a Z car.

So, to me the pinnacle of Nissan happened in the early 2000s.  Case in point…the Nissan Maxima.  The Maxima was making 255 HP, you could get a 5 speed auto or a 6 speed manual with LSD and sports sedan handling to match.  The interior was not just class competitive…it actually leap frogged it’s Infiniti brethren in some categories.  This was the Nissan I fell in love with.  Power, handling, refinement and craftsmanship…all for a price you can actually afford.  

Fast forward a few years later, the third generation Altima debuts and stuns the world.  Here was a car that was bigger, faster and better handling than the Maxima and cheaper!  But this was the turning point for the brand.  It was cheaper for a reason…a big reason.

Sure it made a lot of power and it could go to 60 in under 6 seconds.  But the interior was filled with brittle, hollow and just plain awful looking plastics and materials.  Stepping inside that model was like stepping inside a car made by a completely different company.  Details didn’t matter any more…profit margins did.  So by 2007 proverbial the fecal matter hit the fan.

From 2007 onwards, majority of Nissan vehicles had a CVT bolted to them and with that became the beginning of the end of the ‘Japanese BMW’.  Any sense of the ‘soul of a Z car’ was left to wayside in a puddle of CVT fluid.  If you don’t understand why.  Let me explain it to you this way.  

CVT transmissions are usually found on either electric/hybrid powered vehicles.  For a simple reason, it can take the instant torque from that DC motor and smoothly apply it to the ground.  It creates a seamless power delivery and obviously with economy.  

Now slap that same transmission to a gas powered motor you have some issues.  Especially if that motor lacks low end torque, like Nissan’s 4 and 6 cylinder power plants.  So instead of a seamless power delivery…you have the engine wailing itself to its power band and a rubber band like sensation as the CVT attempts to keep up.  It is just awful and that awfulness spread across Nissan’s entire portfolio.  

So now that my rant on Nissan is over.  Let’s talk about this 2020 Nissan Rogue Sport.  This is not going to be pleasant.  So brace yourselves. 

The Great:

Nothing

The Good:

Styling?  Maybe?  Not the best…not the worst.  Could be worst?

The Bad:  

Uh nothing is ‘bad’ per se but more on that below:

The Ugly:

Instead of going on a long, long, long run-on sentence.  I’m just going to bullet point for the worst parts:

• Depressing Drivetrain

• It is just horrific.  It sounds abysmal and has no perceptible power whatsoever to the point, it’s almost dangerous to merge on to the highway.  

  • I don’t understand how Nissan got 140 HP out of 2.0 liters in the 21st century.  

• All of the horrific-ness is mated to a just awful CVT that attempts to act like a traditional automatic but fails in every regard.  Listen, I don’t like CVTs in general but Honda and Toyota have CVT tuning nailed down to a science.  Nissan apparently missed that class because it’s a rubber bandy experience that’s intolerable. 

• Hilariously small, washed out and old infotainment screen

  • It’s about the size of an iPhone Max but completely washes out in sunlight. 

• My God the seats.  

  • Every time I hit the brakes, I would (quite literally) slide forward.  There is no adjustments and no support in either direction.  

• The Steering

  • This is within the top 3 worst steering units I have ever felt.

    • Stick your arms out. Now pretend there is a steering in your hands and just move left and right.

      • That is the steering feel from this Rogue. Nada. Zilch.

• The PRICE

  • This thing costs $32K!!!  No, Just No. 

The Overall:

Overall….no.  just no.  Let’s give Nissan the benefit of the doubt and just go with the base price of this at $28,000.  That is still way too much.  Every single one of its competitors is not just better…they are in a different league.  So if you’re looking a compact crossovers…cross this off the list.