PLYMOUTH, MI – One of the most eye-catching elements of the new Nissan Murano is the unique white trim on the Cashmere interior color package.
Dubbed “Jasper Pearlescent” by Nissan, the plastic trim was part of Murano Chief Engineer Chris Reed’s desire to break the mold with the midsize CUV’s third-generation.
“We were trying to push the envelope a bit on the Murano, with the whole vehicle,” Reed tells WardsAuto here in an interview during a Nissan CUV media drive. “Obviously we started with the exterior styling, (but) we didn’t want to lose that connection with the interior.”
Inside and out, the Murano was heavily inspired by nature, Reed says, so natural materials were considered first as decorative elements inside the vehicle.
“You start to brainstorm crazily, even if you can’t do it. Like, ‘Oh, let’s use stone...woods,’” Reed says. “We had a lot of candidates in the beginning, but we didn't limit our minds on what actually was doable...because it’s too tempting in the beginning to limit what you can do to ‘the how.’ ‘The how,’ you do that later.”
While stone wasn’t seriously considered as an interior trim, wood was. But eventually it was determined wood didn’t match the modern, ‘wow’ feeling Nissan was after for the CUV.
The Jasper Pearlescent plastic, from film supplier DNP, arrived as a candidate, partially due to its color similarity with a seagull, whose shape and appearance inspired the design of the ’15 Murano inside and out.
But the Jasper Pearlescent was not without its detractors. To some people at Nissan it looked like 1970s-era Formica.
“But I think the execution made it – even the naysayers loved it at the end of the day,” Reed says.
The lines in the Jasper Pearlescent, striations of browns and grays, helped Nissan achieve the cohesiveness it was seeking between the front and rear passenger areas of the Murano.
But there was a lot of complexity in properly executing the trim.
“There were so many challenges with connecting the lines,” Reed says. “You’re trying to match the patterns and you’ve got door (and instrument-panel trim to align). And as that material is flowed and formed it changes and stretches.”
Reed admits Nissan got overzealous with its use of the material throughout the Murano’s development process.
At one time the Jasper Pearlescent wrapped around the edges of what he calls the media center, a place to stow cellphones and connect devices via USB ports. “We got a little bit carried away in the beginning, then we backed it off (the edges) to try and make it look more naturally executed.”
Many reviews of the vehicle have noted the high luxury quotient of the new Murano’s interior, and that it could fit comfortably into Nissan luxury brand Infiniti’s lineup. But Reed says Infiniti had no bearing on any material used or not used inside the Murano.
Within Nissan “you have different people working on different projects. We were just putting Murano on its own pedestal. It’s not like we didn’t choose wood because we were worried about the Infiniti connection.”
By that same token, Reed says Nissan discontinued decorative metal trim in the Murano not because of concerns about intruding on Infiniti territory, but to spread around the amount of money the development team had to spend.
“You look to balance where you put the money for the biggest impact. The metal stuff is very expensive and we thought we could take the money (that trim costs) and put it through all the other materials and it would be more balanced, and the customer could appreciate it across the whole car. We didn’t forget about the second row.”
The ’15 Nissan Murano, assembled in Canton, MS, is on sale at U.S. Nissan dealers.
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