Road Test
To our ears, the word rogue has a kind of bad-ass appeal. It conjures up Cold War films where a rogue Soviet submarine, captained by a bushy-browed Sean Connery, causes a tenuous nuclear standoff. Such an image is probably fine by Nissan because although its new Sentra-based Rogue isn't likely to cause any kind of political rift, the name should allow it to distinguish itself in the increasingly competitive and rapidly saturating small-sport-utility market—a segment that is expected to generate more than 1,000,000 sales this year. Okay, Rogue, you got our attention, but is this economy-car-based SUV worthy of its swashbuckling name? Or even a road test? Is there anything rogue about the new Rogue?
An SUV that emerges from the bones of a Sentra doesn't exactly cause shoving matches at our car sign-out board. We've compared two of the latest Sentras and found that the first, a Sentra 2.0S, ranked last in a field of five peers ["Sensible Shoes," December 2006]. A second comparo ["Power Toys," May 2007] placed the sportier Sentra SE-R Spec V one step up from last place. However, plopping an SUV body atop that platform works better than we had expected. One major advantage of this relationship can be seen at the scales: Our fully loaded Rogue SL with all-wheel drive weighed in at 3533 pounds, hundreds of pounds lighter than the portliest small utes and nearly identical to the weight Honda claims for the AWD version of its bestselling CR-V.
Transforming a Sentra into a Rogue apparently didn't require much stretching of the architecture. The Rogue's wheelbase is 0.2 inch longer than the Sentra's, and the Rogue's width is 0.4 inch greater. The overall length grows by just 3.1 inches. Aside from the 5.8-inch-taller, Murano-like body, the Rogue has nearly the same footprint as the Sentra.
