A long, long time ago I used to read an automotive site that was abbreviated TTAC. Long before there was such a thing as CC (and long before I ever started writing online) I rented a car and decided to write a review for submission to TTAC. For reasons that elude me the review never got submitted. In going through some old folders on my computer I came across the rental review I wrote when this car was still new. So when is a Classic CC piece not a rerun? Howabout right now.
Why would anyone care about this van as the 2019 model year begins? From my experience lots of our readers live with ten year old vehicles – which seem to be the new five year old vehicles. Someone shopping for an older minivan might come across one of these. They were never terribly common so perhaps this slightly tardy review might be of some assistance now. I suppose I could wait another ten or twenty years and write it as a CC driving impression, but that would kind of be cheating.
By way of background, I had only fairly recently transitioned from a Ford Club Wagon into a 1996 Honda Odyssey. The Oddy had racked up something over 200K when I bought it. Although it was reliable, it was undersized for any serious travel for my family. When we needed a vehicle for a trip I would rent a nice new minivan.
The occasion for this particular rental was a day trip for six with our two high school age sons and our middle school aged daughter and her friend. The trip was from our home in Indianapolis to Holiday World, an amusement park in Santa Clause, Indiana. Seriously. Given the road situation at the time the drive was about 3 hours and 180 miles each way in order to stay on interstate highways. I give you this history not to bore you, but so that you can see my vantage point. I had then lived with two unique vans from the same era that were polar opposites. The old Ford was big, comfortable and powerful, but very thirsty. The Oddy was nimble, well thought out and efficient, but lacked room and power. One thing they shared, however, was that each was durable and also best-in-class in its unique niche.
At the rental pickup, I was first offered a base Sienna. The Sienna looked OK. Frankly though, it struck me the way every GM car at a rental lot has struck me – nothing really wrong with it, but – – yawn. One problem for us was the Sienna’s middle row of seats. To get 7 passengers, Toyota puts 3 individual seats in the middle row. These seats looked rather narrow and, frankly, not that comfortable. Had we been herding a crew of 7-year olds, the Sienna would have been fine. But with two strapping high school boys (one of them 6-4 and 200 pounds), those narrow little seats were an issue. So, when I asked what else was available, the rental staff showed me a Nissan Quest.
The Quest seemed larger than the Sienna and made a great first impression. The moment my wife saw it, the Quest was for her. This was the 3.5 S model. In Nissan’s 4 model lineup, the S is one step up from the bottom. But make no mistake, the vehicle was very nicely equipped in this trim, including a DVD player, rear radio controls, and a power rear door and cargo hatch. The Quest 3.5 S features twin captain’s chairs for the first two rows, and a rear bench with 3 seatbelts. In truth, the rear bench would have been tight for 3, but was fine for the pair of 8th grade girls who spent the day there. And there were plenty of cupholders for the rear occupants.
For the driver, the seat was comfortable with more adjustments than I knew what to do with. You can adjust the front and back halves of the seat cushion independently. Plus, there is the usual back angle and lumbar support. My only gripe here was a desire for a little more aft adjustment. I’m a pretty normally proportioned guy at 5-11, but I could have used a bit more leg room. But the Quest was hardly the only minivan with this problem.
The instrument panel was laid out nicely and most of the controls were pretty convenient and intuitive (though I did have to search a bit for the rear hvac controls, which I found on the ceiling above the rear view mirror.) The instrument lighting is orange, which is attractive if you like orange lighting. Maybe its an age thing, but the color reminded me of the old orange computer monitors from the bad old days of MS-DOS in the early ’80s. I prefer blue or green instrument lighting, but I understand that this may just be me.
The 2009 van’s instrument panel was WAY nicer than the earlier version of the dash offered in this generation of Quest which tried to sell a central instrument panel to everyone, presumably to make the van ambidextrous for both right and left side drive markets.
What was NOT just me is the design of the front seat cupholders. The first leg of the trip, I had a briefcase between the front seats so I could catch up on a little work while my wife drove. This worked fine until I opened a can of juice and discovered that I had no place to put it down. The only cupholders are on a tray that pivots and locks between the front seats. No tray, no cupholders. I was forced to cram the briefcase between my feet in the footwell. Not comfy, and the briefcase barely fit there. My 2012 Sedona suffers from the same shortcoming, FWIW.
Later, it was my turn to drive. I was, in general, happy with the driving dynamics. The 3.5 V6 seemed well-matched to a 5 speed automatic. Truth is, I had to look up the number of speeds – the shifts were so smooth that I never really noticed how many gears we had. (But being used to my 96 Odyssey, virtually any automatic shifts smoothly). A rough calculation showed that our fuel mileage was in the mid 20s on the highway, which is not bad for a vehicle this large. I had only 2 gripes. First, there was a strange little vibration that transmitted up through the accelerator. This was a minor annoyance (and my wife did not notice it) which could be a quirk of this particular car.
The second complaint strikes one of my raw spots – the van was unable to maintain 70-75 mph on a modest grade without downshifting. We drove across I-64 in northern Kentucky. Time after time, the hill and the gearing would overwhelm the van’s torque, the tranny would shift to 4th, then shift to either 4th lockup or 5th with the torque converter unlocked, then back to normal as we crested the hill. Then repeat. Every few miles. I hated this characteristic in my 85 Crown Victoria AOD (in fairness, the Vic’s downshifting was way more intrusive) and I hate it just as much now.
I had a few other niggles. First, I don’t like power doors. But again, this may just be me. The curbside rear door and the cargo hatch were power. Why not both rear doors? You have to move up to a higher model. Also, the DVD system featured a single small screen that flips down from the ceiling. One small screen for two rows of passengers is inadequate. Again, a more expensive trim level solves this dilemma. Finally, what’s with the injection molding nubbies at 12 and 6 o’clock on the back side of the soft plastic steering wheel, right where you put your fingers when you squeeze the wheel. I know, I know, 10 and 2 is what they told us in drivers ed. But I found this to be an irritating little detail that I have not experienced in my Hondas (or anything else that I can recall.)
All in all, however, the Quest was a nice van. It has a unique look that will not please everyone is an acquired taste, but it kind of grew on me over the time we had it. The Quest gave me most of what I had with my Club Wagon except obscene rear storage and torque at 2k rpm, but made up for it with much better gas mileage. And it drove as nicely as my old Oddy (OK, nicer), but with much more power, room, and creature comforts. In a sea of Siennas, T&Cs and Odysseys, the Quest was a unique alternative that was a pleasant and comfortable family hauler that did a lot of things well. But in a dwindling world of minivans (which are not so mini anymore), Nissan provided a worthy offering. I had never really thought about a Quest before, but noted that I would at least consider one as a possibility the next time I found myself in the van market.
So that was my impression from 2009. Have we learned more about the Quest with a decade or so in the rear view mirror? Quite a bit, unfortunately. From what I can tell the Quest of this generation (2004-09) was only a little bit more trouble prone than a Ford Windstar. So, yeah, these kind of turned into a “run away like it is going to explode” kind of thing. These seem to have distinguished themselves for weak transmissions and other powertrain issues. They did not sell well to begin with and do not seem to have outlasted the bigger players as can often happen with niche products. This has sort of been my impression of modern Nissans in general, although perhaps those with more firsthand experience will chime in.
Knowing what I knew then I would have shopped one if I had been in the market. But in a bad news/good news sort of thing that torqueless engine and shift-happy transmission might have saved me from having to repair both of those components as the car aged by sending me to the competition. Hindsight tells me that the 3rd/4th generation Chrysler twins or an early second generation Sedona would have been more to my liking.
Verdict: It was a great short-term rental. But would probably not have made the cut for a space in the JPC garage in 2009. And it absolutely would not in 2018.
None of these photos is of the rented vehicle. All photos are from Wikimedia Commons or from Nissan promotional materials.
I never realized they changed the interior in the later iterations of this van.
Last year, we took a 5,000-mi. trip and considered renting a minivan. Ultimately, we took our 8-year-old Odyssey, but I had secretly hoped to rent a Quest to write it up. These have long been an odd minivan to me; like it would be no one’s first choice except because dealers discounted them heavily.
Since I spent a good part of the past 2 months researching minivans, I thought I’d share this chart on US minivan sales. Since 2005 there’s been the Top 4 (Dodge, Chrysler, Honda & Toyota), and then what seems like a permanent underclass. No one’s been able to break into the Top 4. Not even close. And this shows how puny Nissan Quest sales were compared to the Big Guys.
Of this underclass, everyone’s given up except for Kia. And since the redesigned 2019 Sedona looks almost exactly like the 2018 model, I don’t see their sales taking off any time soon.
That chart is interesting. Combine the Chrysler and Dodge (they were the same vehicle until very recently) and there are really three tiers with Honda and Toyota fighting to dominate the middle one.
What is fascinating is the way neither GM nor Nissan was ever able to break into anything resembling mainstream success with a minivan. Ford gave it a good try with the Windstar and both the last and the recently departed versions of the Quest should have (on paper) been decently successful. But I kind of think that Nissan tried to go for “different” but it came out as “weird”.
Hyundai/Kia had been on a real roll for awhile but it looks like their forward momentum has cooled a bit. Which is frustrating because the Sedona is right on the edge of being a great minivan.
And just this morning on the way to work I saw a black late model Sedona being followed by a black late model Quest. Not a common pairing on the road.
Somehow I forgot to include Ford on the chart… if I write up our Sedona I’ll include a version of this as well, so I’ll add Ford.
I agree that the Quest just crossed the line a little bit and ended up being too much of an oddball.
I would have included the Mercedes Metris in there.
We owned an early example, 2004, of the Quest. It was a fantastic highway cruiser and took the family to Texas and back twice. The early interior might not have used super high quality materials but it was actually very, very functional once you got used to the center mounted gauges. In fact it was one of the most logical, user friendly layouts I’ve seen.
We racked up a lot of miles of ours and it suffered from electrical maladies later in life. I recall having to replace the brakes far too often but other than that it was a good one.
I hate power doors as well. In fact they are a deal breaker – I refuse to own them. Luckily the wife agrees with me on this point.
I remember you writing about it in your COAL series. I feel the same way about center instruments; once a small adjustment process has been made, they’re quite logical, as it takes less eye movement to scan them. Being so used to the almost-center high pod on my xB, I sometimes struggle to read the speedometer buried deeply in the nacelle of the Promaster, especially when its very sunny out.
It’s always interesting what works for different people; I never can get used to the center instruments. Maybe it’s just the way I’m constructed, but that setup is painful for me. The rest of this generation Quest was always appealing, though, and I liked the styling. Much better than its overly slab-sided successor.
Nice review, and thanks for sharing. Looking forward to any other old ones you have.
Me too, as long as I remain strong enough to open the door myself. Once I become too decrepit I probably won’t want a minivan anyway
Interesting you mention the brakes! Whilst my father strongly dislikes SUVs and Minivans, and will never own one (Which is fine by me as an only child), we did have a 2003 Infiniti G35 Sedan(NAV/Aero/Premium if I recall correctly). That thing also went through brakes pretty rapidly. Perhaps it was a Nissan/Infiniti thing in general? I do know the G35 is known for eating through brakes, but wasn’t aware that other models did too! It also had an electrical gremlin, a fault with the cruise control which would pop up from time to time. Perhaps also a Nissan/Infiniti thing? When we were looking to buy a car to replace our TL Type S, we did visit a Nissan Infiniti dealer. Suffice to say they were not as good as that G35. Not even close, really. Which is a shame, because that G35 was an excellent car!
We reluctantly got a left-side power door on our 2004 Sienna LE only because the dealer had no simpler trim levels on hand. As it turned out however, after 120k miles, the doors still work fine. I shouldn’t have doubted Toyota electrics.
We also got the unwanted Rear Seat Audio System, pointless nowadays.
Having been the youngest and smallest of three children, I spent a lot of time in the very back of cars. Narrow was never the problem. Leg room is the killer, even for a four-foot-nothing seven year-old. As for your “gripes,” they are well-founded. That feeling of effortless power is very important in this country, especially for a car of this size. A car should be able to effortlessly maintain 70 on a hill. That said, the vibration in the pedal is also hard to forgive, considering the pedal is not likely connected to anything at all.
I also dislike power doors, in no small part because they are one more thing to break down. However, I must disagree about the injection molding points. They are placed fairly logically. You aren’t supposed to grab the wheel at 12 and 6. You’re not even supposed to grab it at 10 and 2, either, what with airbags. 9 and 3 are the ideal points, as it ensures your arms will be relatively undamaged by a rapidly expanding airbag, and it gives you more control over the wheel.
Lastly, I feel as though this article is better for the decade-long delay. When writing for an audience that tends to keep older vehicles, hindsight becomes valuable.
That tendency to hold the wheel at either 12 or 6 o’clock is, I think, a result in too many years and miles being spent piloting Mopars with the (in)famous “Full Time Power Steering”. The palm of one hand at the 6 o’clock position in one of those old highly-boosted thin plastic steering wheels was the most natural feeling thing in the world. 12 or 6 provided balance. One hand on either side needed some support or you would start to steer in circles.
The presence of injection molding points at all is the real critique, I’ve piloted some crap cars with molded steering wheels, not one has noticeable mold points in the rim, and regardless of where your preferred driving position is I presume you’ll probably feel them through the rotation as you make turns. It’s probably punishment for not ordering the leather wrapped wheel. In my experience Nissan is one of the greatest offenders with cheapskate reminders, my mom’s second gen quest was littered with obvious button blanks.
I tend to drive one handed at 6 o clock too. In drivers ed we were indeed taught 10 & 2 was wrong, and that we should do 3 & 9. I find that position rididulously uncomfortable personally.
The lack of leverage at 6, especially one handed, is dangerous. Moreover, I find 3 and 9 to be quite comfortable. An ergonomically laid out car is going to have controls fall to hand at 3 and 9. Moreover, I’ve found that having my arms injured is quite uncomfortable, so I drive 9 and 3.
I wasn’t saying 6 is necessarily the safest way, it’s just where my hand invariably ends up on a long drive, two handed I’m most frequently at 10 and 2 or even 11 and 1. I did 9 and 3 for years following drivers ed, but I never found it comfortable or better for control, even racing.
So then, if you are designing a car on a budget, would it make sense to place the injection molding points where people would be ill-advised to grab the wheel? Assume that you cannot economically avoid injection molding points.
In the spokes, maybe? Where any other automaker who doesn’t have noticable nubs on the rim put theirs? A budget constraint shouldn’t be noticeable by customers, that’s kind of the crucial point of the criticism isn’t it? Other major manufacturers don’t have noticeable injection molding points there even in penalty box models, which a Quest isn’t.
Besides, you’re not going to be at 3 and 9 100% of the time, when you’re maneuvering through a parking lot and doing the hand over hand rotation, you’ll probably coming across those awkward spots.
Yes, I do not ever recall the sensation of little pointy nubbies on the back side of the steering wheel on anything else ever. My Sedona has a soft plastic wheel and I have no idea where the molding sites are. It was one of those things that was really a small point, but whenever my fingers hit those spots the sensation was highly irritating.
I’ll agree with you insofar as it pertains to the presence of injection molding points on the wheel at all. However, the point of my question is not to defend or otherwise advocate for the presence of injection molding points on a wheel. My point was to illustrate that the best place to put molding points is a place that people should not be resting their hands in the first place. Moreover, even if you will occasionally handle the points, your contact with them will be fleeting at best.
I never actually considered whether they should be on the wheel in the first place, as the criticism in the article is not about their presence, but their location. I concede they probably shouldn’t even be on the wheel.
“the criticism in the article is not about their presence, but their location”
Perhaps I was not clear enough, but the big problem was their presence. Their location was irritating to me personally, but I do not ever recall experiencing the existence of these things on the steering wheel of any other car ever, and I have been driving since the mid 1970s.
Thanks for this flashback. I didn’t know you had ever submitted anything to TTAC. Was that during the time my son was at the helm? He wasn’t very good about keeping up with his email. 🙂
These have become very rare on the streets already. And Nissan’s timing sure was lousy, as the minivan market seems to have gotten hit harder by the Carpocolypse than the rest of the market. Yet they came back with a gen2 version.
As I recall I inquired about a submission and got approved but must have gotten busy and never followed through. It was certainly not the fault of anyone there, except to the extent that they failed to nag me. 🙂
I actually started the Ur Turn idea, to encourage reader submissions, during my stint as Managing Editor (9/09 – 12/10), and was the one who put them together and posted them. Before that, reader submissions were not a regular thing, or dealt with consistently. But the Ur Turn series got neglected again after I left, and there were many that never got posted. I was just wondering if it was during the time I was doing that, because I don’t remember it. I suspect it was in the year after I left.
Never realized how much the Quest looks like a Hearse, from the angle of these photos any way.
I was surprised how small they are in person.
Small? I put a Lotus Seven clone in the back of mine!
https://i2.wp.com/www.curbsideclassic.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Seven-in-a-Quest.jpg
I’m a pretty normally proportioned guy at 5-11, but I could have used a bit more leg room. But the Quest was hardly the only minivan with this problem.
Is that Japanese vehicle thing? I’ve noticed the same issue with my Highlander. I have to raise the seat quite a bit to get any thigh support because the tracks don’t go back far enough and I’m just a hair under 5’11”.
My dad rented a Quest of this generation during a trip once and he came away generally liking it, although he would never buy from a non American company but that’s just his beliefs.
Not all Japanese vehicles, but it’s definitely a Toyota thing. They seem to target a shorter median height when setting up their driver ergonomics. It used to be worse, particularly in the small cars when the steering wheel would be too far away once you scooted back enough to comfortably work the pedals, and the driving position was awkwardly high. The newest generation seems to have fixed most of this. Except the Tacoma.
Honda and Mazda have been better in my experience.
PD – you’d probably like the newer (current generation) Highlander. The driver seat has an extending thigh bolster. Perfect for my 6-1 frame. I often find i suffer from poor thigh support, but hit that button at the side front of the seat and the front of the seat kind of unrolls for an extra inch or so of support. Makes all the difference.
Very French styling. Very French durability as well, apparently. European flair and European ownership costs from a Japanese marque, what’s not to love?
Those front seats look like hell, I never would have guessed they were comfortable with a shape like that.
I know exactly what you mean with a high-profile vehicle dancing between 4th and 5th gear on highway grades. I just shunt it into 4th and keep it there on the hills, makes it far more pleasant.
The head of Nissan design (which was or maybe still is affiliated with Renault) was a French guy at that time. The original Versa had a lot in common with this Quest, and was built on a Clio (or some Renault) platform.
Overseas, the Versa is called the “Tiida”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Tiida
Also, the Renault platform mate is the Megane.
The previous 2 generations [1993-2003] Quests, aka Mercury Villagers are still popular as ‘work vans’. But in past few years they are getting used up and parted out.
2004 + Quests haven’t been seen as much as “beater vans”, since they didn’t sell as well when new.
The first version of the dashboard, was very “French” looking, to say the least.
I currently own an 04 Sienna 8 passenger and while I do agree the three 2nd row seats are a bit narrow it is not as terrible as the pathetically small middle seat in the current iteration of the 8 passenger Sienna. While I probably should have bought a Sienna with lower mileage I wanted to get the most bang for my buck.
My jaded opinion is that these Quests are junky and the fact that I can find these second generation Quests in the junkyard makes me leery of them. I also seem to recall these do not have a flat load floor; I could be mistaken. I do find the interior and exterior styling to be neat looking though.
Thank you for the write up.
I think that in this and the next (discontinued in the US) generations of the Quest the seats fold on top of the floor instead of the third row going into the floor and the second into the floor (Chrysler) or flipping forward or being removed (Toyota and Honda). A crap seat system also has doomed the current Kia – like the first Quest/Villager the second row slides back and forth but you can’t remove those seats.
For ultimate versatility and utility with a minivan you want to have the whole load floor clear, and also you don’t want those Kia seats taking up half the sliding door access. Sliding big things in through the side doors can be very useful.
I did like the style of these things – it’s more Frenchy-arty than the others, as was the Versa and also the Sentra of that period.
Ive seen Quest on a Nissan, in traffic thats as far as my curiosity has gone, its not a type of vehicle I need as far as I can tell.
I had a 2005 Quest SE that was loaded with the weird rear sunroofs (yes, plural), fold down TVs, and power hatch and side doors. I must say, it was a cool minivan and pretty quick with the 3.5 V6.
We once took it on a trip to the Smokey Mountains and for a huge family vehicle, was quite nice and engaging to drive in the twisty mountain roads.
Having said all that, it was a giant PITA to work on and it was obvious that Nissan had cheaped-out on things like knobs and switches on the dash as evidenced by the way the finish began rubbing off of everything I touched. It also had failing pixels on the gauge cluster that rendered the fuel readout unusable. That was an expensive fail.
In the end, I decided to trade it on something newer and bought our short-lived 2012 Buick Enclave. In hindsight, I probably should have fixed and kept the Quest rather than finance the Enclave, which proved to be even more troublesome than our old Nissan.
I loved the design of these when they came out. Especially the crazy-ass dash. But seats looked bad. Now that the 2004-2006’s are affordable (for me), I’m hesitant to buy. The bad reputation they have now gives me pause. I did have an early Quest (1994), blew the tranny, so not a good omen.