What is not to love about the Nissan Quest minivan? It has the same 3.5 liter DOHC V-6 Nissan puts in its 350Z, which means the Quest has excellent acceleration, passing power and driving flexibility. How many other minivans can you honestly say are actually fun to drive, as the Quest can be on the right road and so long as you remember that it is a minivan, not a sports sedan? The Quest is also long and tall and it has a huge cargo capacity (compared to that SUV in your driveway now), an abundance of room for its seven or eight passengers, easy-opening doors that are wider than those of other minivans and a list of safety equipment longer than your arm. Yes, the Quest has exterior styling that folks either love for its uniqueness or hate for looking like something George Jetson might have designed had he ended up in a Detroit styling studio instead of in a goofy cartoon sit-com. It s also true that there are elements of the instrument panel that are, uh, different. Evidently those stylistic drawbacks are genuinely serious obstacles to marketplace success because Nissan has seen a 22 percent decrease in Quest sales in the past year, and that s down from 2005 levels, which were rather unimpressive from the outset. The Quest just hasn t been a successful entrant in the minivan wars. There are other problems with the Quest. My Silver Mist tester was indeed fun to drive, thanks to that delightful powerplant under the hood and the six-speed automatic transmission to which it is connected. And the tester came with just about every available option, including two DVD entertainment center screens, the GPS-based Nissan Navigation System and Michelin s PAX tires with run-flat technology, second row folding captain s chairs and third row fold-flat seats. I could go on with all the comfort, convenience, safety and mechanical features on the tester Quest, but you would probably stop as abruptly as I did the first time my eyeballs found the bottom line on the sticker – $40,865. For that much dough, I could get a Kia Sedona minivan for family hauling and a Chevy Cobalt for commuting. Nissan does a super job with vehicles like the Altima. Let s hope the next generation Quest merits the same sort of praise.
