1999 Silver/black Leather Nissan Maxima Gle on 2040-cars

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2015 Nissan Murano could have been a lot more boring to look at

When it debuted at the 2014 New York Auto Show, the third-generation Nissan Murano wowed us more than just about any other car on hand (that's sort of why we handed it an Editors' Choice for the NYIAS). It's sharp, aggressive design was a dramatic departure from the smoother styling of the second-gen CUV, although it wasn't too polarizing. Most importantly, though, it was a vehicle with actual design presence - you want to see it from every angle, all of which draw your eye with something new.
Of course, settling on the design for a new vehicle is far from a straightforward process. While a design might take shape on a designer's drafting table, there are a huge number of steps it needs to get through before making it to an auto show stage or to your local dealer. According to Nissan engineer Chris Reed, those steps very nearly curtailed the Murano's design before the first die was even cast.
Reed has a full account of this sharp design's trials and tribulations in a must-read story from Ward's.

Nissan Canada kills Cube, is US next?

Canadians, say goodbye to the quirky Nissan Cube. In fact, it's too late; it's already gone. The question now becomes whether the boxy model gets the axe in the US as well.
Nissan didn't exactly publicize the Cube's Canadian retirement. An Autos.ca reader noticed that the vehicle was no longer listed on the automaker's official site in the Great White North. He tweeted the company about it and was told, "Yes, the Nissan Cube has been discontinued in Canada."
The news certainly makes you wonder what the future for the model is in the US. The Cube isn't exactly a hot seller here, either. According to Nissan's last sales results, it sold just 356 units in April, down 23.9 percent from a year ago, and 1,604 vehicles from January to April, down 33.7 percent. Annual sales were as high as 23,000 units in 2010, but they started dipping as early as 2011.

Asking price for Paul Walker's GT-R from Fast & Furious nearly triples [w/video]

The German owner of the only Nissan Skyline GT-R to survive filming Fast & Furious (a.k.a., The Fast and the Furious 4) has put his car up for sale following the death of Paul Walker, Yahoo Autos reports. The original sale price was reportedly an already hefty 300,000 euros ($412,110), but it has since been raised to 1,000,000 euros ($1.37 million).
Despite many well-intentioned efforts, the Skyline GT-R was (and still is) illegal to import for street use in the US, so this R34-generation GT-R and seven others were shipped here without engines and classified as kit cars to sidestep federal law. Once here, the engines were installed, and seven street-legal GT-Rs proceeded to be destroyed during the filming of F&F. But one car, the "hero" car for sale here, was driven by Walker in non-violent scenes and thus is the only GT-R that survived filming.
Then, in July 2009, the federal government cracked down on importers of these cars, seizing almost 50 GT-Rs, including this one, telling owners to export them or risk having them destroyed. The hero GT-R was therefore exported, and its whereabouts have been unknown until recently, when the current German owner allowed it to be featured in a review (watch the German-language video below). You can see the online ad (also German) of the heavily modified GT-R here, where it sits proudly with its sky-high price tag.