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The Force Was Clearly Not With The 2017 Nissan Rogue SV: Star Wars Edition, Here's Why

The Rogue will almost certainly be your culprit if you want to know how Nissan pulled off the spectacular feat of selling America's best-selling crossover SUV while also teetering on the verge of ruin.
Rogue One Nissan Rogue 57 photos
Photo: Nissan USA
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Priced cheaper than a Toyota RAV4 and cheaply built as a result, the only people who had anything nice to say at the end of ownership were leasees who got rid of them, right before their transmissions failed. But if tone-deaf cash grabs are your kind of automobile, the Rogue: Rogue One Star Star Wars Limited Edition is your beacon on a hill. The Rogue One Edition, as we'll mercifully try and call it, was everything wrong about Nissan in the late 2010s.

But before we dive deep into the nitty-gritty of this sci-fi movie-themed Mother-mobile, a little bit of back story behind the Nissan Rogue. The second-generation T32 Rogue is an enigma in the annulus of automotive history. Normally, when an automaker sells hundreds of thousands of one singular vehicle for years on end, it's a remarkable achievement. But in regards to the Rogue, sales figures don't even tell half of the story.

The reasons why the Rogue was so often problematic after the date of sale is not an easy thing to explain in a concise way. A lot of it still makes no sense. It involves internationally wanted business criminals being smuggled out of Asia to the Middle East and a locust-adjacent swarm of Jatco CVT transmissions going kaput well before the warranty was over. But let's break it down piece by piece to understand precisely why the Rogue was ultimately a failure for Nissan, at least for a generation.

The obvious place to start in breaking down Nissan's fall from grace is the man who headed the company for almost 20 years. You've all no doubt heard the tragedy of Darth Plagueis... I mean... Darth Carlos the Wise. Otherwise known as Carlos Ghosn. Fitting, the man who signed off on a Star Wars-branded automobile has a track record like Emperor Palpatine.

Nissan Rogue\: Rouge One Edition
Photo: Nissan USA
In the same way that Order 66 laid waste to the Jedi Order and gave rise to the Galactic Empire, the Renault-Nissan alliance of 1999 resulted in more than a small number of people losing their jobs or being made redundant in both the American and the Japanese markets. Some argue it's a cost-cutting move that saved Nissan in the end.

No doubt because the profit margins are bound to be higher when your vehicle's head gaskets are seemingly made out of cheese, and your Jatco CVTs have belts made adjacent to the silly-string factory. Nissan paid dearly for cutting corners with the Jatco CVT-7 and CVT-8 automatics.

Everything from the tiniest Versa to the highest trimmed Pathfinders came equipped with some variant of the Xtronic CVT for many years. The results were catastrophic, enough to wipe out any good feelings about record sales of the Rogue and the Sentra sedan under a tsunami of recall and extended warranty repairs.

Renault-Nissan issued extended dealership warranties for the R52 series Pathfinder, T32 Rogue, and B17 Sentra for up to 84,000 miles depending on the specific model. Grand Master Yoda himself would struggle to keep the internals of the Jatco CVT transmission together after 50,000 miles or so, even with all his strength in the Force.

Nissan Rogue\: Rouge One Edition
Photo: Nissan USA
So imagine when somebody who was unfortunate enough to buy one of these Nissans used when the warranty is just past the expiration. They didn't stand a chance.As for the Rogue One movie, a pretty awesome flick in its own right, the Rogue Special Edition that bears its name fails to live up to the acting chops of Felicity Jones.

Apart from a Sith Black or Storm Trooper White pain color on black rims and matching black trim pieces, there's nothing about this Special Edition Rogue that isn't present on a modestly optioned standard car. There's, of course, some obligatory Rogue One branding throughout the interior, with the Death Trooper helmet being our personal favorite.

Apart from this, there's not much with this Special Edition Rogue, reluctant as we are to be too critical. At least in a vacuum where the Toyota Rav4 and Honda CRV don't exist, the Nissan Rogue Star Wars Edition is a pretty neat little trinket.

But we don't live in a vacuum, and the half-baked George Lucas director's cut of a crossover SUV clearly attempted to appeal like the original trilogy but wound up wreaking like the prequel and sequel trilogy put together. Even Revenge of the Sith couldn't save it.

Nissan Rogue\: Rouge One Edition
Photo: Nissan USA
Only 5,400 units of this branded Nissan SUV were ever produced, with all of them landing in North America. The Rogue platform is branded as the Nissan Qashqai in eastern markets. As such, it's pretty clear the Nissan Rogue: Rogue One Edition is spending the rest of its days in a Galactic Republic prison, right where Carlos Ghosn might end up if he's ever extradited back to Japan to face a jury for numerous accusations of financial crimes.

As for Nissan, they've obviously shed as much of a trace of Darth Carlos from their public image. Thankfully, they realized using CVT automatics in SUVs is a terrible idea for the following fifth-generation Pathfinder, debuting for the 2021 model year.

Check back soon for more from Limited Edition Month here on autoevolution, and may the Force be with you, always.
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