While the minivan segment started with a wild mixture of ideas including rear-wheel-drive and body-on-frame construction, by the time the new millennium rolled around, pretty much everything had gone all normal. However, a few years later, a funny thing happened — halfway through the 2000s, the minivan market started to get a little bit weirder again. Honda had a van with an under-floor lazy Susan and tire technology used on the Bugatti Veyron, General Motors decided to invent the “crossover sport van” marketing term, and Mazda decided to go small, ditching the MPV in the North American market for the smaller, stick-shift Mazda 5. However, kicking it all off was the third-generation Nissan Quest, and it was the weirdest of all its contemporaries.
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It starts with a rather unusual body. While other minivans of the era kept things clean and conservative, the Nissan Quest went all dramatic. From flared fenders to fuselage-style flanks to an unusually curvy greenhouse, Nissan’s van looked like nothing else on the road. Love it or hate it, this was a distinctive look, and it was sorely needed considering how milquetoast the previous model looked. Mind you, this striking sheetmetal came with one downside — unlike pretty much every other minivan of its generation, the Quest’s sliding door windows didn’t open. Huh.
To go with the radical new styling, the old VG33DE 3.3-liter V6 was out, and it was replaced by a 3.5-liter VQ35DE V6 similar to the one in the 350Z sports coupe. Alright, so the Quest’s V6 was transverse instead of longitudinal and pumped out 240 horsepower instead of 287 horsepower, but it was still beefy in the face of the 200-horsepower 3.8-liter V6 found in well-specced Chrysler vans of the time. Paired with a traditional torque converter automatic transmission, it motivated the Quest from zero-to-60 mph in a respectable 8.2 seconds during Car And Driver instrumented testing. Alright, that wasn’t quite as quick as the Toyota Sienna or Honda Odyssey could manage, but you could hide either of those vans in the Quest’s literal shadow.
While the second-generation Sienna was big at 200 inches long, the Quest measured in at 4.1 inches longer than that. It was also an inch taller and ever so slightly wider than the second-generation Sienna, and while that translated to a challenging turning radius, it also made for proper interior room.
Oh, and what an unusual interior it was. For the first three model years, the Quest featured a gauge cluster perched atop the middle of the dashboard. Was this a cost-saving measure to support both left-hand-drive and right-hand-drive markets? Well, not really. The Quest was enormous, and primarily focused on the American market. Japan had its own roster of high-end minivans, so this was done purely to be different and make room for some extra storage solutions. Many cars have a glovebox in front of the front passenger seat, but the Quest also had one in front of the driver, sunk into the top of the dashboard.
Once you’re done taking in the fact that everything important on the dashboard was pretty much located atop a giant cylinder in the middle of the dashboard, it wouldn’t hurt to look up. Well-equipped Nissan Quest trims were available with what Nissan called the Skyview roof — three glass panels that gave every outboard passenger a little bit of a view up. The front panel was a traditional sunroof, but the rear two panels ran parallel to each other, oriented longitudinally down the roof. With two sunshades per rear roof panel, each outboard passenger was able to control exactly how much sun they were getting — a strange but genius idea.
Interestingly enough, the Quest was one of the few minivans to have two rows of fold-flat seats. However, instead of the flip-and-fold arrangement of the Chrysler vans’ second-row chairs, the Quest featured a jog in the floor that the second-row seats simply flopped down into. While this didn’t offer a seamless cargo deck with all seats stowed, it was an easier system to operate one-handed than what Chrysler offered, a great example of how sometimes ‘good enough’ is preferable to perfection.
It all added up to a distinctive enough package that, while not objectively groundbreaking, garnered some positive reviews upon launch. As Car And Driver summed it up:
This Quest may not set new standards for comfort or value or have Z-car driving dynamics, but we rate its styling best in class, inside and out. And for those who drop off their kids at school and then spend the morning prowling garage sales for big bulky items, the all-fold-down seating makes this the must-have minivan.
So, if the Quest was heralded as “the must-have minivan,” why don’t we see them everywhere? Why isn’t Nissan still making it? Well, when it launched, the third-generation Nissan Quest had a little quirk more commonly known as massive quality control issues. Ah. Recalls came hard and fast, including one for failing to comply with advanced airbag requirements, and Nissan tried to up its minivan quality control game. As per Wards Auto:
[Senior vice president of total customer satisfaction Doug Betts] says Nissan saw a 73% reduction in warranty claims for the Quest minivan from November 2004 to November 2005. Overall, warranty claims were down 83% for the Canton-built models in the same period.
While a 73 percent reduction in warranty claims over a one-year period is substantial, it speaks volumes to just how troublesome the third-generation Quest was at first. A launch this troubled tends to stick with a nameplate for a while, and indeed, sales quickly fell off. In 2004, Nissan sold 46,430 Quest minivans. By 2006, that fell to 31,905 units, and the carpocalypse in 2008 put the nail in the coffin. While Nissan tried again with a fourth-generation model in 2011, it had the scarlet mark of a CVT, and would be Nissan’s last minivan sold in America.
Due to their particular use case, minivans suffer a high attrition rate as the years go by, and the third-generation Quest was no different. However, a few examples are still out there, and they aren’t worth an absolute fortune. This 2004 Quest SE with the Skyview roof is up for sale in Washington state for $6,991. Sure, it may have 121,519 miles on the clock, but high-spec examples aren’t exactly thick on the ground anymore.
Now, if you’re looking for a more distinctive color and are wary of multi-panel moonroof leaks, here’s a 2004 Nissan Quest SL up for sale in New York for $5,950. Sure, it might appear to be missing a few headrests and have faded headlights, but it’s in a rather particular shade of brown and comes with the original window sticker, so that has to count for something, right?
The third-generation Nissan Quest had its challenges at first, but that doesn’t make it any less weird. While it might seem like Nissan made the Murano CrossCabriolet out of nowhere, models like the Quest show that the seed always existed. Sure, a Sienna or an Odyssey was a better van, but the 2004 to 2009 Quest was interesting, and that gives it a certain amount of heart. That alone ought to count for something.
(Photo credits: Nissan, Autotrader Sellers)
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