The CVT is gone and that changes everything — but this is a launch year with five recalls, rear brakes that wear out absurdly early, and a glass roof that breaks.

Two separate failures of the same assembly, and both are well represented. On the shattering side, owners report the panoramic glass breaking with no impact at all — one at 7 mph, one at 65 mph on the interstate, one describing it as sounding like a bomb going off. At least one owner has had it happen twice on the same vehicle, first in October 2022 and again later. On the water side, the roof's drainage is the problem: one owner had the dealer document water entering the vehicle at just over 6,000 miles, with the drains found to have been pinched by the headliner; others report clogged drains, recurring water intrusion, a gurgling noise from the passenger side after rain or a car wash, and mould growing inside the cabin as a result. There is no recall for either failure. Glass breakage is generally an insurance matter; the leak is a warranty-or-your-problem repair that can do expensive secondary damage. Check the headliner, the A-pillars and the carpet edges for staining or damp, and put your nose in the vents.

The one genuinely new powertrain complaint of the fifth generation, and the closest thing this car has to a transmission problem. Owners describe the vehicle dropping itself into Neutral without any driver input while under way — at speed on the highway, pulling away from a stop, and in one case shifting into Park while pulling out of a driveway. The consistent description is that the engine revs freely with no drive, and that recovering it means stopping and cycling the selector through Park. One owner reports being unable to select either Park or Drive when it happened mid-drive. There is no recall covering this, but there is a documented path: one owner paid $230 in diagnostic fees at a Nissan dealership and reports the dealer confirmed the fault was directly related to a service bulletin. If a car you are considering has any history of this, get the bulletin work confirmed in writing rather than accepting that it was 'checked.'

Four of the five recalls on this car were filed within a year of launch, and they cluster on things that were welded or bolted wrong. Recall 21V706 covers insufficient welds that can let the secondary hood latch retainer bracket detach from the front bumper assembly, which fails the federal hood-latch standard and could let the hood open if the primary latch is not engaged; Nissan's code is PC840. Recall 21V742 covers third-row headrests with an improper weld or misaligned internal parts that can let the headrest move or detach, failing the federal head-restraint standard — dealers replace all three third-row headrests, Nissan code PC844. Recall 21V743 covers second-row seat back frames with insufficient welds that could separate, Nissan codes PC845, PC846 and PC847. Recall 22V111 covers a second-row seat track that may be missing a mounting bolt outright, failing the federal seat-belt anchorage standard, Nissan codes PC867 and PC868. Every one is free and every one is a straightforward dealer visit. On a three-row family car these are exactly the recalls you want confirmed rather than assumed.

A narrow but genuinely odd recall worth understanding before you dismiss it. Recall 22V527 covers certain 2021–2022 Rogue and 2022 Frontier, Pathfinder and Titan rental vehicles in which setting the SiriusXM subscription to 'Not Subscribed' can cause the infotainment head unit to reboot, leaving the rearview camera inoperative — a failure to comply with Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 111 on rear visibility. The remedy is a software update applied either by a dealer or over the air, free; Nissan's codes are R22A5, PC901 and PC902. The important qualifier is that the population is rental fleet cars, so most privately sold 2022s are outside it. But ex-rental Pathfinders are common on used lots, so it is worth a VIN check rather than an assumption.

Beyond the five safety recalls, Nissan ran three Voluntary Service Campaigns on specific 2022 Pathfinders — free customer-satisfaction repairs rather than NHTSA safety recalls, which is why they do not appear in the recall database. Campaign P1A24 reprogrammed the engine control module's seatbelt software logic on 11,656 specific vehicles, relating to the Idle Stop Start system that shuts the engine off at a standstill. Campaign PC841 replaced a bolt in both rear door lower hinges on 4,965 specific vehicles. And campaign PC968 sent roughly 67,546 owners an owner's-manual supplement because, in Nissan's words, the manual's second-row seat instructions did not indicate that the one-touch seat release function may operate while driving the vehicle. That last one is filed as a documentation fix, but the underlying behaviour is real and worth knowing if you carry children in the second row. Ask a dealer to check all three against the VIN.

Worth stating plainly, because it is the strongest argument for this car. The fifth-generation Pathfinder drops the Jatco CVT — a continuously variable transmission, which drives through a belt between variable-width pulleys — in favour of a ZF nine-speed torque-converter automatic with conventional fixed gears, the same supplier used by several other manufacturers. Reviewers who inspected the car on a lift describe the result as having no strange vibration, no fake engine noise and no gear hunting, and call the nine-speed one of the better transmissions in the business. The 3.5-litre V6 carries over, now with direct injection, and it is worth knowing that this brings a clicking noise from the high-pressure fuel pump that is normal — on the previous generation a similar rattle would have meant timing chains. The car is a unibody built in Tennessee, rated to tow 6,000 pounds. The complaint file bears the change out: across 133 filings there is not one CVT judder complaint, because there is no CVT. The reviewers' own gripes are interior ones — screen backlight bleed, a wasteful gauge cluster, and automatic climate control that 'cannot maintain its controls,' cooking your legs while your upper body is cold.