Nissan knew its Variable Compression engines were defective since at least 2021, continued selling those vehicles to unsuspecting buyers, and then issued recalls it knew were incomplete — all while its customers’ cars were catching fire on the road.

The Engine That Was Designed to Fail

At the center of this lawsuit is Nissan’s Variable Compression system engine. This technology was marketed as an engineering breakthrough: an engine that could dynamically shift its compression ratio to optimize fuel efficiency and power. Nissan became the world’s first automaker to put this engine into mass production. That milestone is now the foundation of a class action covering hundreds of thousands of people.

The defect lives inside the engine’s Variable Compression System. When it malfunctions, the system causes oil leaks, engine misfires, and total loss of power. Worse: the conditions created by the defect can cause the engine to catch fire. The lawsuit states that the defect affects the plaintiffs’ ability to receive full power from the engine and creates dangerous safety risks for drivers, passengers, and everyone else on the road.

The affected vehicles span model years 2019 through 2023 and include the Nissan Murano, the Nissan Altima, the Infiniti QX50, and the Infiniti QX55. All of them shipped with the VC-Turbo 2.0-liter engine or the 2.5-liter engine variants. This is not a handful of lemons. This is an industrial-scale failure built into the design itself.

How the Defect Actually Kills Your Engine

The Variable Compression System controls the stroke of pistons inside the engine. When the system malfunctions, it creates abnormal compression that forces oil into combustion chambers, causes oil leaks at the engine surface, and allows debris to form inside the engine that then circulates and causes damage to components. The plaintiffs’ complaint describes the defect as causing “excessive oil consumption, oil contamination from fuel, crankshaft failure, and connecting rod bearing failure.”

The lawsuit lays out the technical chain of events precisely: the defective system leads to abnormal lower link rotation, which causes metal debris to circulate with the oil, which then destroys the engine bearing surfaces. In some cases, this progresses to the point where the engine catches fire. In others, power is simply lost while the vehicle is in motion — creating a lethal situation on highways.

Nissan’s own recall documentation and NHTSA investigations confirm these failure modes. By the time the company was forced to acknowledge the problem publicly, drivers had already experienced it on roads across the United States.

The Non-Financial Ledger

Every number in a class action represents a person who trusted a company and got burned. In this case, that phrase is not a metaphor.

One plaintiff purchased a new certified pre-owned Nissan Rogue Sport in February 2021 from a Nissan dealership in New York. She drove it without incident until a fire started from the engine — the vehicle she relied on for daily life suddenly became a hazard she could not control. She brought the vehicle to the dealer and was told there were no known defects. That response was false. The lawsuit establishes that Nissan knew about the defect from at least as far back as 2021. She was looking her dealer in the face and hearing a lie, and she had no way to know it.

Another plaintiff purchased a Nissan Altima in June 2021 in New York. The Variable Compression engine in her vehicle began exhibiting the exact failure modes described in the defect: oil contamination, misfires, and total loss of power. She brought it in for service. The shop found debris in the engine and replaced components. The defect returned. What Nissan sold this woman was not a car with a problem that could be fixed. It was a vehicle designed so that the problem would return, because the root cause remained untouched by every repair Nissan offered.

A third plaintiff purchased a 2022 Nissan Altima in January 2022. By March 2022 — less than two months after purchase — the vehicle was back at the dealership with its engine warning light on. The dealer found debris in the engine oil, replaced the engine, and sent him home. Shortly after, the same warning light returned. He brought it back. The dealer found more debris, replaced more components. Then the warning light came back again. This plaintiff cycled through repairs on a car he had owned for weeks. Each time Nissan handed it back as if the problem were solved. Each time, it was not.

A fourth plaintiff in the case purchased a 2019 Nissan Murano in October 2019. He paid $1,281 (enough to cover a month’s groceries for a family of four for nearly half a year) in additional warranty costs on top of the vehicle price, expecting that Nissan’s extended warranty would stand behind the product. When the engine defect surfaced, he discovered that the warranty he paid for was structured to force him to take the car to an authorized dealership for every covered repair — a system designed to channel his money and his problems back into Nissan’s own network, where the company could control the narrative around every failure.

These are people who made one of the largest financial decisions most Americans ever make. They researched. They test drove. They signed papers and made monthly payments. Nissan’s marketing told them they were buying a technological pioneer — a world-first engine. What Nissan did not tell them is that the same technology the ads celebrated had never been made reliably safe at mass-production scale. The company collected the money, collected the praise, and left the risk sitting in the driveways of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people.

Dignity Stripped at the Dealership

The lawsuit documents a pattern that goes beyond the mechanical failure. Plaintiffs brought their damaged vehicles to Nissan dealerships and were met with denial, delay, and deflection. Nissan’s own service representatives told customers there were no known defects even when internal documents confirm the company had known about the problem for years. This is not negligence — it is the active deployment of trained customer service staff to prevent customers from understanding the legal rights they had already earned.

When repairs were offered, they were targeted at symptoms rather than the root cause. Nissan replaced bearings, oil pans, and connecting rods — the damaged output of the defect — without addressing the Variable Compression System itself. The result is that plaintiffs paid for vehicles, paid for extended warranties, paid for their time at dealerships, lost use of their vehicles during multi-day repairs, and still ended up driving the same defective product they started with. The cycle repeated until the engine finally failed catastrophically or until a driver found their way into a lawyer’s office.

What the Court Documents Actually Say

These are direct citations from the complaint filed July 8, 2025. Read them slowly.

The Recalls That Were Never Meant to Work

In response to NHTSA pressure and mounting complaints, Nissan issued a series of recalls. The complaint documents each one — and each one’s failure.

The first major recall covered 45,312 model year 2019–2021 Murano vehicles. The recall’s remedy was an inspection: dealers would check the engine oil for debris. If debris was found, the engine would be replaced. If no debris was found, the vehicle would be cleared and resold. The problem: the defect produces debris as a consequence of the underlying system failure. Clearing a vehicle because debris had not yet appeared does not fix the system that will generate the debris. Nissan sold those cleared vehicles back to consumers who believed they had been repaired.

Subsequent Recalls: The Same Failure, Repeated

A second recall covered 2019–2020 Murano and Altima vehicles with the 2.5-liter engine. Same inspection-based remedy. Same structural inadequacy. The recall instruction told dealers: if no debris is found, the vehicle gets an oil change and gets sent home. The defect that generates the debris remains.

A third recall in the same period expanded coverage to 2019–2023 Altima and Rogue vehicles with the 2.5-liter engine — a significant expansion that signals Nissan’s own engineers understood the problem was not contained to the original recall population. And yet the remedy remained the same: inspect for debris, replace the engine if debris is found, send the car home if it is not yet visibly degraded.

The complaint states plainly that by 2022, NHTSA had launched an investigation specifically because of the volume of consumer complaints the agency received. The regulatory pressure forced Nissan to act. But the actions Nissan chose were calibrated to address liability exposure, not engine failure. Every recall Nissan issued addressed the symptom — debris — rather than the mechanism that produces it: the defective Variable Compression System itself.

Who Actually Pays When Nissan Gets Away With It

What Nissan’s Silence Actually Cost

What You Can Do About It

The class action was filed July 8, 2025. The defendants named are Nissan North America, Inc. and Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. The plaintiffs are seeking injunctive relief, damages, and restitution for all class members. If you own or leased a Nissan Murano, Nissan Altima, Infiniti QX50, or Infiniti QX55 from model years 2019 through 2023, you may be a class member.

Regulatory Bodies That Should Hear From You

Corporate Roles to Watch

• President & CEO, Nissan North America, Inc.
• General Counsel, Nissan North America, Inc.
• VP, Consumer Affairs, Nissan North America
• Senior VP, Engineering & Quality, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.
• Board of Directors, Nissan Motor Co., Ltd.

File a complaint with NHTSA today at safercar.gov. Your complaint becomes part of the federal record and triggers the threshold for mandatory investigations. If you experienced engine failure, oil leaks, power loss, or fire in a qualifying Nissan or Infiniti vehicle, document everything: dates, repair orders, dealer names, and what you were told. That documentation is your evidence. Connect with local consumer rights organizations, lemon law clinics at law schools, and your state’s consumer protection office. These cases are won when ordinary people refuse to let a corporation tell them that what happened to them was normal.