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NEW YORK — It is the automobile industry’s most inappropriately named vehicle — the Nissan Rogue.

It is a moniker bespeaking wayward nature — excess horsepower, egregious fuel consumption, reckless speed.

But the Rogue I drove here and in upstate New York was something different. It was a compact crossover utility wagon that fit neatly into tight parking spaces. It maneuvered easily through urban traffic, and it nimbly climbed the narrow, winding mountain roads of the Hudson Highlands 90 minutes and another world from here.

I was so impressed with the way the 2009 Rogue SL transitioned between town and country that I was determined to give it another name, because there’s nothing the least bit roguish about it.

I hereby suggest that this clever little urban runner, available with front-wheel or all-wheel-drive in either base “S” or upscale “SL” trim, be renamed the Nissan City. Failing that, something like the Nissan New York or Nissan Chicago would do.

Those proposed names speak more accurately to the beauty of the Rogue’s function and utility in urban canyons, as well as to its obvious limitations on the open highway. Let me get to its shortcomings first.

On the highway, the Rogue is far less rogue than it is altar boy — one that much prefers serving on the right side of the altar. Translation: Keep this mild-mannered wagon with the rascally name and the raspy 170-horsepower, four-cylinder engine out of the left lane. The highway’s real rogues — and there are many, especially in this region of impatient speed demons — will run it ragged over there.

The Rogue’s little engine serves nicely on city streets and country roads where it provides more than adequate acceleration and delivers decent fuel economy for a crossover-utility wagon — 21 miles per gallon in the city and nearly 27 mpg on the highway, running on recommended regular unleaded gasoline. But the word is out on the Rogue among veteran highway motorists. They know it’s a wimp with a continuously variable automatic transmission — a pulley system with no fixed gear ratios — struggling to transfer power to drive wheels at highway speeds. They give it no respect. They rev their engines. They tailgate. The Rogue scampers to the middle or right lane in pursuit of relative safety.

What kind of rogue is that?

Genetics helps to explain the conundrum. In another life, when automotive marketers and their bosses were not afraid of the term “station wagon,” the Rogue would have been, well, a little station wagon. In fact, it would have been a station wagon based on the compact Nissan Sentra sedan, with which it shares a platform and many components.

Put another way, the Rogue is a complete marketing exercise that in another life would have been a compact Nissan Sentra station wagon. That explains its urban confidence and utility and its slow, but steady comfort on mountain roads when equipped with all-wheel-drive, as was the case this week.

So, here’s urging Nissan to reconsider the Rogue’s name. It’s stupid. Worse, it’s misleading. The road’s real rogues know better. And they’re out there waiting to pounce on this pretender — this little wagon with the phony hot-rod name, this compact car masquerading as a sport-utility vehicle.

Please, Nissan, do the right thing for this one. Give it a name that speaks to its soul. Rename it the “City.”

ON WHEELS WITH WARREN BROWN Listen from noon to 1 p.m. Tuesdays on WMET World Radio (1160 AM) or http://www.wmet1160.com.