"bwp240" (bwp240)
12/21/2018 at 12:28 • Filed to: Oppo Reviews, test drives
2
6|
"bwp240" (bwp240)
12/21/2018 at 12:28 • Filed to: Oppo Reviews, test drives | 2
| 6 |
It has been quite a while since I have written one of these things. Since buying a newer car, it is much more difficult for me to pull off the “I am looking for a new car in the next 6-12 months” thing that let me test drive cars previously . I probably should replace “test drove” with rented.
Full Disclosure: Nissan wanted me to test drive their Sentra so badly that they sold it to Avis to allow anyone over the age of 25 to drive. Budget liked Avis so much that they bought the company. They were so anxious to get me in the car that they struck a deal with Priceline to have the car at a reasonable rate on their website.
Also I forgot to take pictures of the car outside of the scratches and dents already on it; so here are so pictures I stole from a dealer.
The Nissan Sentra has long been the representive of the compact sedan for the company. Then Nissan built the Versa which is basically the same car, but smaller and worse. The Sentra is the most purchased new vehicle by people with credit issues that need something larger than a Toyota iA .
Here are some basic stats about the Sentra...
Engine: Naturally aspirated 4 banger with untold amount of horsepower - I am going to guess at most 87.
Transmission: A c
ordless drill with about 18% battery life left
Environment: Northern California, no not that part, the boring rural part south of that
Why do all the signs in California look so weird? They use a different font.
As always my review structure is very subjective, your personal experience may vary. Every area is scored on a scale from 0 to 4 as follows:
0 - I hate it
1 - I don’t particularly care for this
2 - Eh
3 - I like this
4 - I very much like this
There are 52 points possible in the 13 categories.
Exterior - 2
The Nissan Sentra is a decent looking car. Although it is pretty much the epitome of generic compact sedan, the Sentra does not look hideous.
Interior - 1
Everything in the interior just seemed to fall short . It is perfectly adequate, but they could have done better. Some buttons were in weird places. Accessing steering wheel controls was not ergonomic. Hard plastic was the name of the game. The seats were not that comfortable but good enough for a basic car. Overall quality was to be desired. I feel that the engineers and designers could have put some more effort into it.
Acceleration - 0
The naturally aspirated 4 banger coupled with the CVT fake shifting transmission gave me low expectations. Those were still too high... Some may remember from my !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! review how woeful the acceleration was. This one was just as bad. Put the pedal to the floor in sport mode and it was anemic. Trying to accelerate in front of a semi that you could easily do in an Altima was a wheel clinging experience. It took at least 1/4 of a mile to get from 35 to 70 mph.
Braking - 2
Generic car has generic brakes. It is pretty hard to score less than a 2 in this category. To truly score less than 2, a car must cause me to freak out repeatedly when braking or actually hit something.
Ride - 2
The ride of the car wasn’t bad. Cars like the Camry and Corolla ride better. You definitely can feel the 10 inch wheels and 2 inch wide tires the car has.
Handling - 2
The car handles decently. It is not an invigorating driving experience, but it handles well enough that anyone can drive it easily. You certainly won’t get any enjoyment out of sharp corners, but average city driving and the occasional evasive maneuver will not be an issue.
Gearbox - 0
The cordless drill that is the CVT transmission is awful. The fact that it pumps in fake shifting sounds and feel is awful. You bought a CVT it is 1 gear, there is nothing wrong, just get use to it and don’t try to break it with things it is not meant to do. One quirk about this transmission is that you can deselect overdrive. Why is that an option ? To kick the CVT into it’s final gear? CVT gearing is supposedly ideal so that it is always in the optimal ratio. Wouldn’t it do that anyways? What benef it does turning of O/D in a CVT have ?
Audio/Toys - 2
The car has a radio and sound system. It is the type of sound system that you compare to your friends Jetta and conclude that their’ s is better.
Sound (Engine) - 2
Like the transmission and acceleration, the sound of the engine is pretty pathetic. It sounds like it is trying very hard to get to normal in town speeds. That being said, I do love when you punch the throttle and the engine makes lots of noise attempting to reach 60 mph. This averages the score to a 2.
Dash/Infotainment - 1
The dash tells you everything you don’t want to know in the most inefficient way possible. The digital screen is pretty useless and doesn’t give you any information that you actually need. The LCD radio stack is pretty useless in a car that did not have navigation. I don’t know why the large screen is necessary. You can’t really use it for anything.
Visibility - 3
With the era of high belt lines, backup cameras, blind spot monitoring, and Camaro caves, the one thing the Sentra has going for it is that you can actually see out of it. I like being able to see out of the car. I find it useful so that I can avoid hitting things like trash cans, people, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.
Utility Value - 2
Budget/Avis classified the Sentra as a compact. Maybe I am misinformed, but to me the Mirage, iA, Sonic, and other similar sized 4 door sedans are compacts. The Sentra feels larger. I probably would not want to be in the back seat of one for a long period of time, but unlike the other cars mentioned , I can actually fit in back seat . Trunk space was very good for the car’s small size with plenty of room for baggage. It was a pleasant surprise.
Value - 1
A new Nissan Sentra is about $20k. I feel that is far too expensive. For around that price point you can get a low end Camry, Malibu, or Buick Encore. Those cars are larger, have better features, and offer more practicality.
Total: 20/52 - 38%
In the first few minutes of driving the Sentra I couldn’t imagine why anyone would buy one. It is cheaply made, slow, and not exciting to drive. That being said, and several more hours and miles later, I warmed up to it. It is not a bad car. Sure it has the same rating as the box truck I drove, you can’t thrash around tight canyon roads (like a box truck), and you question if it can do basic driving tasks (sort of like a fully loaded box truck ), but it fulfills the role of basic transportation (definitely unlike a box truck) . I think the Sentra needs to be cheaper to be more appealing. If they can target the Sentra in the $14k to $18k range , it would be much more reasonable . At its current price point, there are better new car offerings on the market, and most certainly better cars on the used market (even CPO) . The Sentra is a perfectly adequate car. It fulfills the needs that most people have; however, it is marred by the build quality of a Mitsubishi Mirage at Toyota Co rolla prices.
arl
> bwp240
12/21/2018 at 15:12 |
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It’s like Nissan has just thrown in the towel. Build rental spec cars and reap whatever profits come in. Don’t design anything good looking, engaging to drive, or God-forbid..interesting (source: my wife has a Rogue and it’s as horrible as the Sentra you’ve reviewed here).
Fyoeu
> bwp240
12/21/2018 at 19:22 |
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I see a lot of high school/ college students driving these Sentras. I’m sure it’s because of how cheap you can get these things. I’ve also heard that the CVT in the Sentra doesn’tdoesn't hold up very well, so that sucks...
thunder1979
> bwp240
12/22/2018 at 06:56 |
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So, I’m a bit jaded perhaps, but I’ve owned a ‘15 Sentra SV and traded it in on a’ 17 Sentra Nismo. A bit of background, my 2 cars preceeding these 2 were a ‘90 Mazda MX-6 GT Turbo, then a ‘98 Maxima. Both manual transmissions. While I had the MX-6 and the Maxima, my wife and I bought her an ‘ 03 Sentra SE-R Spec-V. Then an Infiniti I35 when that was totaled by a driver that needed to be im the shopping center more than avoiding an accident. Anyway, I’ve owned more Nissans as well, just gona stop there though.
A couple thoughts as it looks from the pictures that you rented a Sentra SR. They have 17" 205-width tires which is quite a bit larger than 10" diameter and 2" wide. Pretty respectably sized in my opinion for a car with 130 horsepower. Putting larger wheels and tires would only serve to sap more of that power. You also mention it didn’t accelerate like the Altima, which has nearly 190 horsepower in the base 2.5 liter 4-cylinder engine. So I’m not really even sure why comparing the Sentra to the Altima would even be an apt comparison. You might as well be comparing the Corolla (which would be more in line with the Sentra in the 1st place) to the Camry.
The headunit has such a large screen because a backup camera is standard on that model. If the screen was smaller, I have no doubt you’d be complaining about that as well. I will say it does provide a bit more information if you have a satellite radio subscription though.
You gave the interior and features an awful score, which is perfectly your right, but you never mention the car has heated front seats, dual zone automatic climate control, automatic headlights that are also smart enough to turn on when the wipers make more than a couple passes to keep you in compliance of many states that require lights to be on when wipers are going. You deride the back seat,by saying you wouldn’t want to spend time there, but then say it seems spacious enough? One of the reasons I went from a 4th gen Maxima to a Sentra was because the Sentra had grown so big I no longer felt the need to buy a vehicle as outwardly large as a Maxima. In the Sentra, I can easily sit in the back seat behind my optimal seating front seat seating position which I did when I made my daughter drive when we took her to college. I’m 5'8" btw, with decently long legs and I don’t get knee-capped in the Sentra and my size 13 feet fit under the front seats. This is because the Sentra is actually considered mid-size per the EPA based on interior volume. And as you mentioned, the trunk at over 15 cu. ft. is actually huge compared to other cars in its class such as the Corolla or Elantra. The thing that makes the Sentra’s trunk unique is that it’s load floor is a lot lower than others in its class. It swallows luggage better than a “compact” car has any right to.
I drove my ‘15 Sentra SV from Missouri to Texas and back and averaged 37 mpg ober the trip. Do I like the cvt? No, but it doea what it needs to do. It’s fine. You may ask why I went from the SV to the Nismo? Honestly, I was happy enough with the car generally speaking, but yes, I needed more power, and a manual transmission. Both remedied with the Nismo trim. Which I flew to Alabama to buy and averaged 35 mpg driving back to Texas.
You also mention the $20K asking price, but the Sentra’s base msrp is $16,990 before incentives. Sentra’s don’t go for msrp like Toyotas.
Anyway, I know there was obviously some tongue-in-cheek humor in your review and to be honest I enjoyed your take. This is just my counterpoint. Obviously I’ve been steeped in Nissan for a long time so I have a somewhat biased perspective perhaps . When I learned to drive, I learned on my dad’s manual B13 Sentra. The one from the same generation as the original SE-R. My mom had a 4th gen Maxima SE and later on, though I was going to omit it, I had 2 3rd gen Maximas, 5-speed manuals with the VE(the good engine). Mind mentionin g your daily driver so we can get an idea of your experience, expectations, and what you may be comparing the Sentra to?
Anyway, this response is all in good sport. Hopefully it garners no offense.
Cheers!
Chariotoflove
> bwp240
12/22/2018 at 13:08 |
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I can’t believe I’m typing this, but I kinda like that steering wheel.
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thunder1979
> Chariotoflove
12/23/2018 at 15:33 |
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It's actually the same as the Z's wheel minus the "Z" emblem in the middle. It's perfectly functional.
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Chariotoflove
> thunder1979
12/23/2018 at 20:52 |
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So that basically makes it a sports car.