nissan maxima: '4dpavslc'

"perryair52" (perryair52) 10/16/2020 at 22:15 • Filed to: None

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nissan 4 d oor p seudo a merican v ersion of a s porty l ike c ar

in the next installment of rental car chronicles: the nissan maxima sl, topline trim! i was super lazy and woke up at 5:45am so that i could get on the road to be in memphis and then had to hustle back after work so no time for cool pictures. i took a screenshot of nissan’s build your own site.. hope thats kosher for here?

bear with me for a small tangent cause i’m gonna start this story with a memory of a trip i took many a moon ago. my now ex wife and i went to cabo san lucas one year. it was my first time there and as im walking around and seeing all of this opulence at the all inclusive hotels - then going to ‘town’ and looking at all of the places you could take a tequila shot upside down off a frog, buy a $30 trinket necklace or $40 seashell or badly screenprinted ‘cabo’ tee shirts, stuff your face with food that mysteriously looked little like any of the food that you’d see any local people eating and it all made me think quite a bit about what this place really was trying to be. it bugged me for the first few days and i really couldn’t put my finger on why it bothered me so much.

and then finally one morning i woke up and thought - this place is what the people that live here must think that americans think that like mexico looks like.

why is that relevant? because tangentially similar to my cabo experience, i think that that this car is what nissan’s engineers think that americans think that sportiness feels like in a car.

at first glance, all is great. you get in, it is somewhat low to the ground, looks sporty, the seating position is sporty - then getting up to full highway speed takes just a few seconds. it eats up the highway miles, soaks up the road imperfections fairly well, stays fairly planted at speed. but after a while behind the wheel, you start to pick apart at the seams a bit. even in sport mode, the steering was playstation-like with very little tangible connection between the effort that you put into turning a wheel and what that wheel then did to the direction of your car. and as you gained speed, it didnt gain any tightness or provide any extra awareness - you’re basically just swerving around hoping that your movements were small enough to not sideswipe your highway neighbors. what felt like 67% of the throttle existed within about 15% of the gas pedal, so modulating speed also felt a little weird. small jabs of the brakes to, for example, disable the radar speed control - resulted in a head bopping suspension travel, which i couldnt really figure out whether had more to do with overly touchy brakes or subpar control over lifting/diving from the suspension.

so it was easy togo fast and feel somewhat ’sporty’ i suppose but not actually in ways that actual sporty cars behave. what it did do well was to make the driver (me) feel fairly comfy in its super comfy seats in a sporty position that was able to go moderately fast. how it would fare around a track or twisty country road, i dont know and not sure i’d wanna find out. honestly though, i think what it does offer probably is all that most of us ‘murican’s really need in terms of having a sporty drive. as for me, i’ll gladly take something like my m240i for feeling sporty (or a 3 series if it had to be apples to apples as a 4 door car). (please no jokes about bmw’s somewhat lifeless steering, its vastly better than this maxima was)

other thoughts

the doors and ESPECIALLY the trunk opens and closes with a lightness that makes you wonder if there is any real metal inside them. there is no satisfying *thunk* when you close anything.

for being a rather large car (its within an inch in length of a 3 row 7 passenger gmc acadia) it feels rather cozy up front, and crazily enough, there is less rearseat leg room than in the altima, which is the next size class down as well as the sentra which is 2 size classes down.

not. one. rattle. in a rental car with 31 thousand miles. that’s impressive interior build quality.

cvt’s are.. not.. my favorite, but honestly in this application it seemed to do its job pretty seamlessly well.

pip bip - choose Corrour > perryair52 10/16/2020 at 23:02

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how many dead hookers w ould you fit in the trunk?

asking for a friend

:)

JawzX2, Boost Addict. 1.6t, 2.7tt, 4.2t > perryair52 10/16/2020 at 23:05

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“this is what Nissan thinks Americans think a sporty car is like” perfect. The Cabo san L ucas of sport sedans ... Haha! 

perryair52 > JawzX2, Boost Addict. 1.6t, 2.7tt, 4.2t 10/16/2020 at 23:12

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its got a nice ring to it. 

perryair52 > pip bip - choose Corrour 10/16/2020 at 23:13

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in all honesty the trunk was huge. easily could fit a human being in it, probably better for all parties that its a live one tho. 

ranwhenparked > perryair52 10/17/2020 at 00:18

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Interestingly, although the Maxima is positioned slightly above it, the Altima is actually bigger - just barely - 192.9 inches long, vs the Maxima’s 192.8. However, they are further apart in wheelbase at 111.3 inches for the Altima , vs. 109.3 for the Maxima, which may account for the more cramped feeling interior.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > perryair52 10/17/2020 at 00:48

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Great write-up. It’s true, Americans will eat up what other people have fabricated to feel like what Americans think something is like. Like Epcot or Cabo San Lucas. Americans like to have their biases affirmed. Yet I wouldn't buy one over an Altima. Why do both those cars exist again. They're the exact same!

SilentButNotReallyDeadly...killed by G/O Media > perryair52 10/17/2020 at 01:26

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I’m not sure that you can even buy a Maxima (or a Altima or even a Sentra) in any market outside the Americas. If this is the case then is it still pseudo American?

perryair52 > ranwhenparked 10/17/2020 at 08:35

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im curious if altima is in a more current lifecycle than maxima and a future (if it even makes sense to continue non-suv development) maxima gen would then overtake altima? 

perryair52 > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 10/17/2020 at 08:39

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i think styling wise the maxima wears its lines better than altima, which always  seems a touch out of proportion to me. strangely enough i think sentra sears the corporate design language best of the three of them. 

ranwhenparked > perryair52 10/17/2020 at 10:54

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I believe it's been that way for a few generations, at least, and that the difference used to be more pronounced. Nissan intentionally keeps the Maxima slightly smaller to play up the "4DSC" image, like how Jaguar used to make the XJ's front seat area all cramped and enclosed to make it feel more like a sports car for the driver.

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > perryair52 10/17/2020 at 11:20

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I think Nissan's larger sedan have that long low and sleek look moreso than the Sentra and the Altima just barely edges ahead for me. I don't think the Altima and Maxima should even be separate cars at this point. The new Versa is pretty good looking too

perryair52 > Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available 10/17/2020 at 11:33

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i bet the super declining sales numbers for maxima will make that wish come true, ha. 

Who is the Leader - 404 / Blog No Longer Available > perryair52 10/17/2020 at 11:42

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The Maxima was always a little too similar to the Altima but now they are less differentiated than they have ever been before. Surely as they were designing this car someone stopped to say, "what if we DIDN'T make it the same as the Altima?"