CAR GAZING
Maxima has all-new feel
Nissan's flagship sedan returns to sporty roots
By Derek Price
Carmakers often brag that their latest products are "all new."
And when they do, they're lying.
In reality, "all new" simply means "looks new" or "new ... for the most part" because it would be incredibly stupid to build a new car from scratch. It's just too expensive, and there's no sense tossing all the good parts into the garbage.
If the car commercials were honest, they'd say, "This car has a new body, but lots of bits and pieces under the skin are exactly the same as last year's model. We just call it 'all new' because we can't keep passing off the same old stuff forever."
But that wouldn't sell many cars, would it?
Even worse, many of these "all new" cars end up feeling a lot like the old ones. They've got a fresh face but the same saggy suspension and wheezing engine they always did.
Every so often, though, a new car comes along that feels completely, totally, utterly different from the old one.
That's the case with the 2009 Nissan Maxima.
While I'm sure it shares some parts with the old Maxima, you can't tell that from the way it looks and drives. There's just no comparison.
The previous Maxima was a dreadful car, basically a bloated Altima. And people who like driving bloated Altimas would probably be happier in a Toyota Avalon or one of the countless big, squishy American cars. That Maxima had no purpose, no direction.
The all-new Maxima – and I say that deliberately – returns to its roots as a four-door sports car, which is what it was back in the early '90s. It feels like a Japanese BMW.
OK, four-door sports car may be excessive, but it's not far off. It's one of the best handling front-wheel-drive cars on the road, with a perfectly balanced chassis and steering that makes you want to scream in delight.
In other words, Nissan made all the right changes. As a snarling, aggressive wolf of a car, the Maxima suddenly has a purpose again.
One of the best decisions was making the new Maxima slightly smaller than the old one, which goes against the prevailing wisdom that new cars must be chubbier than their predecessors. It's about four inches shorter than the old Maxima – which Avalon buyers wouldn't understand – but it's also slightly wider to improve the handling. And the shorter length translates into less weight, which means the sporty suspension has to do less work and the car can accelerate faster.
And it's plenty fast.
With the redesign, Nissan didn't just bump up the horsepower by 5 or 10 ponies. The new Maxima jumped from 255 all the way to 290 horsepower with a re-tuned version of Nissan's wonderful 3.5-liter V6.
You can hear all that power when you press the throttle. It growls like it wants to kill all the cars around it – such a beautiful rumble.
The scary engine is mated to a rather odd transmission choice, but it works well. The Maxima has a continuously variable transmission (CVT), which I had a hard time adjusting to in a performance car, although it did its job superbly.
That transmission is a big reason the new Maxima does something absolutely amazing. Even with all that extra power, it gets 1 mpg better than the old Maxima. Incredible.
Finally, the Maxima has a fantastic new body. The back end has defined haunches that make it look muscular and hunkered down, while the front takes styling cues from the hot Nissan GT-R. It has a bulging hood, distinctive headlamps and an arched roofline that looks more like a coupe than a sedan.
While the Maxima does a lot of things right, it's not perfect. For one thing, you can't get it with a manual transmission, which is a shame in such a performance-oriented car.
For another, while the Maxima feels more like a BMW than ever before, it's also starting to get priced like one. It starts around $29,000, and my test car wrang up over $35,000.
(Derek Price is a newspaper editor and freelance writer living in Texas.)
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