Is Nissan good?

[J Route Z]

Are Nissans good to drive? I heard they are noisy and break down, but yet there are many on the road.

[jeffandnicole]

Good luck finding a car that never breaks down.

My Nissan was quiet and had 221,000 miles on it when I got rid of it.

The only way you'll know for sure is by taking a test drive of the ones you want.

[Henry]

Are Nissans good to drive? I heard they are noisy and break down, but yet there are many on the road.

But not as much as the American makes, from what I've heard. And your best bet would be to buy a Honda or Toyota; don't be surprised if you find 25+year old ones that are still on the road today.

[bugo]

My dad owned cars of several different marques and in circa 1994 he bought his first Nissan, a Sentra sedan. He has since owned 4 more Nissans: a Maxima, two Altimas, and his current crossover: the Rogue. My uncle who also used to buy cars from assorted marques bought a Nissan and has only owned Nissans ever since. His kids even drive Nissans. That is enough of a testimony for me.

I would buy an older model with a 5 or 6 speed manual transmission. Avoid the CVT if possible, if you care about performance at all.

[bugo]

Are Nissans good to drive? I heard they are noisy and break down, but yet there are many on the road.

But not as much as the American makes, from what I've heard. And your best bet would be to buy a Honda or Toyota; don't be surprised if you find 25+year old ones that are still on the road today.

Old Toyotas were good cars, but they started decontenting them and quality took a nosedive, so your observation is flawed. Honda, however, still makes a great car.

Most American cars are just as good as their foreign competition today, and many are better. Cadillac V models typically win competitions in car magazines against German marques such as BMW and Mercedes Benz. Mustangs and Camaros and Challengers are all world class performance cars, not to mention the Dodge Viper and venerable Chevrolet Corvette. The new Buicks have gotten rave reviews, as a hybrid of a sporty car and a luxury car. Ford cars of all sorts are world beaters. The jury is still out on Fiat-dominated Chrysler but hopefully the quality will at least remain acceptable (Most Chryslers were less reliable than their competition.)

Luxury cars of the past were better than modern luxury cars. Before 1990, makes such as Mercedes and BMW built their cars to a quality point, not to a price point. Then along comes the bargain basement luxury car, the Lexus (and to a lesser extent Infiniti, which has never really caught on in the US) which were built to a price point. This forced the German makes to decontent their cars and today a new Mercedes is built cheaper than one built 25 years ago.

[corco]

In 2014 you really have to go out of your way to find a car that won't last multiple hundreds of thousands of miles if properly maintained, and maintenance is easier than ever. There isn't a make available in the USA today I would hesitate to buy from a reliability standpoint.

As far as noisy, take one for a test drive and judge for yourself.

Nissan is good. It's also only marginally better or worse than anything else.

[Alps]

The Nissans now are all CVT. Don't get a small one, the transmission just never settles down. The Sentra I rented did way better than the Versa.

[wriddle082]

My aunt had an '84 300ZX and then later an '89 Maxima that she enjoyed a lot, but traded both of them in due to what she described as the transmission not feeling right.  Since then she has had Hondas and Toyotas.

My mom had a '95 Sentra that was pretty good, but one issue with it that I clearly remember was the malfunction of the mechanism that requires you to press the brake pedal to shift out of Park.

Currently my youngest brother and oldest stepsister drive Rogues.  My brother's is a 2013 with a CVT, and I find it strange to drive.  I wouldn't buy one personally, and I think he'll get a Ford for his next vehicle once this one wears out.

I even had a '95 Altima about 10 years ago that I used as a commuter beater.  Had nothing but problems with it despite my diligence with maintenance.  I suppose the previous owner neglected the maintenance, but still.  Toyotas of that era seemed to be neglect-proof, so why not Nissans?  It shouldn't have started falling apart at around 130k in my opinion.

If I were to buy another Japanese make again, it would be Honda or Subaru hands down.

[on_wisconsin]

Just a word of caution: If you live in a non-urban region, parts and/ or labor will usually be more expensive when repairs do need to be made.

[DaBigE]

In 2014 you really have to go out of your way to find a car that won't last multiple hundreds of thousands of miles if properly maintained...

That is the key. As long as you do proper preventative maintenance, you should be able to drive just about any make and model into the ground. Every company has a few lemons; every company has a supplier issue from time to time.

...and maintenance is easier than ever.

I wouldn't go quite that far...at least not for some things. For instance, changing a headlamp bulb used to be a 5-10 minute job. Now, on several makes, you have to take half a dozen things out in order to access the back of the headlight with how they all the stuff they cram into an engine compartment these days.

[corco]

Just a word of caution: If you live in a non-urban region, parts and/ or labor will usually be more expensive when repairs do need to be made.

I've found the opposite on labor. Small town dealerships, at least in my experience, tend to have much fairer pricing and be more honest about repairs that need to be made than the chain dealers in cities that bill everybody like they bill the manufacturer on warranties (our book says x job takes y hours, so we charge z no matter what, even if we're also replacing another part nearby that will require the same disassembly).

My parents always take their Fords to the dealer in Weiser, Idaho instead of the ones in Boise because they are much cheaper. I do most of my work myself, but here in Montana I've found that the dealer in Anaconda is much fairer than the dealer in Helena when I do need dealer work on my Jeep. The smaller dealers charge for the actual amount of time it takes to do the job, I've noticed, and not what some chain dealer franchise book says it will take to do the job.

Even routine service- on my Jeep Liberty, the dealer in Helena charges $100 to flush each differential. The front differential is really easy to flush yourself- it's basically like changing oil with a drain plug and a fill plug. The rear differential requires actually dropping the pan, which makes it a lot messier and a lot more of a pain to do. Same price for each. The Jeep guy in Cascade, Idaho charges $40 for the front and $80 for the rear. $40 is still a little bit spendy, but it's a lot fairer than $100, which is just a "the differential sounds scary, I can't possibly do that myself" price.

[nexus73]

"Datsun...we are driven!"  That was the slogan before the Nissan name came along.  Over here the franchise was destroyed by crooked dealers while the Toyota franchise hung in there during tough times by treating people right.  Now the only foreign car franchises in our county are Toyota and Honda. 

Back in the day we had Volkswagen, Porsche, Audi, Fiat, Toyota, Datsun/Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Honda and Volvo.  Over here you had better "buy the dealer" since a bad one giving up the ghost will leave you orphaned with a 200+ mile round trip at an absolute minimum to reach another franchise.  Read the Yelps and see which dealer gets the best ratings, then go buy there.  That's my best advice for someone buying cars.

Good luck with whatever you get!

Rick

[Brian556]

I have a 2004 Toyota Camry with 103,000 miles on it. No problems except for cd player failure.

[Dr Frankenstein]

I own a Nissan. I haven't put that many miles on it yet, but I'm satisfied with it so far.

[bugo]

The Nissans now are all CVT. Don't get a small one, the transmission just never settles down. The Sentra I rented did way better than the Versa.

That Corolla you rented that one time was terrible. We did hit triple digits, however, giggling like little girls all the way.

[J N Winkler]

Are Nissans good to drive? I heard they are noisy and break down, but yet there are many on the road.

I think Consumer Reports, a selection of auto magazines, some background reading in Wikipedia, and a reconnoiter of the marque enthusiasts' forums are probably your best bet for an up-to-date, informed opinion that covers Nissan models in their current design generations.  I used to own a 1986 Nissan Maxima (VG30E engine peaking at 152 HP/4,400 RPM, four-speed automatic with fourth-gear lockup overdrive, U11 body) that entered my ownership at 10 years/56,000 miles and left it at 22 years/227,000 miles.  It was refined and handled well, and I loved it, but it is now five generations behind the current Maxima (1984-1988 was second generation; 2009 to present is seventh generation).

My Maxima was reliable for the most part and routine maintenance was generally fairly easy to do (oil changes in particular could be done on the road since access from below was not required; spark plugs, coolant, transmission fluid, fuel and air filters, throttle body cleaning, etc. were also fairly simple), with the glaring exception of the timing belt--a required replacement at 60,000 miles, with the water pump also requiring replacement every other timing belt change.  Belt jobs started at $250 when I got the car and had gone up to about $500 when I gave it away.  There were design issues as well, especially with the body.  Safe lifting points were hard to find, while rust tended to start in the rear wheel arches because the back of each arch had a three-layer weld that was hard to do properly at the factory and tended to come apart.

However, very little of this servicing information carries over to a car bought new today, because the technology has changed so much in the last 30 years.  Spark plugs were still copper with a 30,000-service interval back then, and are now platinum "lifetime" with a 100,000-mile interval; organic acid-based coolants now require changing every five years instead of every two; 1980's ATFs were generally petroleum-based ("conventional") with a 30,000-mile drain-and-fill interval, and Dexron II was state of the art, while nowadays Dexron VI full-synthetic "lifetime fill" is the norm; the 3,000-mile oil-change interval is almost a thing of the past; etc.  Access to the parts may have gotten more difficult in compensation, however--I've looked under the hood of a 2005 Toyota Camry (V-6 engine) and have no real idea how to even begin changing the spark plugs.

My aunt had an '84 300ZX and then later an '89 Maxima that she enjoyed a lot, but traded both of them in due to what she described as the transmission not feeling right.

Second-generation Maximas had problems with the automatic transmission that may have carried over into the same-vintage 300ZX (which I think had the same engine) and the next-generation Maxima.  These issues may have had something to do with Nissan not specifying a change interval for the transmission fluid, at least for the second-generation Maxima.  The transmission would shift fine for the first 90,000 miles or so, and then gradually the shifting would become so hard the transmission needed to be rebuilt.  It is almost impossible nowadays to find a second-generation Maxima advertised for sale, but back when such ads were common, it was almost as common to see "Transmission rebuilt at 200,000 miles."

I never had to rebuild the transmission in my Maxima.  There was no change interval in the owner's manual, nor was there a change procedure in the factory service manual (which I bought and still have), but the Haynes and Chilton books both have a drain and fill procedure which I used every 30,000 miles to keep the fluid looking fresh and red.  I also studied the factory procedure for adjusting the cable linkage between the throttle and transmission valve body.  Instead of following it to the letter, I customized the shift pattern so that shifts were smooth.  When I gave away the car, I had the feeling that the engine was starting to lose compression while the transmission was starting to slip, but neither of these problems was bad enough for a powertrain overhaul to be imminent.

Every design generation of a given model has issues--the trouble, when buying new, is that it is usually impossible to know in advance what these will be, and once they are discovered, it is usually by dealer technicians and the knowledge is slow to escape since it is commercially valuable to them.

[J N Winkler]

In 2014 you really have to go out of your way to find a car that won't last multiple hundreds of thousands of miles if properly maintained, and maintenance is easier than ever.

Ease of maintenance is a function of service engineering and the underlying technology.  The designated intervals are much longer now than they were just 20 years ago, and many maintenance procedures have disappeared because the parts that require them have simply become obsolete--for example, if you can remember what it was like to clean points, you are probably over 50.

On the other hand, to quote just one example, some casual Googling reveals that spark plug replacement has gone from being a straightforward 20-minute job (not including setup and takedown) in a (early 1990's) first-generation Saturn S-Series to a four-hour-plus job in a (early 2000's) fifth-generation Toyota Camry.  What modern technology offers, service engineering often takes off the table.

[bugo]

I have changed alternators in a Geo Metro and a Plymouth Neon. Both were at the back of the engine, near the firewall on the passenger side. The Suzuki 3 cylinder was easy to change but the DOHC 4 banger in the Mopar was a real pain in the ass to change.

Older ('80s and older) Ford mechanical fuel pumps are extremely simple to replace. It's a 15 minute job if you know what you're doing.

[SteveG1988]

Just get a Kia or Hyundai, they are well built,and you cannot beat the price or warranty.

[Pete from Boston]

Just get a Kia or Hyundai, they are well built,and you cannot beat the price or warranty.

I still can't get the Hyundais of 30 years ago out of my head when thinking about them, which is a shame because they make some very nice cars now.

[J N Winkler]

I have changed alternators in a Geo Metro and a Plymouth Neon. Both were at the back of the engine, near the firewall on the passenger side. The Suzuki 3 cylinder was easy to change but the DOHC 4 banger in the Mopar was a real pain in the ass to change.

My Saturn also has the generator between the engine and the firewall, so it is an easy from-above DIY replacement only for owners of the base model who don't have power steering.  Others, like me, have to go in from below and through the passenger-side front wheel arch.  The Saturn enthusiasts' forum has a new Saturn owner's checklist which recommends replacing the battery every four years whether it needs it or not, and part of the motivation for this is to help keep a bad battery from taking down the generator with it.  Generator life is very variable with some people reporting replacements at 30,000 miles while others say they are still running on the original generator at 200,000+ miles.

Diagnosing generator problems is also hard to do because of the bad access.  You can do a simple wellness check by checking voltages at the battery terminals before and after running the engine (should be above 12.5 V with engine not running and between 14.2 V and 14.7 V with engine running), but for absolute certainty you have to measure the current output instead of just the voltages, since a bad generator can still hold the correct voltages under low load even if it has a blown rectifier diode or worn-out brushes.  It is so much trouble to get access to the correct terminals for current output measurements on a Saturn alternator that it essentially has to be removed for bench testing, and once that is done, you may as well install a new generator and take the core refund.

I coddle the generator on my Saturn by trying to keep accessory loads light.  I don't use the cigarette lighter to charge my phone unless I have no convenient access to mains power, I take a minimum approach to using headlamps (on promptly at sunset, off promptly at sunrise, not on in bad weather unless visibility is genuinely degraded, on in safety corridors only if it is legally required and turned off as soon as I can), and I turn off electrical accessories before I shut off the engine.  I used to inflate tires from battery power but I don't do that anymore--instead, I now have an air compressor that runs off wall current.

Older ('80s and older) Ford mechanical fuel pumps are extremely simple to replace. It's a 15 minute job if you know what you're doing.

I never attempted it on my 1978 Chevrolet Impala, but I believe that in general cam-driven fuel pumps on older American cars are pretty easy to do.  Newer cars tend to have electric fuel pumps in the tank and while replacement is within reach for DIY mechanics, it is difficult since the tank has to be drained and dropped to get access to the pump housing at the top.  Standard advice nowadays is never to allow the tank to get more than two gallons from dry since the fuel pump depends on the gasoline itself for lubrication and cooling.

I have never owned a car that was newer than 10 years when it came into my hands and my approach has generally been to dodge difficult end-of-life replacements by overmaintaining and coddling the parts.  If I had had to replace everything on my Nissan or Saturn that has a nominal 100,000-mile service life, I would have been far deeper in the hole than I was with the added maintenance expense--as an example, my Maxima still had the original fuel pump at 227,000 miles.

In regard to repair operations in general, some things become less difficult while others become more difficult.  It is a lot easier to do an ATF and filter replacement (not just a drain and fill) since spin-on can filters are increasingly the norm for automatic transmissions, not just engines.  On the other hand, fuel filters designed for use with modern returnless systems are a lot more trouble to replace (including finding a good-quality part) than the older can filters with no internal moving parts.

Ignition system components have gone back and forth.  My Impala and Maxima had actual distributors; I think the Impala might have been one of the first cars without points, but its distributor still required disassembly for checking while I only had to take the Maxima's apart once, to check for carbon deposits on the optical crank angle sensor.  (It was clean and shiny.)  My Saturn has just coil packs with waste spark ignition.  The newer cars in the family have coil-over-plug technology, so things are now ten times harder than they used to be.

[The High Plains Traveler]

I'm pretty satisfied with our '12 Rogue, which we've had almost two years now and have put almost 20,000 miles on. We've driven a couple of cross-country trips with it, and it's comfortable for long hauls with reasonable if not great fuel mileage. It also handles nicely on mountain curves. The only complaint, referenced above, is the CVT. What I have found is that, if I want immediate foot-to-the-floor acceleration, I only need to push the overdrive button on the shift lever. Despite the lack of individual gear selection, though, it does have the ability to hold well on steep downgrades without excessive braking, using the OD button or, if the hill is extremely steep and winding, the "L" selection.

We recently rented a Jeep Patriot for a week-long drive around the Southeast coast, and I think Chrysler does the CVT much better. Not only is acceleration immediate, you also have the ability to select discrete gears in pseudo-shifting.

[SSOWorld]

I've had my Sonata for nearly 6 years now (bought new) and its over 103K for miles (having been to almost every corner of the country (New England, North Dakota, New Orleans, Los Angeles and points between several times).  I've had no issues with it through the years except for an unscheduled replacement of the rear brake rotors and pads due to a stuck caliper on them causing damage and a couple tire issues. Its technology is (obviously) outdated compared to today's vehicles, but that is not going to stop me from keeping it and running it into the ground.  Its equipped with the electronic shifter which comes in handy for downhill driving without wearing out the brakes. 

[lordsutch]

Had a 2009 Altima for nearly 6 years now with 96k miles on it; all I've had to do is replace tires, do oil changes, a front brake job, and deal with a couple of flaky TPMS sensors. So I'd definitely say it's been reliable. The CVT doesn't bother me at all, although you can throw it into manual shift mode if you really want some engine braking (useful if you want to lose some speed without the brake lights coming on).

Before that I had a used Infiniti I30 (essentially a Maxima) that I bought with 92k on it and until the transmission (non-CVT) gave out about 6 years later it was reliable too.

[oscar]

My 2006 Nissan Titan pickup truck has over 130,000 miles on it.  It's reliable enough that I confidently take it on remote unpaved roads like the Dalton and Dempster highways in the Arctic, where a breakdown can put you in really deep shape (hasn't happened yet).

It was a little noisier than the Toyota Tundra that was my second choice when I was shopping for a pickup.  I suspect that was to project a macho image for the truck, rather than something with all the brand's vehicles, though I've never driven any Nissan cars lately (not counting several Datsuns back in the 1970s).

No CVT -- I'm not sure they even exist for 4x4 pickups.