Nissan Altima Drivers

[formulanone]

Altima is the every-person's car. So bland and generic, they just give them away.

Cheap-person's version of the basic car.

And to think there was a time when even some basic cars have some charism like the old VW Beetle, Citroen 2CV, the original Fiat 500, Austin Mini,...

And I'd argue that their disappearance has allowed the subpar Altima to flourish.  The line is being discontinued despite somewhat strong sales.

As much as I prefer smaller cars for their nimble behavior, most of the above examples were also slow (2CV, 500) or ancient (O.G. Beetle, Austin Mini) and haven't been for sale over here in about 3-4 decades. With the exception of the Beetle, none of these were popular cars in the US, just something different. Even then, 1990s-Beetlemania died off before the scare of Y2K ended. Small cars or the A/B-segment has rarely brought the masses into showrooms for long. Nissan tried with the Cube and the Juke but neither were long-term success; styling might have been a little too funky and those were cautions to Nissan USA to keep things conservative in their offerings.

And let's face it, the pass given for CAFE Standards of lower-required fuel economy averages for "light trucks" should have been voided 15-20 years ago, once they represented 50% of the vehicles for sale, but special interests of all types had their say. So we're probably not going to see some popular European market Renault show up here any time sooon.

The first two generations of the Altima were actually surprisingly reliable vehicles but Nissan has been on a reliability slide for the last 15 years. Somehow a mid-sized sedan that filled a niche worked out for Nissan by slotting it between the Sentra and Maxima, the latter of which was seen as upmarket.

Materials have cheapened to stay competitive in the market. Which wouldn't be such a big deal if it were on the entry-level part of the sales spectrum, but it's spread across their line-up. The Maxima died off, which seemed a matter of time, but the same problems have crept into Infiniti, its luxury brand; an almost all-SUV brand (no sports sedan after this year) leaving just a few big shiny models to choose from. 

The latest Altima reeks of cost-cutting compared to the previous generation, which wasn't even half bad. They are positing the vehicles as lower-priced versions of the Accord/Camry and make it up on potentially lower credit scores with higher interest rates.

[GaryV]

Nissan (or Datsun)

This reminded me of a joke:

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2000-aug-23-hw-8785-story.html

[vdeane]

I'm really not picky. My criteria for a car is: does it get my ass (and occasionally a few items and maybe someone else's ass) from point A to point B (and occasionally point C) cheaply and reliably?

I don't own any donkeys, nor am I sure what cars are best at transporting them.