arentz07

+1, it's certainly a good car for the money. The back seat was about as big as the one in my (former) Camry.

GS3Tek

iTrader: (8)

Regarding nissan getting saved from BK, was it the introduction of the first gen Altima (pre-Stanza) that saved Nissan?

mmarshall

Not quite sure what you mean? The Altima, in 1993, was after the Stanza, not before it.

I was a big fan of the non-sporting versions of the 1Gen Altima....in fact, strongly considered buying one. They had very nice interior trim, rode comfortably and quietly, and shifted like butter...in an era when many automatics tended to downshift (and sometimes upshift) with a noticeable bump. Later on, though, cost-cutting cheapened the car.

JDR76

The interiors vary from model to model, and within models, from trim level to trim level.

I am 100% impressed with my sister's Murano's interior. It's wonderful.

I've been driving a rental Nissan Rogue for 2 weeks and I hate it. Good lord it's terrible. Everything is hard plastic.

Fizzboy7

That is true. Toyota has some funky styling going on. However, they also have the excellent reliability card to keep sales numbers rolling. Loyalty due to that is legendary. Not so much with Nissan. Nissan has kind of been like a cheap date.

dseag2

Totally agree. We leased an '06 Maxima as a third car because we were putting so many miles on our primary cars. The interior was terrible. Hard plastic painted like aluminum and cheap orange lighting in the gauges. The paint quality was no better, but the lease was cheap.

I also owned an '06 Infiniti M45 Sport at the time. There were a lot of cost-cutting measures that were evident in the interior, but it sure was a pleasure to drive. That's when Infiniti was chasing BMW.

But yes, Ghosn was clearly responsible for those cheap interior materials.

mmarshall

Both Nissan and Infiniti, at that time, used that strange orange-yellow color for the panel lights. No other manufacturer that I can think of or remember ever used it, though some, like BMW , Pontiac, Mazda (which are generally considered sport-oriented brands) used a red-orange color that was (and is) popular in racing vehicles and aircraft.

I agree he gets the blame for it. But, under the circumstances, something had to be done. Nissan was rapidly going down the tubes, and, like it or not, costs HAD to be cut somewhere. My own personal opinion is that, Instead of cheapening out the interiors, which owners had to sit inside of and stare at every day, better methods of cost-control could have been implemented that did not impact the public image of their vehicles quite so much on a day-to-day basis. For one, the XTerra could have been dropped altogether, long before it actually was, with Nissan saving the costs of producing it. From what I could tell, it served little function except to serve as a Japanese-designed off-road Jeep...at a time when fewer and fewer SUV owners were actually going off-road at all. And, on-road, it was a stiff, uncomfortable vehicle that jarred one over bumps. IMO, Nissan could have dropped it long ago, and few people would have cared. But, of course, Ghosn chose not to do it that way....he hit the interiors instead. Still, though, in doing so (like it or not), it helped save the corporation....and he will be remembered in automotive history for that.

dseag2

Again, he was the one who green-lighted that atrocity, the Murano Cross Cabriolet (that nobody asked for or bought), because his wife thought it was a good idea. Yes, I know he already had a chassis to work from, but that was another example of spending money needlessly when other models should have been the focus. Not one of his better decisions.

​​​​​​http://blog.caranddriver.com/2011-ni...-drive-review/

GS3Tek

iTrader: (8)

Ooops, yes you're correct MMarshall.
I meant to say post-Stanza. The designs back then was so boxy (I should know, I had an 87 maxima.) and felt that nissan's offerings were pretty stale.

So the introduction of the new design-theme probably helped saved nissan then?

mmarshall

No problem......I sometimes make typos, too.

Yes, some of those earlier Stanza sedans were classic three-box designs (a large box for the cabin, and two smaller ones for the hood and trunk)

The 1Gen Altimas, IMO, were very impressive, and I was a big fan of their design and road manners (and I almost bought one). Other Nissan products of that era were generally well-designed and built, too.....and, of course, the Infiniti Division started off in 1990 with a whole new level of customer service that, at that time, was undreamed of at Nissan. But that apparently caused the company to bite off more than it could chew....and Infiniti sales trailed those of Lexus, so the corporation did not profit as much. When Renault took over, that alone, IMO, set the stage for at least some quality-loss in Nissan products, as Renault has never been known for reliability in its vehicles. But the real factor was the massive cost-cutting that CEO Ghosn ordered around 2000...that was when Nissan started to get Mickey-Mouse interiors that were like toy vehicles in some ways. Mechanical quality stayed high (in the Japanese tradition) for several years, but, then, it, too, started to drop. In the late 2000s, some improvement in the interiors slowly started to come back (a little earlier than that for the Altima), but reliability suffered in relation to that of other Japanese makes. Yes, I'd say that the cost-cutting eventually saved Nissan and Infiniti...but at the cost (for a time) of some unpleasant and (later) unreliable vehicles.

Aron9000

I actually liked the 1st gen Altima, buddy in high school had one for a first car. We called it "the golden egg". Yeah the rounded styling is rather passe now days, but compared to how ugly and boxy Nissans(and almost all cars) from the 1980's were, it was a revelation. Interior was really well screwed together as well, had really nice velour upholstrey, drove very tight, felt light on its feet, looked great, interior looked brand new and that car had over 150k miles on it.

The Altima from the 2000's was bigger, lots more room, and fast with the V6, but man it felt like a piece of junk compared to the 90's car, laughable how bad the interior was on those cars. Of course back in the 1990's if you wanted the big car, you bought the Maxima(once again a way better car than the 2000's Maxima), the Altima was more of a really nice compact car back then.

dseag2

Yes, I had a '93 Infiniti J30, and that style trickled down to the Altima. It looked like a mini-J30. Looked nice.

mmarshall

Compared to the rest of the car, I thought the rear end of the J30 looked like an egg LOL.

Aron9000

Interesting fact, the J30 was styled after a toilet. Imagine if you took a plaster mold of a toilet bowl, flipped it over, there you go, Infiniti J30(and 1st gen Altima). I kid you not about this . .

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...s_cojones.html

mmarshall

Well, it may have styled after a toilet, but it sure didn't drive like one. I thought it drove better than the Lexus ES of that vintage, but that, of course, was to change with the later, superb 4Gen ES.