2016 NISSAN MAXIMA

// Teana siblings


  
Styled with the same dramatic, sweeping fashion as last year’s Sport Sedan Concept, the new Maxima is either banging hot or bound to age fast. There’s a lot going on, but design chief Shiro Nakamura at least should be toasted for unbuttoning the Maxima’s oxford shirt and exposing raw flesh. Like the new Murano, the Maxima’s visual stimulation never lets up: Boomerang-style lights, double U-shaped grilles, intersecting creases, swooping chrome, blacked-out pillars, bulges, and quarter-panel flares attack the eyes. While Nakamura’s team threw every conceivable trend at the new Maxima, it’s defiantly Nissan and definitely not cobbled from generic European car parts.


Some standout details: The floating, canopy-style greenhouse with its blacked-out C-pillar is said to have been inspired by the U.S. Navy Blue Angels. Designers also tilted the center stack seven degrees toward the driver, as they did for the GT-R, and aped Jaguar’s pulsating ignition button.


Nissan’s Drive Mode Selector offers a choice between normal and sport settings for steering effort, throttle sensitivity, transmission tuning, and the piped-in engine noise. The suspension is damper-struts up front and multilinks at the rear—an SR performance trim level stiffens the dampers and the front anti-roll bar. The available Active Ride Control doesn’t perform any active dampening but instead brakes individual wheels to settle the chassis over bumps and dips.



The new Maxima utilizes more high-strength steel, which helps provide 25-percent greater torsional rigidity. Nissan engineers were able to trim up to 82 pounds, despite this eighth-generation Maxima being a bit larger than its predecessor. The car is 2.2 inches longer (at 192.8 inches) and 1.3 inches lower, while the width (73.2 inches) and 109.3-inch wheelbase are identical to the outgoing car’s. Head-, shoulder-, and legroom are up by fractions of an inch for front passengers, although some measurements shrink a bit for folks in the back.




  
The revised 3.5-liter V-6 churns out 300 horsepower (up 10) and the same 261 lb-ft of torque, while the Xtronic CVT gains a wider ratio spread, more aggressive fake shifts, and an rpm-hold function when the car senses hard cornering. Pretty tame stuff, although fuel economy improves, Nissan says, from 19 mpg city and 26 mpg highway to 22/30 mpg.


Price starts from $ 33,235-38,495.