Nissan has reinvented the Altima for the second time in its four generations.
The Nissan Altima has been completely redesigned for 2007. It offers more performance, comfort, safety, economy and better looks than last year’s model.
Now it looks more like the Maxima. It’s a couple of inches shorter on the outside, but it has more room inside, including a roomy trunk.
Folding rear seats allow the trunk to expand into the cabin for hauling big, long stuff.
The goal of the redesign was to bring the feel and power of a luxury car to this midsize sedan for everyone, and Nissan has succeeded, at least with the Altima model that has the V6 engine and all the options, including plush leather.
Four-cylinder engine models still exist, which offer good power and get 26 miles per gallon in the city and 34 on the highway.
Standard equipment on the 2.5 includes cloth seats, 16-inch steel wheels, 60/40 split-folding rear seats, power windows, power door locks, cruise control, halogen headlights, electric power steering, AM/FM/CD with four speakers, vehicle information display and smart key with push button start. Air conditioning does not come standard.
The 2.5S adds air conditioning, a six-speaker sound system, remote keyless entry, power sideview mirrors, and speed-sensitive intermittent windshield wipers, among other smaller things.
The 2.5SL uses the continuously variable transmission and adds a leather interior with heated front seats and a power driver’s seat, a sunroof, alloy wheels, dual-zone climate controls, and rear air conditioning vents, among other smaller things. .
In redesigning the Altima, Nissan engineers were assigned to create more room in the cabin and were given an inch less to work with, due to the shorter wheelbase. They achieved their goal by stretching the distance between the A-pillar and the C-pillar, thus shortening the hood and bed. There’s 1.7 inches less legroom up front, but 3.1 inches more in the rear, and that’s a lot; however, 0.8 inches of headroom has been lost in the rear. Trunk space has grown from 15.6 cubic feet to 17.9.
The seats are relatively large. They also have power lumbar support and stand up higher, something most cars do these days, as people need a better view of the road, with all SUVs blocking visibility.
The suspension has been redesigned on the new rigid chassis and it passed this difficult test with flying colors. It is quite firm; there’s no roll on switchbacks, so the steering stays tight. And it wasn’t harsh on the bumpy parts of the road. He took some good pothole hits, undeterred.
The speed-sensitive rack-and-pinion electric power steering works well and, because it uses less power than hydraulics, improves fuel economy by a touch. The Altima 3.5SL doesn’t look like a sports sedan, but the handling is quite nimble.
But the real engineering breakthrough could be in the CVT, or continuously variable transmission. This is the fourth generation of this transmission design, which doesn’t have the separate gears of a standard automatic transmission, and Nissan has excelled at this technology. The Sentra’s CVT, for example, has only two ranges. But the CVT in the Altima has a manual mode that, in effect, makes the transmission a six-speed.
We love it because it is true to us. He is totally sensitive and obedient. He did things that the manual mode in some expensive cars (Mercedes and BMW, to name two) apparently never dreamed of. She listened to the driver. We challenged it by going all the way up to sixth gear at no more than 30 miles per hour, then back down, and it did each gear instead of ignoring them, though it’s unlikely they would have done so under normal driving conditions.
