News & Reviews- Make: Nissan

With the plethora of large luxury sedans from mainstream volume brands you'd think they were popular, but the majority merely boost their respective automaker's rep than reap profits. Really though, after reviewing some of the numbers from last year's sales chart I'm starting to wonder if they're even doing much to enhance brand image.

The list of mainstream volume branded full-size luxury sedan winners and losers vary considerably from Canada to the U.S., with our friends to the south enjoying a large car renaissance with the big Chevrolet Impala topping the list with 116,825 sales during 2015, the Dodge Charger coming second with 94,725, Toyota Avalon third with 60,063, Chrysler 300 fourth with 53,109, Ford Taurus fifth with 48,816, Buick LaCrosse sixth with 42,035 and the Nissan Maxima I'm reviewing here placing seventh with 40,359 sales. To its credit the totally redesigned Maxima beat out the Hyundai Genesis at 31,374 deliveries, although that one is priced a bit higher Read Full Story

Automakers don't make cars like the Maxima to make money, or at least not much. Such exercises are more about building brand image, and to that end Nissan's all-new flagship sport-luxury sedan is a serious head-turner that will cause many to sit up and take notice of a Japanese brand that's going through a styling metamorphosis as of late.

We started seeing the new Nissan when the current second-generation Rogue appeared in 2013, but even that couldn't have prepared us for the third-generation Murano that rewrote CUV styling the following year, the eighth-gen Maxima layering this wonderfully unusual new high-tech look onto the sleek shape of a four-door coupe.

Nissan might have issue with me using the four-door coupe terminology to describe its latest 4DSC, but as it is I have issue with that cute alphanumeric abbreviation for four-door sports car. The Maxima certainly looks sporty enough, but it's a bit of a literal stretch to consider something that's front-wheel Read Full Story

Nissan has a thing about offering the least expensive car in Canada. Right now it's the Micra, a sub-$10k hatchback that not only looks good but also is brilliant fun to drive with its base manual gearbox. Before that, however, Canada's cheapest new car buy was the Versa sedan, a good, reliable and roomy subcompact that could have been the poster car for the word dull. Nissan has come a long way with its small car style since then, the new Versa Note an altogether more appealing car.

The Versa Note effectively replaced the Versa Hatchback that was discontinued after the 2012 model year, although it didn't arrive until later in 2013 as a 2014 model, the aforementioned Versa four-door having soldiering on to fill the gap. Despite being on the road for two years and now moving into its third model year the Note is still one of the better looking subcompact hatchbacks in Canada's marketplace, my SL tester just a little bit nicer than average.

It gets an attractive grey-painted Read Full Story

Nissan does a lot of things very well, but in the compact arena most competitors completely outplay the Japanese brand. First off, its Sentra only comes in one single four-door sedan body style within a segment dominated by hatchbacks, at least here in Canada. Some of its rivals also offer two-door coupes and even two-and-a-half-door whatchamacallits, so Nissan is seriously limiting its sales opportunities. Its competitors also draw big attention from flashy sport-tuned models, the Sentra being one of the more sedate cars in its class.

This is rather odd considering that Nissan has a heritage rich in performance cars, the Sentra SE-R still sought after by sport compact collectors, especially in top-tier Spec V trim. For reasons only global-boss Carlos Ghosn and company can explain, there's no SE-R in today's Sentra lineup, let alone many sport-oriented models within Nissan's entire small car segment, other than the commendable Micra (when outfitted with its base manual gearbox), Read Full Story

I don't know about you, but Nissan's new styling direction really speaks my language. Every time I see a new Maxima or Murano pass by, my neck takes a spin and eyes lock on until it disappears in the distance. The Japanese brand is certainly onto something.

So you can imagine how thrilled I was to pick up my first Murano in near top-line SL AWD trim earlier this year. I was impressed in almost every respect, but I must say its over-the-top mother of pearl style interior accents challenged my sensibilities to the extreme. I gave Nissan points for bravery, the unique pearled treatment covering almost the entire instrument panel and taking up much of the door panels front to back, not to mention the top cap of the gearshift knob, most of the lower console surfacing, the slit between the two middle armrests as well as the back half of the centre console, but despite once owning a sweet looking golden sunburst Gibson ES 355 copy with a similar effect on its pick guard, fret and head Read Full Story