Nissan
List: Top Ten Longest Range Vehicles
With the departure of our BMW X5 xDrive35d, we began talking about vehicles that not only offered decent-to-good fuel economy, but also packed massive gas tanks to allow outrageous distances between fill ups. We set a minimum of 600 miles per tank, and got our numbers by multiplying the gas tank size by the EPA estimated highway mileage. Here are the results.
List: Top Ten Spring Break Cars
It’s about that time of year again; if you’re a member of the 21-or-close-enough set, you’re likely to be planning some kind of splashy road trip to the sun-drenched lands. Florida, Mexico, it doesn’t matter, you’ll still need some wheels that look decent and have at least some room for a few of your closest party people. Our top picks for Spring Break cars put an emphasis on image, with a bone thrown in for practicality, occasionally.
Secondhand Gems: $17K Front-Drive Heroes
Front-wheel drive gets a bad rap. Not every performance machine on the planet needs a buffet of horsepower and torque driving the rear wheels. And yeah, torque steer can sometimes be a handful, but then again, reining in a Corvette ZR1 on an aggressive launch isn’t exactly a simple case of point and shoot. Like it or not, plenty of really great cars tend to be overlooked just because they’re labeled as wrong-wheel drive, and folks, that’s just a shame.
First Look: Nissan Juke Is Geneva-, U.S.-Bound
Nissan announced that its new small crossover, the Nissan Juke, which will debut at the Geneva Motor Show next month, will, in fact, be headed for the United States this fall. It will also be at the New York Auto Show late next month.
Driven: 2010 Nissan Altima 3.5 SR
Earlier this year, we had the chance to get behind the wheel of part of Nissan’s refreshed 2010 lineup. We admitted that taking the 2.5-liter Altima Coupe for a spin didn’t exactly leave us impressed with the performance. Now, we have just gotten out of the 2010 Nissan Altima sedan, this one housing the 3.5-liter V-6, and we’d be lying if we said it didn’t make up for most of the shortcomings of the smaller-displacement, four-cylinder engine. And this time around, the Altima came to our turf—the wintry roads of Michigan.
Detroit 2010: GMC Granite Concept Is An Urban Cruiser Bred In The U.S.
Based on the Chevrolet Orlando platform, the Granite features rear-hinged rear doors with no B-pillar, making it extremely easy to load people and things inside of the useful little vehicle. The overall interior design is very open and airy, but is still very functional. This meshes well with the angular, edgy exterior lines, finished off nicely with LED lighting and twenty-inch wheels.
Nissan Gives The Axe To Slow-Selling Quest Minivan
Even though automakers like Toyota are looking to breathe some life into the minivan segment, there isn’t that strong of a business case for the once-loved people movers that stole Americans’ hearts over the past few decades. Because of this, Nissan will be stopping production on the much-overlooked Quest minivan.
Driven: 2010 Nissan Altima Coupe, Sentra, and Versa Hatchback
We drive the 2010 Altima Coupe, Sentra Sedan, and Versa Hatchback back-to-back-to-back to see what the refreshed line is made of.
First Look: 2011 Nissan GT-R
The Nissan GT-R isn’t an old car, and we don’t have many complaints about Godzilla’s mannerisms, but nonetheless, some small, yet crucial, tweaks have been made to the GT-R for the 2010 model year.
Driven: 2010 Nissan 370Z Roadster
Creating a really good convertible is tricky business, especially when the coupe or sedan it’s based on is such a strong, well-liked car. Simply lobbing the roof off causes a whole host of rigidity and stiffness problems—not to mention design dilemmas—and if these issues aren’t properly addressed, the new-found droptop might just be a big mess. The Infiniti G37, for example, is one of our favorite sport coupes, but in its cabriolet guise, the chassis proves to be a bit more flexible than we’d like. Don’t even get us started on worse offenders like the Chrysler Sebring and Toyota Solara.
First Look: 2010 Nissan Sentra
Nissan has released pricing and images (three of them) for the updated 2010 Sentra. The news here: the prices have been reduced, and the Sentra offers a navigation package for the first time, which has been priced at a mere $400. A rearview monitor has also been made available.
First Look: 2011 Nissan Leaf EV
Nissan unveiled its all-new electric vehicle called the Leaf yesterday, which is to be launched in Japan, Europe, and the U.S. in late 2010.
Driven: 2010 Kia Forte
While sitting around a candlelit table at Chandler’s Crabhouse in downtown Seattle, we talked with other journalists about our recent drive in Kia’s all-new Forte sedan—the replacement for the long-running Spectra. We discussed our generally lukewarm driving impressions, but still resolved that the Forte is a good competitor in the compact segment. One colleague said, “If I only write about the drive experience, it could come off as a bad review—but it isn’t actually a bad car at all.” So stay with us here, because while there may not be any juicy, exciting, sports-car-type bits about the Kia Forte, it’s still a perfectly adequate player in a segment that needs to appeal to the widest variety of shoppers. Think about the Nissan Sentra, Toyota Corolla, and Ford Focus sedans—these cars are tragically vanilla, but they still sell in droves. And so the Kia Forte comes to town, bringing with it a bigger pile of standard equipment, attractive design, and a very low price point. None of these cars are particularly exciting, and the Forte still manages to seal up the whole compact sedan package better than these aforementioned competitors.
First Look: Nissan 370Z Gets Nismo Performance
Not only did Nissan bring the new 370Z Roadster to this year’s New York Auto Show, they decided to turn up the heat and unveil a much-anticipated Nismo version of the hot new sports coupe. Nismo, Nissan’s in-house tuning division, did a pretty successful job with the last-generation 350Z, so we can only expect good things from the new Z, what with its upgraded powertrain and utterly primal driving dynamics.
Driven: 2010 Mazda3
When you think about driving along the mountain roads of southern California, your brain immediately fixates on images of Lotus Elises and Porsche Boxsters as potential quick-footed dance partners for a day of driving fun. But in reality, any car with nimble steering, a taught suspension, and a bit of pep in its step can give similar pleasures. Take our 2010 Mazda3, for example. We spent many hours throwing it through a seemingly endless series of back-and-forth, left-and-right turns, and walked away feeling quite satisfied. The previous generation 3 was seriously fun in these conditions. We’re happy to report that the new car is too.
Driven: 2009 Nissan 370Z
Downshifting from third into second for an especially tight right-hander, Nissan’s 370Z makes a soaring, rev-matching howl that radiates through the desert like thrown-stone ripples in a quiet pool. It’s the sort of bellicose and randy whine that alerts motor-minded schoolboys to prick up their ears, setting the would-be racer’s heart to flutter. The uninitiated might assume that the sonorous growl of a lone sports car in the desert may simply evaporate into the vast distance, but our tour of the stark, southern Nevada moonscape in the newest Z proved that to be untrue, with the hard scrabble surfaces acting more like an echo chamber for the roaring V-6 and a sonic lodestar for anyone within earshot.
Driven: 2009 Suzuki Equator RMZ-4
The auto purist inside nearly every enthusiast still pines for the now far-gone days when automakers, conceived of, built, and sold each of their creations – owning both the process and the results from cradle to grave. Of course the results of such one application engineering weren’t always laudable, and the process was (and is where and when it still happens) inherently more wasteful than the modern practice of building multiple vehicles on the same or similar running gear. And yet even today, platform sharing vehicles, especially those between two distinct parent companies, are often dismissed with a “badge engineered” label and cast as being somehow less good than the earlier product with which they share an architecture.
Driven: We Drive the 2009 Mazda6
Hard as it may be to fathom, we automotive journalists get things wrong every once in a while. Despite perpetually cheering for the 2003-2008 Mazda6’s ragtag charms and dynamic excellence in a crowd of somnambulant sedans, it never really sold. Nevermind that it was a wieldy package and fun to grab by the scruff on winding roads, it languished on showroom floors while far duller drives poured out of showrooms like so many bags of rice. Heck, we even heartily applauded the availability of a segment-best three separate body styles (sedan, wagon, and touring), as well as a genuine high-performance variant, the Mazdaspeed6. Still no dice. Great handling and a multiplicity of formats are evidently no substitute for outright size and power in the family sedan stakes. Not that we’re bitter or anything.
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