My 1996 Nissan Maxima
Detroit. The Motor City. Motown. Caropolis. (OK, I just made this last one up). It is 1995, and I am realizing one of my life-long dreams of living and working in the heart of the automotive universe. Greektown! Greenfield Village! The financial mismanagement! OK, I’m jumping ahead.
Here I was working at Ford Motor Company (albeit as a contractor and not an employee) driving a foreign car. Not just domestic competitors like GM or Chrysler, not even a captive import or foreign transplant like a Honda Accord, but a genuine VIN-starts-with-a-J made in Japan Acura Integra GS-R. So one of my first concerns when I started at Ford was where I would park.
Many assembly plants of the day were legendary for having remote parking lots for foreign cars located on the far reaches of the property. Luckily, the world headquarters building was a bit more enlightened, with all employees parking in the same lot (well, except for executives, who got to park in a heated underground garage).
At first, I was somewhat self-conscious parking my Acura in a sea of mostly late-model Fords, Lincolns, and Mercurys, but I quickly got over it. At least it made it easier to find at the end of the day.
It was around this time that some of the shortcomings of the Integra began to manifest themselves. For starters, visiting my friends and family in central Ohio now meant a three-hour drive (each way). The short gearing on the GS-R which made for swift acceleration also made 4,000 droning rpm at 80 mph. This, coupled with the relative lack of sound insulation made it a really lousy freeway cruiser.
Furthermore, I was frequently driving coworkers and friends to lunches and evening outings, and having to move the seat to let people in and out of the back seat was starting to become a hassle. To my logical mind, a 2-door coupe didn’t offer any inherent advantages over a 4-door sedan, and considerable disadvantages. Lastly, I was done with buzzy 4-bangers, so I wanted a smooth-running V6, although I still wanted a stick shift.
By virtue of being a Ford contractor, I could qualify for X-Plan pricing on any car Ford made. I went to a Ford dealership, but they didn’t have anything that interested me. The Taurus was still in its oval phase, and the interior was cheap and plasticky. Moreover, it was no longer available with a 5-speed, which was a deal-breaker. I gave more serious thought to the Contour, which did offer a V6 with a manual transmission, but it was too cramped, and also suffered from a cheap plasticky interior.
Neither Honda nor Toyota offered a manual transmission with their V6 sedans, so it was down to the Nissan Maxima by process of elimination. Plus, I always had a soft spot for Maximas. The third-generation iteration was (and remains) an iconic design. I lobbied (unsuccessfully) for my dad to get one in the late ’80s. The fourth-generation version was a little less chiseled and a little more chubby looking than the third-generation model, but it was still an attractive car, especially in the chrome-free SE guise. The SE also had the way cool black-on-white gauges (that turned to white-on-black at night).
Despite being the center of the American auto manufacturing universe, there were a fair number of Honda, Nissan, and Toyota dealerships in the Detroit area, more than I would have guessed anyway (which would have been none). So in the summer of 1996, I stopped in at Dearborn Nissan (which was doing surprisingly brisk business) and took delivery of my 1996 Maxima SE, black on black leather.
So black even the white bits are black.
Following my now usual pattern, this car had pretty much all the options, including a few I had not experienced before, such as the Bose sound system and automatic climate control. The latter was practically a revelation to me: Being able to set and forget a desired temperature rendered instantly the obsolete manual climate control systems of my previous cars, which seemed fussy in comparison with their constant need for temperature and fan adjustments. But the absolute best feature was the cornering lights. I absolutely loved the bright side lighting when turning at night. Are there any cars that still have these?
The Nissan VG30E 3.0 liter V6 was indeed one of the best engines you could buy at the time. It was smooth as the clichéd sewing machine, and the 160HP/182 lb-ft, while wimpy by today’s standards, was adequate for the day and comparable to competitive offerings. And of course, I never got tired of looking at the black on white gauges, pictured below.
1996 Nissan Maxima Dashboard – Still love those gauges!
However, all was not perfection (it never is, it seems). Had I never experienced the best manual transmission in the industry in the Acura, the 5-speed in the Maxima would have been fine. Unfortunately I did, and the transmission on the Maxima seemed truck-like in comparison with its relatively long chunky throws. The strut front suspension was on a whole lower level of sophistication than the double-wishbone suspension on my Acura. I just kind of plodded over bumps and potholes that I felt I had much more control over in the Acura.
But perhaps worse of all, the “single piece of metal” solidity that the Acura exuded was nowhere to be found in the Maxima. The body was solid enough, but the steering column always felt like it was shimmying out of sync with the rest of the car.
1996 Nissan Maxima
Overall, however, the good outweighed the bad, and I was largely pleased with the Maxima during its time with me. The same cannot be said for my stay at Ford Motor Company. As I alluded to in my previous COAL, the project I was working on was basically a cash furnace. Even a company as large as Ford has a pain threshold, and apparently in the case of our project that threshold was around 15 million dollars.
Fortunately, I was now an experienced IT consultant with some high-demand skills, so I had my choice of contracting gigs to choose from. I ended up taking a short-term contract in Troy, MI at Ryder Automotive Carrier Division, a lesser-known division of Ryder back when they still had the consumer truck rental business. At Ryder I was doing mostly FoxPro and C programming, and a smattering of Level 3 support. It was basically a placeholder job, allowing me to set aside some money while I figured out what to do next.
So what was next? Stay tuned for next week.
I see cornering lights on more and more cars these days. My works Sprinter has them, but I’ve never found them useful.
Weirdly, like the idea of a place where everyone is driving the “local” product. I’ll always remember waiting to cross a road in Wolfsburg and being blown away by the almost complete lack of non VW products passing by.
The employees know how the cars are built, so they avoid them……..
In my experience familiarity breeds contempt. A friend of mine works at the Brampton Chrysler plant, where they make Challengers, Chargers and 300’s.
He spends all day ducking in and out of the interiors of these. The last thing he wants to do was to look at the interior of one when commuting to work, so he did not buy one.
I worked at Avis at a time when most of the UK fleet were Vauxhalls, and funnily enough they were the most popular car amongst the staff – even those who spent all day cleaning them.
Many newer BMWs, Audis and Subarus utilize the fog lamp on one side to illuminate turns to that side. For a long time, I noticed an awful lot of late model newet cars with malfunctioning fog lights before I read what was up.
My first car was a “Rosewood” 1998 Maxima GXE with only one option – the package that added power driver seat and illuminated vanity mirrors. Excellent car. Since, the A32 generation has developed a rep for very poor rustproofing, but at the time (2004) rust was only and issue on the outer covering of the muffler. I don’t know how I didn’t score speeding tickets in that car. It was too fast. And looked appropriately dowdy with wheelcovers and purplish paint. What a sleeper…
Was almost trouble free from 132,000-150,000 miles while I owned it. I needed to replace a few lightbulbs, a power antenna, and lubricate a stuck evap vent valve, placed helpfully in the spray pattern of the left rear wheel. Was able to get it working and reinstalled, return the new one I had purchased, and never had a problem again. I added a stock dealer installed CD player and keyless entry remote, purchased on eBay.
I still remember the license plate, and how it smelled inside.
I had the cornering lights on my 96 Altima GLE but by the time I bought a new 99 Maxima GLE, Nissan had eliminated them from all lines. They were great, a feature I miss.
My 99 felt pretty solid until I bought a new Infiniti G37 in 2010 and realized how much better the G was – of course a very different car, RWD, 500 pounds heavier, 328 vs. 190 HP, 7-speed vs. 4-speed automatic. The fourth gen Maxima was a pretty terrific car: very light (mine was 3,090 lbs), good power to weight ratio. and that smooth VQ engine with good low end torque made it pretty quick. The auto temp in mine was about the best I’ve had in four Nissan products – you really could set it once and forget it. Weak points were the coil packs, oxygen sensors, and that multi-link rear suspension.
A friend had a 95 Nissan Maxima with the 5-speed and he loved it.
My ’98 Altima didn’t have cornering lights – but curiously, Nissan added them for the mildly facelifted ’00 through ’01 version.
The original headlights in my ’98 Altima eventually got so badly hazed, I could no longer drive at night. So I found some recent replacement headlights in a salvage-yard, out of an ’00 model and ‘upgraded’ mine. Since my ’98 didn’t have the circuit for the cornering lights, I moved the parking/turn signals there (where they had been on the ’98) and installed amber bulbs, as the cornering lights have clear lenses.
There’s a big lighting improvement now when I’m signaling and they still pass the annual safety inspection.
Happy Motoring, Mark
Nissan eliminated cornering lights from the Maxima in the 1997 update, when they switched from glass to composite headlamp lenses. The 2004 Maxima gained them yet again, to lose them in the 2007 update.
I believe the 1996 Maxima and Infiniti G20 were some of the last passenger cars with non-sealed beam glass headlights. After 15 years and 200,000 miles, the glass units in my 95 G20 still looked brand new. I see modern composites yellowing at 1-2 years old now.
Agree on the cornering lights. My 2016 Accord has it, very useful safety feature at night
Black on white gauges, I had them too in my 1995 Ford Escort 1.8 GT. Cool, but after a few years the white background turned a bit gray-ish / dirty. Of course the nineties was Ford’s Peak El Cheapo Era, I’m sure they stayed very white and clean in your Maxima.
The Nissan Maxima was also available here, Nissan’s top model in the E-segment, right above the D-segment Primera. As such it was a direct competitor of cars like the Toyota Camry, Ford Scorpio, Peugeot 605, Mitsubishi Sigma, Renault Safrane, etc.etc.etc. (a lot of choice back then !)
This is the last Nissan Maxima we got, the 2000-2003 Maxima QX. Available with a 140 hp 2.0 V6 and 200 hp 3.0 V6.
IIRC that was the last one we got. In Australia our product line kinda took a detour. After the one Johannes showed, our big Nissan was called Maxima, but was really a Japanese Teana. According to Wikipedia, the latest Teana is a rebadged US Altima. Full circle, almost!
You almost never see any. Makes me wonder why they bothered.
My 1997 Maxima base 5-speed had 190hp I think and didn’t feel substantially different from my mother’s 1995 GXE auto or my brother’s 1995 SE 5-speed. Where did you find the 160hp number?
Matt, you are correct. Gen 4 (95-99) Maximas have a VQ30DE engine that made 190 HP out of the box in the US market. The bread and butter of the Gen 3 (89-94) Maximas were the VG30E at 160HP, a normally aspirated, SOHC version of the same VG engine family used in the 300ZX Turbo, SUVs, etc. The VG engines are cast iron while the VQ series are all aluminum.
Gen 3 Maximas were also available with 190HP from the short-lived VE-series engine, which was a great performer but suffered valvetrain reliability problems. Probably a big money loser for Nissan in those days.
Oh god, FoxPro! I had a job 20 years ago for a midlevel ERP software company where the software was written in Visual FoxPro. I was in charge of test automation. What an infernal platform VFP is for that, as the controls aren’t objects and are just painted on the screen. You had to address them by pixel position.
Hi,
you got some great writing going on there. I started reading to find out more about a car, but it is really the spirit of a time that you manage to capture. Keep it up!
Very sharp looking Maxima! This generation was quite popular in the Boston suburbs during the late-1990s/early-2000s. It wasn’t as sporty looking as its predecessor, but I always felt it was a classy design nonetheless.
My high school pre-calc teacher drove a platinum-colored (not and SE) Maxima of this generation, though she replaced it with a newer sixth generation Maxima when I was in her class my junior year.
As for cornering lights, modern BMWs’ fog lights actually act as them. When taking a turn or even putting the directional signal on at night, the inboard fog light of the upcoming turn kicks on. It actually does help in illuminating the pathway. For the longest time though, I always thought every BMW had a fog light out.
This post really resonates for me.. I had an Integra (a 97) from this era, after a string of four earlier models, and it was the car that drove me away from Acura. Mine wasn’t the GSR but suffered from some of the same faults. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to strip all the sound insulation out of them? Didn’t anybody drive one on a freeway in the U.S. when they were picking out the gear ratios? The decontenting was really bad in 97, and even the FM radio had been cheapened -it would lose its signal at one stop light… where its older sister never did. At the same time, as you point out, the fundamental design was clearly superior. It handled wonderfully, and the transmission was invisible; you just thought your shifts -or didn’t even realize you were making them- and they just happened.
Still the little annoyances built up -upholstery wear at 10K miles? And so I dumped it.
The Maximas of the day had what I called ‘the GM of Japan” feel to them. They had great engines, and were good and solid but just lacked some of the essential sophistication of Toyota and Honda; a little more designed to a price than engineered to an ideal. Still I had a friend who had to be pried out of her Maxima when the rust-monster finally got it….
Finally, on the job front. I was a voyeur on several such expensive and botched IT projects in our HR division. The pattern was that some ‘up and comer’ junior HR executive (read ‘Yes Man’) would be given head of an IT project as an opportunity. The measure of success was quick implementation and proposed cost rather than usefulness of design. So we’d wade in with the cheapest bidder (ignoring input from our IT guys) and start out on a crash course to ‘get-er-done’. Somewhere around eight months in things would begin to flounder, partly because of insistence on design modifications in mid-stream. At eighteen months or so, a cobbled together system (read out of money and patience) would be foisted off on the field under the familiar system of “Declare victory and move on”. The program head would be promoted, and two years later the program would be quietly scrapped as ‘not fitting our current needs’. Repeat as necessary.
Sigh
That model maxima was a masterpiece of its time. Nicer than a Camry IMO with fantastic road manners. Looked fantastic too. But I’ve always viewed Nissan a notch below toyota/Honda in reliability. Maybe their association
with Renault?
…”Maybe their association with Renault?”…
It’s about time you change your mindset and think WAY beyond the Alliance, Encore and LeCar of yore. Move on.
Nissan and Renault are still to this day associated.
I’m not talking about the Renault-Nissan alliance.
…”Maybe their association with Renault?”…
No, that’s backwards. Nissan was in huge trouble long before Renault came along. Mismanagement and poor economic conditions had inflated Nissans’ debt to a staggering $21 billion in 1998.
As we know its a vicious cycle. High debt loads means cost cutting on design and manufacture which leads to lost sales which increases financial losses.
Renault got involved with Nissan in 1999, when the damage was done and the firm was desperate for a lifeline.
Correct Mike. Nissan almost went belly-up before Renault came along. Since then Renault is the leading party.
ya that could be. hence my opinion that nissan quality is not up to honda/toyota quality.
ja sure, you betcha !
+1
I Ride a lot of times in a 2016 Kangoo and rides rather nicely and the 1.5 dCi is a nice and smooth engine with nearly all of its bugs ironed out. A great van.
I think I will just leave this here.
I had a ’95 Maxima (manual), and a ’96 (automatic), the latter of which I ended up keeping for nine years. One huge difference I noticed between the two was the final drive ratio: The manual was quicker off the line, but the automatic ran at noticeably lower RPMs at 70mph on the freeway. In comparison, the manual seemed to positive drone.
The ’96 was amazingly durable, but there was obvious cost cutting, especially in the interior. No power window switch on the passenger door. A hole appeared in the thin vinyl of the parking brake boot within the first year (fixed under warranty). The hinges on the center console were flimsy. The paint on the front seemed to chip from air passing over it on the highway. And as was repeated in my partner’s ’06 Murano, the welds attaching the power drivers seat motor to the seat frame broke.
Still, the ’96 Maxima was one of my all-time favorite cars, and among the least expensive to own.
These were very nice cars. I still see plenty of them plying the roads, testament to their sheer durability.
Interesting factoid, but these and the next Maxima, which were sold from 99-03, were the last mid-size sedans without IRS.
Tom,
Are this the cornering lights you are talking about? Current VAG cars still have them (Pic from Google Image Search, 2014 SEAT Ibiza)
Pretty much. Read up here: http://jalopnik.com/a-tribute-to-the-most-un-appreciated-light-the-corneri-1625241633
My Golf SportWagen has them. But I have the optional HIDs; I don’t know if the standard halogen pods have them. They are actual dedicated cornering lamps within the headlamp pods, too; not just fog lamps acting as cornering lamps.
I was surprised to see my pal’s Jeep Renegade have them, or at least a feature that acted like them. Then I was jealous that my 300 doesn’t have them because I always thought them a sort of Broughamesque feature.
My 2015 Golf SportWagen (which is equipped with the bi-xenon / LED premium lights) has cornering lamps. If I’m at or below a certain speed and I either hit the turn signal or start to turn the wheel, the respective cornering lamp lights up, which is just an extra bulb on the lighting pod that’s aimed at a 45-degree angle to the front of the car.
Also, I had a 2011 X5 which would use the fog lamps as cornering lamps. To my knowledge, you could not turn that feature off without reprogramming the car.
I had a 97 Maxima SE bought it new, one of my favorite cars. I too had an Acura Integra, a 92, and I traded it for the Maxima. My seats were horrible and one day I woke & said I couldn’t take it anymore. My Max was automatic, the only fault I had with the car was the air conditioner, it never got cold enough. I complained about it from day one but they claimed they couldn’t find anything wrong until 3 years of ownership they told me my compressor was bad and Nissan would not pay for it. We also had a new 96 Honda Accord but I hated it comparison to the Max, its real slow and the Max actually got better gas mileage & was wayyy more comfy than the Accord. I traded the Max for an 01 TL but we still have the 96 Accord and I still don’t like it.
Wow, stunning example of a mint condition Maxima. Beautiful color, always loved the black on white guages. This use to be a Nissan high level trim trademark.
The Maxima is truly a working class gentlemen’s ride for sure. Even at top GXE trim it does not compete with the high end competitors like M-Benz E-Class, BMW 5-Series, Audi A6 etc. However, it’s prestigious/sport like dynamics make the Maxima have enough “it” factors in the car. To be a clear notch above say a mundane Ford Taurus, Chevrolet Lumina, Toyota Camry etc.
The Maxima IMO occupied a important, but under the radar class that was between say a Ford Taurus & a BMW 5-Series. Affordable, yet expensive when loaded to the “T”, the Maxima was expensive when new-but still about $12-$20K cheaper than high end E-Class/BMW 5’ers. I think the direct competitor to the Maxima was always the Mazda 929 (especially the 1992-1993 Mazda), Lexus ES-300 (1992 model), Toyota Avalon etc. Meaning you needed a good enough income to afford a (then $30K) car when loaded. Yet one could get lesser trim level models of the Maxima for around the mid $20’s, base models hitting for around an affordable $20K flat.
GXE was the lowest level trim for the fourth gen Maxima, not the top. The highest level was GLE and the SE was the sport trim level.
I have a copy of the 1999 Product Guide for the Nissan Maxima created by Nissan for sales staff. As indicated from a page of that guide below, of the cars you name, only the Avalon was a market competitor of the fourth generation Maxima under discussion here. In 1992 a direct competitor was the Camry V6 – the Lexus ES was considerably more expensive.
I don’t get the knocking of the beam rear in these cars. I had a ’91 GXE with the IRS and had to swerve to avoid an oncoming car. Almost spun the car because the tail swung out. Had a similar incident in my ’97 GXE with the multi-link beam and it stayed confidently planted…It was a revelation in terms of stability.
I do love the cornering lights. I currently have an ’87 GXE wagon and the cornering lights in this car take the concept a step further: they stay lit 2-3 seconds after the signal stalk cancels. Nearly all designs I’ve encountered, the light turns off immediately when the signal cancels. Those couple extra seconds of having light where you might need it, especially at an intersection, are much welcomed.
As far as generational differences go, the ’89-’94s had superior interior quality and better, more supportive seats. The ’95-’99s, while having the VQ, lost a lot of character, gained a ton of refinement and as noted, had cheaper interiors. There were content and option differences even between the ’95-’96s and ’97-99s and this was likely in part to create more separation between the Maxi and Infiniti I30.
Overall, I still like this generation of Maxima and I’m starting to keep and eye out for a clean one.
I sold Nissans from 1995 – 1997 and can honestly say these Maximas were great cars. You could see some cost cutting in them, especially in the interior and the quality/levels of materials, but people loved them and they sold like hotcakes. I had only one customer ever complain that they were having an issue with their Maxima, and it was an SE with a bad clutch that never seemed to feel and/or shift right. Nissan actually helped them out and gave them another car which turned out to be fine. Other than that isolated incident, I never had another customer come back because there was an issue with their car in the two years that I sold them.
Were they without flaws? Being a Honda guy, I was never a fan of the suspension. Compared to Honda’s double wishbone, the Nissan felt a little cheap in comparison. The steering had a loose feel to it, and the ride quality wasn’t all that great. If you never owned or drove a Honda then you wouldn’t know any better, but back then to me it was very noticeable. Yet they were a quieter car than the Honda. I guess all the manufacturers do have their highs and lows.
Tom, cool recollections! I agree with everything you say about the Maxima, except for the comparison with the Honda. When I leased my 1997 Maxima, I made sure to test drive an Accord as well. It may have been a 1996 Accord, or a 1997, I can’t remember. What I do remember about the Accord was that not only was it not nearly as powerful as the Maxima (130hp sticks in my mind), which I expected, it also had terrible brakes. I was a Honda lover who was quite disappointed in that generation of Accord.
Thanks Matt! If you were looking at the Maxima back then, I think a V-6 Accord would have been a better car to compare to the Maxima and the 4-cylinder Accord to the Altima.
When this generation Maxima first came out, I fell in love. I test drove over a dozen of them on weekends when I had nothing better to do. It was such an amazing car. It held the roads. That 5-speed manual. I loved all of it. However, to this day I’ve never actually owned one. Maybe I should change that.
You state that your car had the VG30DE engine. That’s incorrect. The VG was the older generation engine. This generation Maxima was the debut of the VQ-series engines, at least here in the US (not aware of elsewhere). The VQ30DE was the same engine across all trims of the Maxima in the US, the GLE, SE, and GXE. It made 190 HP in it’s first iteration. Also to note, the Infiniti I30 could be had with a 5-speed manual and limited slip diff in the Touring edition for the first few years.
The gauges were a trip as well. Those black-on-white in the daytime to white-on-black at night (with the lights on) were referred to as “reverse-to-electroilluminescent” gauges in all the sales literature (if my memory is correct). I loved that little feature.
Now off to craigslist…..
Your car is quite close to a former co-worker’s car, which I saw just about every day at my previous job (until mid 2016). I think his was a ’98, but it was definitely a black over black leather Maxima of this same generation. While I personally prefer both the generation before (iconic) and the generation after, these seem to have held up well given the number I still see on the road, and they did seem to have a “premium non-luxury midsize” cachet that even a loaded V6 Accord or Camry didn’t quite possess.