[ WATCH ] THE BEST SELLING IN THE US PART 6 NISSAN ALTIMA
Channel: Auto Today
Date: 2016-12-29

THE BEST SELLING IN THE US PART 6 NISSAN ALTIMA. No doubt about it—if you think the roads and parking lots are filling up with tall, view-blocking crossovers and SUVs, your eyes aren’t deceiving you. The four-door mid-size sedan, once the dominant form of family transport, has lost favor. Call it a sedan recession.

Nissan wants no part of that for its fifth-generation Altima—even if the sales surge of its own Murano, Pathfinder, and Rogue crossover SUVs is contributing to the sedan slide. The Altima is still the bestselling product in Nissan’s lineup, and so far this year, it’s just ahead of the Honda Accord for second-place sales honors in that segment (the Toyota Camry remains number one).

Energetic Flow

The fifth-gen Altima was all-new in 2013, so this update leaves the sedan’s bones largely untouched. The big change is the move to “Energetic Flow” styling, which consists of a more muscular front fascia, Nissan’s “V-motion” grille (which looks like a grille overhanging another grille), and boomerang-shaped headlights and taillights.

The likely theory being that if crossovers are selling like hotcakes, then adding some Murano visuals to the Altima should spur sales of the sedan. It doesn’t stop there: Energetic Flow design is now found on the newly excited surfaces of the smaller and soberer Sentra and on the more expressive and expansive Maxima.

In the cabin, the 2016 Altima’s refresh centers on expanding available technology, as well as hushing unwanted noise with added sound insulation and an acoustic laminated windshield. The Altima’s already pleasing interior gets a Murano-inspired center stack and console, but otherwise the materials, textures, and colors from the previous model continue. Particularly welcome are the Altima’s well-padded door armrests and form-fitting “zero gravity” front buckets—cloth-covered in our SV test car—that seem to comfortably accommodate a wide spectrum of posteriors.

Rear passengers don’t get the form fitting “Zero Gravity” seats, but ingress and egress into the Altima’s aft quarters is easy at least. Rear-seat headroom and legroom, while not as generous as that in the Volkswagen Passat, are mid-size-sedan appropriate. Six-footers can ride in back without asking the front-seat occupants to scoot their chairs forward. Fold-down rear seatbacks add cargo space for long items, expanding the 15-cubic-foot trunk, which otherwise is average for the segment.

All but the base Altima come with a 5.0-inch touchscreen for infotainment. The system has handy knobs for volume and tuning flanking the screen, plus a few virtual buttons on the display and hard buttons alongside. Even better is the 7.0-inch unit that was in our test car—it comes with the navigation package, which is a $580 option on the mid-level SV and range-topping SL. The larger screen gives easier access to all of the mobile apps available in the NissanConnect system. For those buyers who want the latest in connected tech, the lack of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay is a glaring omission, although Apple users can access their phone’s voice recognition through the vehicle, a function called Siri Eyes Free. Still, with a market bursting with 8.0-, 9.0-, and even 12.0-inch screens, the Altima’s seem small.

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