It seems that
the Nissan Maxima gets way too little love among auto-reviewing colleagues, but
I’ve liked it for years. For me, it has
the right mix of style, performance, comfort and convenience.
It’s the sedan
you don’t hear coming. But it has enough
juice to blow past you in an eye-wink.
Changes for
the 2016 model year are numerous, and only bolstered my good feelings about the
Maxima.
My tester was
the lofty 2016 Nissan Maxima Platinum edition, which translates to about
$40,000 on the bottom line. Happily,
this buys a bunch of goodies.
Sporty styling
tweaks on the exterior give the 2016 Maxima a look that’s darn near weekend
racer. Sweetly sculpted from grille to
back bumper, the sedan makes you do a double-take when you first see it in
profile.
The 18-inch,
machined-aluminum alloy wheels added to the racy look.
Visually, the
Maxima makes a promise of serious performance.
And it delivers with a finely tuned 3.5-liter V-6 rated at a max 300
horsepower.
As previous
Maximas have done, the latest generation lays down heart-pumping acceleration
in smooth, but not overly loud, layers.
On the freeways, even small blips on the accelerator produced comfortable
space between myself and following cars.
You can almost
read the mind of the driver quickly disappearing in the rearview mirror: “What
the heck was that?”
This has long
been true of the Maxima. The engineers
have always done it right. I love
it. Fuel mileage is pretty OK as well,
at 22 miles per gallon in the city and 30 mpg on the highway.
For all its
robust road energy, interior comforts are numerous, luxurious and fun to
use. The dual panel panoramic moonroof,
rear window power sunshade and voice-recognition system for navigation and
audio were my favorites, although I think I started to drive passengers crazy
with my relentless use of these features.
Nobody
appreciates this kind of in-car entertainment anymore. Go figure.
Oh, there’s a
"Drive Mode Selector," with a choice of Normal
or Sport. Maxima pilots can hit the
switch to tweak throttle response, transmission programming and shift
adjustments.
Without shame,
I confess that I had the tester in Sport mode during my entire week with the
car. When you spend time with an old
friend, you want to make the most of it, right?
On my report
card, the latest Maxima gets a solid “A” grade.
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