I've been thinking about making my wife's Altima into a pseudo-offroader. She took it on a camping trip, and long story short, it got stuck with just minor mud in the tires and on a slight uphill/washboard road. I' sure if I was with her it wouldn't have gotten stuck, but I feel like it could be more offroad friendly. Not in the way of serious lift kits and what not, but more of the AWD Subaru sense. Here's a little background on the car. It's a 2006 Nissan Altima sedan with the 2.5L 4 cylinder and 4-speed auto trans, FWD, with a little over 115k freeway miles. It's been gently driven most of its life, but now that we've got 2 young kids, taking the Ranger camping alone isn't enough for all of our stuff. My idea is to fabricate a custom skidplate(possibly 1/8" steel or 1/4" aluminum), put some decent offroad tires on it and maybe that's it? I don't know much about rally cars, but I'd like to use some of that engineering in my car. It's got a set of P21560R16 street tires on it now, and as far as I can find there's only 1 tire(Yokohama Geolandar A/T-S) in my factory tire size. I might be able to push it to a P215/65R16(only 0.8" taller than factory) which opens me up to a set of BFG T/A KO2 which I really like, especially with the 3-ply sidewall. If anyone has any experience with rally/offroad cars or the L31 gen Altima, or general suggestions, it would be super appreciated. Thanks, guys!

sounds like a bad idea to me...

If you want a real off-road machine, get an SUV or pickup truck.

I've actually got a little experience with this, so here goes:

It's FWD - you're not making it AWD without significant re-engineering and fabrication, so it'll never behave like an AWD Scooby.

A mild lift isn't completely out of the question - I have a beater 04 Corolla with a 2" lift and larger tires. The lift is in the form of spacer bushings atop the struts, and will affect your alignment for the worse (and the larger tires will hamper acceleration).

If it were mine, I'd venture the lift and taller tires. A skidplate would really just be for looks, but perhaps an intake/exhaust upgrade would give it a bit more HP to pull hills and turn the taller tires.