Why My Next Car May NOT be a Nissan

[JerryHofschneider]

I'm shopping.
My Infiniti, with about 120k on her, is beginning to age, and before I put a few thou into brakes, struts, and other details ( like tires, minor paintwork and the like ), I'm thinking of making a trade and buying something new., something with a manual trans, rear drive, 2 or 4 doors and 300 horses ( There is no Infiniti dealer in Ocala. The closest one is in Tampa, 100 miles away).
Naturally, as a big Nissan fan (--I've owned 9 of their cars-- the legendary 200 SX, a 240Z, the 280Z, a 280ZX 2+2, a 300 ZX, the 350Z, the Maxima, my current Infiniti coupe and my first one, the '74 Datsun 610) I thought of them first, so I went by the Nissan dealer, and honestly, I was disappointed with the model lineup.

The 370Z, while a superb sportscar, is showing its' age--as am I-- but it's not in consideration this time around anyway. The Max and Altima, both front wheel drive, now have CVT "trannys" and NO manual option, rendering them, for me at least, as undriveable, and the Sentra is something I wouldn't even consider. They had a Juke on the lot, possibly the ugliest carlike thing manufactured in the 21st century, and I can't afford the GT-R. They also had a full array of trucks, none of which I'm the least bit interested in.

I drive cars, and I'm looking to buy a 4-seater, something sporty and affordable, like in the $30-35k range.

Nissan has dropped the neat, manual Altima coupe, a car that I had considered a few seasons ago, so I have sadly determined that my favorite car company no longer makes anything that I am interested in driving.
What happened??

Nissan is popular with the American driver these days, Last year they sold nearly 900,000 cars and trucks in the USA, and they now rank 6th overall in global sales.
They have a $44 billion net worth and are partnered with Renault, they have joint ventures with Daimler, Ford and Mitsubishi and they are a very respected and successful worldwide company. The Altima is as popular as the Accord or the Corrola, the Z is a genuine, beautifully sorted out sportscar, one of the few really affordable ones, the GT-R a true exotic, a world-beating supercar, the Leaf a worthy electric vehicle ( despite being an ugly SOB)-- but it seemed to me, as I perused their current lineup, that they have lost the spark that they owned around ten years ago.

When Carlos Ghosn took over as CEO in 2000, Nissan was on their knees. They were unprofitable, had a line of mediocre cars that just weren't selling and were losing market share fast. He turned the company around, first merging it with Renault to capture economy of scale--and the European market-- then cutting cost, redesigning all the car lines, bringing back the Z as a performance icon, positioning Altima as viable competition against the dominance of Toyota and Honda in the midsize sedan category and pulling the company back from the brink of disaster.
Infiniti gained strength as the Luxury/ performance line, challenging (and beating) such powerhouses as BMW and Lexus. The Fabled GT-R came to the USA, finally. And the trucks, now accounting for more than half of Nissan sales, got redesigned and updated, becoming sound alternatives to the F150s, Chevys and Toyotas that owned the categories.

Ghosn has to be recognized as one of the most brilliant executives to ever run a car company, taking Nissan from disaster to success in a few short years. The enthusiast magazines loved the guy and they heaped enormous praise on the cars (and trucks).

He found the formula to make the cars viable to the enthusiast who had a limited budget but expected awesome performance, to the youngsters who needed to drive something afordibly cool and to the families who sought inexpensive but well-built sedans, and he managed to market them effectively, bringing the company and its' products back to profitability and visibility.
Then everything stopped.

The company seemed to lose the imagination that propelled it to the top. The design philosophy grew stale, product development slowed and went the wrong way ( read: CVT--the anti-enthusiast transmission, or the Cube, a stupid, useless toy, or the Sentra, now an actual cheap, cheap car).
Instead of a fresh 350Z successor, Nissan tweaked the design, changed the motor and simply reformed the car into the 370Z. It's still a good sportscar, but it is not nearly as exciting as the 350 was. Instead of a world-beating Maxima, Nissan introduced a clumsily designed lump of a sedan and called it a sports sedan, a '4DSC", as if an old label reflected a new car--plus they cursed it with the stupid CVT: instead of building actual performance into their vehicles, NISMO became an add-on extra, compelling the enthusiast to customize the basic vehicle at extra cost if they wanted real performance. The small economy hatchbacks (a market that I don't pay much attention to) went from clever to tinny, plasticy cheap, appealing only to buyers who sought inexpensive appliances and knew nothing about actual driving.

And the enthusiast magazines, where I get most of my information about new cars and their development from, just don't write much about Nissan products these days. I guess it's because there is nothing new to write about.

Is Ghosn coastin'--Is Carlos resting on his past success?
Has Nissan decided that it had gone as far as it could?
Has the company taken it eye off the ball?
Have trucks become more important than cars?
I guess that I'm lamenting Nissan's lack of innovation and it's turning away from the enthusiast market, but it seems that the exciting products from the early part of the century have blanded out to the kind of mediocrity that the company found itself in at the end of the last century, and that ain't good.

My next stop is the Ford dealer. They have stolen the excitement and innovation that Nissan had and seems to have lost. Ford now makes some very neat, smallish cars with great performance and efficiency, plus the new Mustang has become an actual alternative to the Z car, or to the Infiniti coupe that I have been wearing out over the last few years. It's a real sportscar now, even if it does have a 4-cylinder powerplant as its stock engine.
At least that's what the magazines have been telling me.

[centralcoaster33]

New cars have never really been in my sights as a reality, more just a dream. They are very expensive to buy at a dealership. However, I still look to them with interest, as they will someday be a used car, possibly one I could afford to purchase and drive. That said, nobody makes a new car that I'm interested in. And nobody has made one in the past 10 years. The three that come close, but miss anyway, are the 350Z/370Z, the Camaro, and the BRZ. I think I'm stuck buying up used cars from the 90's. I put a lot of blame to the government regulations for this and a bit on the manufacturers for what seems to be giving up on cars. That direction seems to be self driving, electric cars that track your location. Why would I want to spend 40 grand on a car/ homing device that I don't really get to drive? I might as well take the bus... maybe that's the goal? That doesn't work for me so much as the car has always been an enabler and creator of freedom. The feeling of current car design is not that of freedom so much. I wish I could phrase that better. I think that is really what my personal issue is with so many of the new cars. They don't seem to offer freedom and even have a slight semblance of shackles.

[JerryHofschneider]

Wait until the "autonomous" car, the robot car, begins to proliferate.
Not only will you, as the "driver" be rendered as unnecessary, your movements will be doubly tracked through your smartphone AND the tracking devices built into the car. Anybody, at any time, can spot exactly where you--and the car--are--and what you're doing. The car will become a huge GPS system. So will you.
As you travel about, your every movement, your passenger's comments, your every gesture and facial expression will be captured by an in-car camera; the car's travels and movements will be similarly photographed from exterior cameras and imprinted onto a hard drive that can be time-stamped and beamed out, to be accessed by God knows how many people sitting in dark rooms gazing at CRT screens. And everything you do or say while you are in the car will be recorded and saved for possible litigation sometime in the future.

Feel like taking manual control and having an enthusiast's moment? if you break any speed or street-competition laws, a dozen law enforcement folks will know about it immediately and send you a ticket through your smartphone. They can even shut you down remotely if they think that you're dangerous...

Feel like making out with your significant other in a dark park? Don't do anything that the sex police would disapprove of, and they WILL be watching. And you'll never know.

How about knocking off a quick J or a cold beer in the front seat after work, or scratching your itchy groin or singing a Taylor Swift song off-key as you cruise along the freeway? Hell, it'll be up on YouTube before you get home.
In the future, the freedom and privacy that make cars so damn much fun will vanish, and the meaning of "enthusiast","'privacy" or "personal" will become as arcane as the dial phone, analogue television or Kodak film.
The oldsters of 2040 will tell the youngsters stories that will never sound credible to them.

If you think this is evidence of encroaching paranoia on my part, well, it's not. Right now, most new cars have the capability to do any and all of what I have described, including talking complete control, stopping, accelerating, changing lanes, and recording it all without the driver playing any role. In-car privacy will become as arcane as enthusiastic driving, and taking the bus WILL become the new fun way to travel.

Tampering with any of these devices will layer a whole new set of laws on the car owner, and if any of the computers or cameras or hard drives fail, the owner will be obliged to repair them immediately or face fines and/or jail time.

It is beginning to make more and more sense to buy the older, non-robotic un-tech cars with every day that passes..

[centralcoaster33]

All that you have listed is current tech. There was a guy on NPR complaining about his commercial tractor. A John Deere I believe, though it may have been another type. It had a computer fail. The appropriate fix could have been easy, but he has to have John Deere fix it. For thousands of dollars. Because they own the software on his tractor. That's right, his tractor is his, but all of the software that runs it is theirs. Changing code, whether to fix, upgrade or bypass, well, that's illegal because it's copyrighted / leased material. I think he simply wanted to unplug something and not use that feature anymore. I don't recall it correctly because it was so absurd and frustrating to me that my head was spinning while listening to it. What I gathered was that whatever black box comes with a vehicle, is not yours and you sure as heck better not be messing with it!

Anyway, what's the worst that can happen? Being mandated to buy a car and keep it running? Based on your household income of course, nothing unreasonable.

[centralcoaster33]

found the article here:
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechcons ... yright-law

It's much better than my fuzzy and frustrated memory. It's not Nissan exactly, it's more like everyone.

[frapjap]

All that you have listed is current tech. There was a guy on NPR complaining about his commercial tractor. A John Deere I believe, though it may have been another type. It had a computer fail. The appropriate fix could have been easy, but he has to have John Deere fix it. For thousands of dollars. Because they own the software on his tractor. That's right, his tractor is his, but all of the software that runs it is theirs. Changing code, whether to fix, upgrade or bypass, well, that's illegal because it's copyrighted / leased material. I think he simply wanted to unplug something and not use that feature anymore. I don't recall it correctly because it was so absurd and frustrating to me that my head was spinning while listening to it. What I gathered was that whatever black box comes with a vehicle, is not yours and you sure as heck better not be messing with it!

Anyway, what's the worst that can happen? Being mandated to buy a car and keep it running? Based on your household income of course, nothing unreasonable.

Thats s***.
I think you can still buy a 'new' VW bug in South America. If worse comes to worst, driving one of those has more appeal than a talking/thinking car.

[Jesda]

The best modern cars mask their electronic BS and give the driver a sense of control, even if it's fake.

[centralcoaster33]

I'm just realizing that my thread topic would be more like, why my next car won't be made in this millennium... Similar to the government, I just don't like the direction that cars are going in. It is more expensive to make dangerous things safe for idiots than it is to educate people so that they can be safe with dangerous things. That and I never felt like I could afford a car I really like, except for the 240sx.

[srellim234]

Unfortunately no matter how foolproof they try to make them the world will always come up with a new and improved fool. What's really bad is that with the current state of educational systems some of the fools are now doing the programming.

My next car will not be a Nissan but it has more to do with Nissan North America and the local dealers than the cars themselves.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

There's really only 2 new cars I would buy today that I know of. One is the Miata.
I haven't driven one of the new BMWs but they seem like they'd be worth a test drive, although they are quite pricey.
I have no doubt a Porsche would be rewarding and nice, but again, that's pricey!
From what I've read, the new mustang has something for everyone, except I just can't get over that front end. No way I want to wake up to that in the morning.

If I needed a "do everything on a semi-budget" vehicle, I'd probably go for a Focus ST or Accord coupe.

[Jesda]

I love the new Camaro. The chassis is freaking world class.

I'd pick the Fiesta ST over the Focus ST, mostly because it's a bit lighter and more focused on handling. The bigger Focus hauls more people/things, however.

[AZhitman]

As usual, great insight and honest talk from The Hof.

Jerry, we're in the same boat. And for nearly a decade, the response from Nissan brass has been, "You have to give [the new lineup] a chance; don't knock it til you try it."

Well, I did. I've driven everything they build.

And I went out and bought Becky a '13 MazdaSpeed 3 (close runner-up was the Focus ST) and myself a '04 MazdaSpeed Miata (recently replaced by a C5 Z06). Why? Because they're driver cars, not appliances. They place fun over practicality - but miraculously, all three are actually VERY livable, logical choices - go figure.

Sadly, although I love the heritage, history, and even some of the attitude of Nissan, they started ignoring the DRIVER in favor of the appliance-buyer in roughly 2004 (give or take a few years). Now, it's all about moving units globally - building an inexpensive, high-profit car that can be easily financed and keeping the volume cranked to 11.

Meanwhile, other car companies (Mazda, for example) lose money on more than one model JUST to satisfy those of us who still buy cars for the visceral and emotional attachment of motoring.

I don't think there will be a "modern" car in this household for a looong time. If Bex wants a new car, we'll buy a gently-used, high-end luxury car or sports car.

It's just very apparent that the company I've spent 15 years cheerleading for has turned their back on this very market.

[JerryHofschneider]

I said I'd go by the Ford dealer, and I did.
What I saw and drove from their used lot was a last-gen 31,000 mile red, V6 Mustang GT and a 2015 Focus--the 262 HP ST 5-door, WITH a 6-speed manual, "a rarity", assured the salesman.

First, I sampled the Mustang and thought it was a really nice car, but it's an automatic and only gets gas mileage in the high teens--and it's AN AUTOMATIC. I took the Mustang out into heavy traffic and then out further to a country road, then I DROVE it. It has guts, handles well and is rear-wheel drive, something that lands on EVERY wish list that I have ever made up.
(The list begins: --rear drive, minimum 250-300 HP, stick shift, V6 or better, something that I can fit into, NOT black, good gas mileage-- and the cars that are available with those criteria are growing rare).

Redstang has brand new Michelins, has 5,000 left on the warranty and is 30,000 miles away from being brand new.
Inside is nice, for a Mustang. The cloth seats are firm but comfortable. The controls are both familiar and foreign---I have been in a LOT of Mustangs, so it's as familiar as my Infiniti, but it now has the ubiquitous telescreen, equipped with "My ford touch", something totally alien to me. I have never owned a car with a telescreen before.
I don't know what gas mileage I got when I was at the wheel--probably in the low teens, considering how I drove it. It's quick, but my tired old Infiniti would eat it alive and get 23 while feasting.
I wonder if the car has the dreaded explode and die airbags? I should have asked.

The Focus emerged as the favorite, despite being polar opposite to the GT. It has 28,000 on the odo. It appears much smaller than it is. It's front-drive, 6-speed, 252-HP.
A 2-litre four, turbocharged, traction-controlled.
It claims 36MPG ...I had to reconsider the list.

When I first approached it, I thought that it was too small--I'm 6'2, 205 pounds, and I don't really fit into a lot of smallish cars--but I fit the Focus and found it really comfortable while driving.
The gearbox is fast and fluid, the car zips away from a stop and can get frisky in fast, heavy traffic. The turbo spools up instantly, giving a V-6 punch. There's very little torque steer.
The seats are a comfy gray leather, it has a sunroof, the sound system is great, the clutch and gearchanges are intuitive.
I could never be comfy in the back seat--still, the Focus SE model is a sharp, surprisingly fast, nicely done hot hatch (unfortunately front-wheel drive), Ford's answer to the GT-i.

It has all these different interfaces for phones and plugs, and "My ford touch" is confusing and seemingly unnecessary. Just give me controls that I can use. The center console has about thirty buttons, levers and knobs that you can diddle with, PLUS a telescreen, which zones out if you look at it with polarized sunglasses. I wear polarized sunglasses, every time I drive a car.
There's also a backup camera, so that you can watch yourself overcorrect when you take off your polarized sunglasses and go backwards.

But it's black, and I won't have another black car if I want to keep living in Florida.
Owning black--or a very dark-colored car--in Florida is an invitation to torture. My 200 SX was black, with black leather seats. It could get God awful hot very fast. When the A/C failed (In July) it was the only time that I just DID NOT want to be around the car. I avoided it. I ignored it until October, drove something else and had it repaired by springtime, so I could drive it again.

The endless Florida sunshine makes a black car into a huge heat sink. You can feel little temperature waves eminating from the thing as you approach. The door handle feels molten, it burns you. Then everything, from the air you breathe to the place you put your azz is volcano hot, especially if you have leather seats. Holding the steering wheel is like grasping a flaming sword and the overwhelmed A/C blasts a smelly dry, hot breath in your face for the first five miles. Touching the shift lever is like touching fire. There's real pain and a lot of sweating associated with all this.
And misery. If you take short trips, say to the gas station, then the diner, then the dry cleaners, then maybe to a hardware store or to the bar, or stopping off at Wally World for a bargain--each time that you shut down the car, it re-heats and you have to go through the entire cycle of sweat, hot air pain and misery yet again.
And the sun shines every damn day in Florida.

The Focus is actually cheap, almost cheap enough to make me forget about black. The dealer wants $14,700 for it (-- he wants 23K for the Mustang, WAY too much for this car), but I can get a better price when I start negotiating.
He has no other Foci ST on his lot with a manual, however.
Only this black one.
I haven't totally forgotten about black.

--The search continues.
What car is worthy of following the Infiniti??
--Still looking. Next, Chevy.

[Bubba1]

I'd like to offer a different perspective. I also find myself disappointed but unsurprised by the direction Nissan's been going over the last decade too. That is, building mostly popular yet bland transportation devices and all but ignoring the "sports" models. I don't blame them entirely as we as consumers are partly to blame. These companies exist to make money, and they only build vehicles people want to buy....NEw. The sad fact is the number of us enthusiasts who are willing to purchase NEw sports/fun cars is small. And If we enthusiasts (as a segment) don't buy enough of them new, what incentive is there for a manufacturer to develop/build them?

I see a generational lifecycle to sports/sporty cars, and it seems to involve every generation. For example,In 1989 Nissan offered a simple reliable Rwd fun sporty coupe that did not sell that well here. It got criticized for (waaa) being underpowered. Fast forward 15 yrs, when younger enthusiasts could buy them cheaply, it finally gets recognized for what it was. Of course that praise was accompanied by complaints that nothing being made now can compare.

Fast forward. Toyota/Subaru invested many millions to offer a reasonably priced 200 hp RwD good handling, traditional sports car with a man pedal. They're on sale right now and they haven't sold that well. I hear a lot more " waaaaah, it's small and needs more power" than I do about how nice a car it actually is. Sound familiar? I think the FRS/BRZ of today is following the same exact same path as the 240sx. It'll become more appreciated after it fully depreciates.

Perhaps it's me and I'm old, but I see several nice cars being made now. Yes, due to changing tastes, more government/safety regulations, new vehicles are bigger, heavier, more complex, and more expensive, But they also are more powerful, faster, handle better, and are more comfortable. we Americans seem to enjoy focusing on the negatives, (kinda like politics these days), but the reality is things are simply different. I'm not hybrid or CVT fan, and prefer man pedals. Fortunately there are still sporty choices out there that have them. I' m hopeful Nissan will eventually awaken from their fog, remember the fun and restart building cars I want to buy. I'm not going to hold my breath that it'll happen with Ghosn at the helm. But until then, I'm with JHoff and will be looking elsewhere. Ok flame away, but be warned, I had Mexican food for dinner last night....

[srellim234]

bubba1 - I agree with you regarding the lifecycle of sports/sporty cars. I've never been an enthusiast but a lot of my friends are.

As a conservative driver who is relegated to short stuff around town during the week and long hauls on weekends and summers I've become a fan of the hybrid and CVTs. It's just quieter and smoother while I don't have to sweat the gas prices. We're done buying new, though, so we have to wait for the newest generation of the Prius, Volt, Focus or Fusion hybrids to get down to our price range. By then the back seat won't be that important since the kids will be grown and gone. It will be all about the car being what we will be comfortable in and can afford to drive from coast to coast.

Of course, a non-hybrid getting the current hybrid type gas mileage will be seriously looked at as well.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

If the FRS/BRZ didn't have that horrendous torque dip and was offered in an I-4 design instead of H-4 (I cringe at working on those things), I'd probably own one.

[frapjap]

Hof- if you liked the Mustang with the 6, definitely check out the new Camaro. You can even rent one for a couple days to see if you can live with it. The coupe is tough on rear viewing, but most newer cars are because of the high trunk decks anwyay- so I find it kinda a moot point.
Pricing for a leftover 2016 is super low due to the 2017 facelift. I've been shopping them for a manual 6 cylinder with a convertible. The coupes I see are very aggressively priced to move off the lot. Likely doubly so if you live in Florida/the south.

Anyway, the new chassis is based on the ATS. Its incredibly impressive, is a blast to drive and it IS NOT the 6 cylinder consolation prize of the past. Here's a colorful review of a rental I had for a few days:
topic608316.html

[Jesda]

The boxer engine is seriously overrated. Few advantages if any, terrible packaging.

[JerryHofschneider]

I'm not looking to buy a new car. I want to pick one up that has shed most of its depreciation, so I'm looking at cars from 2010 through,say, 2014. I'll want the mileage to be reasonable, and if one pops up that is still in Warranty, that'll be a bonus. I'm grazing among the American choices first, just to sample what is current. I haven't really test-driven any cars in a few years.
I was helping my daughter get into a car over the summer and we looked at a 2010 Dodge Charger, the V-6 with an 8-speed automatic. Very nice. I may look at the newish Chargers a little closer.
(--I have read that FCA's cars are poorly built and have spotty reliability. Any truth to that??).

I'm trying to stay faithful to American cars. (...OK, I know, but I'll always see MOPAR as some of the USA's finest cars, and will until FCA goes out of business. Or until 2018, whichever comes first). I'd like to sample a CTS-V, but I know from experience that I can't fit into those Caddys very well. My kneecap ALWAYS thumps into the junction of the center stack and dashboard, no matter how I adjust the seat.

And I want to stick with rear drive, so Camaro is on the short list, although I may look at Mazda--the 3 and the 6 are some of the best stuff out there, or so the magazines proclaim.

I WON'T look at BMW. The FRS/BRZ crowd makes a car that is too tiny. Everybody else is front drive or ultra expensive rear drive...the list of possibles is short.

I'll have to remember to ask the salesman if the car I'm looking at has Takata airbags or a tricky ignition. Or if it's been underwater. I'm also going to ask them if they can disable or remove the Vehicle Data Recorder. I want to see what they have to say about that.

[Bubba1]

JHoff. The FCA reputation for unreliability is real and earned. the product line has a firm grip on last place according to most long term surveys. That said, many of their models are well engineered/designed, and drive well, it's mainly that they're not built particularly well and FCA has a tendency to go cheap on components. That means they're better cars to lease than buy. I don't see FCA going away any time soon as Fiat has very deep pockets internationally and both mopar and jeep have a very loyal following that seem not to care about the facts. Hmm, sounds like presidential politics.. . That's not to say that every model sucks. I personally wouldn't mind owning a Hellcat or ACR Viper, but then again those are special vehicles, not really ideal grocery getters.

As far as the Takata airbags, the recalls have started, so I wouldn't get too obsessed beyond checking if the dealer (or seller) had it completed, assuming it's on the recall list.

If you're looking for a used full sized 'Murican Rwd sedan that has some cajones, you might also look at an SS (impala, 400+ hp. Its not bad, and a total sleeper. It'll feel cheaper than the Cadillac but it'll cost less.

[JerryHofschneider]

The Impala SS is a hell of a car, but it's flown beneath everybody's radar--just like the Pontiac G8 did. ( or the early 2000s GTO). They are both the same car and are the last of a great line of Holdens.
I'd like to find a good, used Pontiac G8, but they are rare as hen's teeth and just don't exist around here.

(When's the last time YOU saw a one in traffic?. You've probably seen more Bentleys than Pontiac G8s--or the Imapala SS, right?).

I wish that Holden had been able to market some of their cars here. They retained the American flair for classic, good looking, interesting rear-drive sedans long after our domestic manufacturers abandoned the formula for crummy, badly designed front-drivers and trucks. It's a real shame that GM is killing the car line off next year. Ford is abandoning THEIR car production in OZ in 2017, also. No more Falcons.
Australia will soon be like Sweden or Switzerland or Namibia-- a country without a car to call their own.

GM seems to take their time in developing really great cars, then they market them poorly and just when they have reached near-perfection, it seems, they kill them off due to lack of interest and poor sales. The company has done this for generations and have sacrificed some great cars because they don't know how to promote them.

I called the local Chevrolet dealer and the salesperson who answered had to be reminded exactly what an Impala SS actually was. I said that it was a "Holden based rear drive with a big V8 and a six-speed" and she didn't say much for awhile, then said "Let me check that out with my manager".
Obviously NOT much of an enthusiast. Or a salesperson. Or well-trained.

Anyway, they don't have one on their lot right now.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

The boxer engine is seriously overrated. Few advantages if any, terrible packaging.

Agreed.

I WON'T look at BMW.

Why not?


Also, I'm pretty certain the car isn't called the "impala" SS, its just the SS. Entirely different chassis.
I work with a guy that has one and its a hoot to drive. I think the interior is actually quite good as well... it just wasn't cheap.

[JerryHofschneider]

You are right about the car's title. It is just "SS", which I think still means Super Sport.

About the BMW comment. I've done that, owned a Beemer ( the 1984 320i) and while it was a really nice car, stuffed to the sunroof with advanced German technology. It was also massively expensive to buy, own and repair.
Like-- a front end that NEVER stayed in alignment. It wore tires out like they were made of soap. Expensive soap.
--A dealer-performed tuneup almost required additional financing--$400 Reagan dollars.
--New brakes--dealer installed-- were breathtaking--$600, just for fronts.
The radio sat in the center console, face up. One night, the wife and I were playing pool in the neighborhood pub when a regular ran in and announced that it was raining. I had left the sunroof open , so I dashed outside and into a Florida deluge, already feeling an impending doom. The interior of my 320 was soaked, and water was pooling around the radio. Natch, it shorted out, causing most of the interior electrics to die.
The final bill for that was around $1600, a month's salary in the mid '80s, and the car never had sounds again, plus the carpets stank from then on.

When we divorced, I chose the Datsun with the busted head gasket as community property settlement. It was cheaper to rebuild the engine than play endless repair games with BMW. The wife got the BMW. It was revenge.
I admire BMW, but that's like admiring a Kardashian. I could not afford to hang out with a Kardashian, nor could I afford owning another Beemer.

[PapaSmurf2k3]

Expensive soap.
$400 Reagan dollars.

I LOL'd.

Fair enough. They HAVE gotten better but definitely still have a few things that just make working on them suck. I suppose its that German thing where they want you to be a slave to a dealership.

[AZhitman]

The '13 Focus ST was *THIS* close to coming home with us when I bought Becky's MazdaSpeed 3.

I preferred a couple things about it, but the MS3 beat it out on more important criteria - and I'm glad we got the MS3 (it's been an amazing car for 90k miles).

[RicerX]

I have had a lot of things change for me during the past year (namely, a little rugrat that just started crawling this week) and I've been planning out the next 5 years of things, and adding a fun car back to the family lineup is on that list.

I have a Q50 now, and I may just very well keep it and play with it past the bolt-on stage instead of adding a third car. I don't have any of the tech or the faux steering, and I'm enjoying it. I was a manual-only guy - my Q50 is the first automatic I have had since my Dad handed me the keys and payments to a Chevy Cavalier at age 16. For where I am in life right now (car-seat duty and juggling all the things that come with that) the Q50 has been the perfect compromise for me in fun and practicality while maintaining my standards in quality, style, performance, and reliability. But, as equipped with the sport package, it falls short on some things (terrible factory tires, no LSD) and it has me considering options - fix those (no aftermarket LSD yet though) and motor on, or check out the rest of the market.

As far as fun cars go now, I find myself wanting something I could fit the munchkin and the wife in, and outside of a GT-R (which is just far too expensive for me to want to maintain and/or drive at this point in my research) Nissan has NOTHING enticing, and not only that, I find myself looking at *GASP* AMERICAN cars!

Cadillac ATS-V. Ford Mustang GT350. Chevy Camaro 1LE/ZL1.

What happened to me? I was always a Nissan guy. I love my Infiniti, but if I want a manual transmission, they now have nothing at all to offer.

The Camaro has evolved to the point that it's an EXTREMELY competent sports car that handles VERY well. The new generation did the unthinkable - it lost weight, gained power, and didn't swell in price! The GT350 looks GREAT (to me), and that flat-plane-cranked V8 sounds EVIL. The ATS-V is even offered in a manual, but it's a luxury sedan that's not German!

It's amazing that a company that one injected fun into every single vehicle in their lineup has gotten into the business of building appliances on wheels.

Nissan is borderline dead to me - I think the Frontier is the last vehicle worth buying (and who am I kidding - I love the 370Z, but I've had three of them already... maybe something else?). At least Infiniti is pushing it a little bit (even though they're shy on the MT front) and their dealership experiences are absolutely fantastic. Every single time the need arises to bring my wife's Rogue to the dealer, I find myself migrating closer to the idea of kicking myself in the nuts than willingly scheduling an appointment.

[AZhitman]

Sadly, the company lost me around 2005. I absolutely loved my 95 Q45t. Loved my 95 G20t. I adore our 05 Frontier. I enjoyed the hell out of my 03 G35C. My 93 240sx convertible was awesome, and became famous. Even our 97 Pathfinder and 00 Frontier were solid, well-built, capable vehicles.

(NOTE: All, except the Q, were manual trans vehicles).

We've beaten this horse ad infinitum, but I suppose the enthusiast market isn't their target any longer. It's more profitable to sell massive numbers of appliances... yet I'm disloyal, or a bad guy, for pointing out the obvious. Sad.

[centralcoaster33]

We have our Versa. It is indeed an appliance, a nice an reliable appliance thankfully. I can understand leaving the teen enthusiast behind, like from a corporate profit perspective. They don't have jobs and more specifically, don't have money. But they do assist by adding 'marketing value' to a brand. An enthusiast might buy a cool car, for example a Nissan 370z, and Nissan gets some $$ for that. And, having a nice 370z on the road is advertising. But then the enthusiast continues to spend money, but it's all on aftermarket parts and some track time. Again, more exposure for Nissan, but no more $$ trickling in. Well, those 30 year olds must have some money. They're working full time right? So that seems like a great market to cater to. How many people that age are enthusiasts? What about people in their 40's or 50's? It seems to me, the way to continue to get $$ from the consumer is to have products the consumer thinks they need (example: iPhones and the latest model thereof, or even better, the M3 or 2 or whatever). Since Nissan makes and sells cars (I'm ignoring NISMO bolt-ons), then they should have a line of sports cars. And that should have new stuff every couple of years. Then people would think that leasing and replacing would be an option. Or even buying and trading up every few years. I think the cars would need to be made a bit more affordable for that to work. That and, do enthusiasts buy new cars? OR do they just buy cool cars used and such? Because Nissan isn't making any $$ from used car sales.

[MinisterofDOOM]

The SS is a great car that checks a lot of my required boxes, but GM made the same mistake everyone else has been making lately with performance sedans: it's all or nothing. The only real option on the car is a $900 sunroof. Everything else is standard or no-cost changes, and that means there's only one trim spec: the pricey one. It MSRPs at $48k but really goes for $50k, and since it's a niche vehicle nobody's knocking anything off the sticker price.

Reality is: nobody's interested in spending $50k for any sedan with a bowtie.

If you could get the thing for $40k or $35k without all the extras they throw in as "standard" that nobody wants, it'd be a vastly more appealing prospect.
And a $30k LF4-powered model would do wonders for production volume and bring down costs while also putting a lot more on the road to build the image.

It's also slightly mis-styled. I'm always in favor of tasteful styling over loudness, but the SS is outright boring or soft in some areas. It's not just conservative: it's lazy. It looks TOO MUCH like the rest of GM's sedan lineup. Which is precisely how it was designed to look, but the Australian market is a very different one from here, and I don't want a big fast torquey monster that looks like somebody's grandma's Malibu. I want hard edges and clean lines and a little bit of muscle to the look

I would never consider spending new-car money on an SS, even with the 6MT now available, because I can get so much more for that $50--even from GM. Hell, the CT6 starts just $3k higher than the typical SS, and while that does have an utterly undesirable turbo 4, there's no way the most volume-produced V8 in the history of the automobile is what places the SS is Cadillac pricing territory.

It's almost like GM WANTED the SS to fail, or at least sincerely didn't care if it succeeded (which wouldn't surprise me, since it's just continued production of an already end-of-life model anyway). They went out of their way to make it too well-equipped, too expensive, and too niche to actually attract any buyers. The people who want it for performance would be happier with $10k fewer options, and the people who want those options don't give half a s*** about the performance and thus will look elsewhere at REAL luxury cars for a lot less money.

The good news for us as enthusiasts is:
These are all reasons the SS will probably depreciate like a lead balloon, so we should be able to pick up lightly-used examples in a few years for much more sensible money.

In the meantime, though, it's doing absolutely nothing at best, and harming the image of the market for performance rear-drivers at worst.

Really, the mis-execution of the SS is the kind of gaff I'd expect from Ford rather than GM. A great product that's well designed, then completely abandoned by the time it's 90% designed but somebody still has to sell them.


As for Nissan----

I've gone from fervently recommending them to friends to adamantly recommending AGAINST them to everyone within earshot. They simply do too many things exceptionally badly and nothing at all exceptionally well. Even if not for the major issues like CVT behavior, there's simply nothing to set Nissan's models apart as worth considering next to other cars on the market.
Yet another victim of the pursuit of volume over excellence. Toyota fell into the same trap. Yes, both brands are very successful. But neither is remotely meaningful.
I honestly wouldn't even want a GT-R unless it was free. It somehow manages to be thoroughly unsexy despite being a marvel of engineering. And I'd say that's a good reflection of Nissan as a whole, but that would be very generous. The truth is almost none of the tech in the GT-R has trickled down, so the rest of the lineup gains nothing from it. It's just this lonely symbol on a pedestal that surrounded by a mass of mediocrity.

Oh, and my dad's experience beyond 100k miles with his 6th gen Maxima hasn't helped. That car is one year older than my LS8 (a mostly-Jaguar product, mind you!) and has SIGNIFICANTLY more issues. It's electrical systems are like Jurassic Park after Nedry did his dirty work, and the mechanical systems seem to have all lined up to fail one after the other. It's been one of the costliest cars to keep on the road that any of us have owned, and no matter how much money we throw at it, it finds new ways to break. Even if the 8th gen Max offered a real transmission, it wouldn't be on the radar as a replacement because of the bad taste the 6th gen has left behind.
It's even worse when you consider that, while one year older in model year, the Maxima is a solid four years newer in engineering than the LS8, and yet the LS is by far the superior design.
It's pretty bad when an early-2000s Jaguar that was redesigned by Ford and built in Detroit is more dependable than whatever you're making.

[JerryHofschneider]

That may be Nissan's most glaring negative--the dismal failure of the quality of its products over time.
I have had 3 new/ semi-new Nissans since the Millenium-- a 2000 Maxima SE, a 2003 350Z Base and the current '05 Infiniti G35 Coupe. Each of these cars were fine cars when the ink was still damp on my check, but each had their problems after I drove them over the curb.
The Max and the Z were (mostly) fixed under warranty, but the Infiniti experienced everything after the warranty expired.

The main, most common issue was the windows. Two died on Max, three died in the Z (the passenger window died twice, giving it Kenny-like abilities to keep dying and being reborn) and each have failed-- so far--in the G. The Max had problems with the driver's seat and the injectors, the fuel cap locked on me and the cloth upholstery wore through on the driver's outboard bolster at around 60 weeks. The power steering pump failed and for awhile the car threw off fan belts like they were mere rubber bands.
I had the Max for 41,000 miles, then used it as a trade for the Z. I'd had it 3 years from brand new, and it had depreciated to a $12,500 trade-in, a near 65% loss from sticker. Despite being in very nice shape, the car had little value to it.

The Z had immediate problems, big ones. On early models, the front suspension had too much camber and the front tires wore out their sidewalls in 15,000 miles. There was a constant, unfixable left-hand pull that got unsettling at higher speeds and kept the car out of alignment. The warranty fixed all that, but still...
Then, like Max, the fabric on the seats began balling like a cheap sweater, and the trim piece on the shifter--the little silvery one that tells you where to find the different gears-- detached, necessitating a COMPLETE REPLACEMENT of the stick part of the stick shifter.
The paint was cheap and was beginning to peel at the leading edge of the hood, the plastic front bumper was stone-pitted and ugly. the headlight covers were going yellowy and foggy.

It was during my Z ownership that I began to question the reliability of Nissan's finest.
On a hot day in Florida, the car vapor locked and left me stranded in the face of an oncoming mega-storm. This was during one of the out-of-warranty/ out of luck, broken-window times. I duck-taped a garbage bag over the window and waited the damn thing out in anger and misery.
Only after a 30 minute cool down would it start again. It did it a couple more times until I finally took it by the dealer, who replaced the injectors and sent me back into the world, $600 poorer.

The Infiniti has disappointed me the most. Early on, 45,000 miles, the cam sensors failed.

WTF is an electronically controlled CAM sensor? --and why do I NEED such a thing??
The car would be running normally, then the motor would shudder, like a dog shaking off water, then the engine would lose cylinders and start shaking like a dog in hypothermia, then it would die, like a dog that failed.
The sensors replaced, a complete tuneup--that'll be-- $1,200.
These cam sensors--they're quite the luxury item, no?

The sunroof only goes halfway back. It just started doing that one day.
Then the center stack ( the "master head Unit" )failed, killing off control of the radio and HVAC. The side running lights and the rear center brake light failed. The rear light would strobe like a disco ball whenever I put the brakes on.
I had to disconnect it. It was actually embarrassing me.

Inside, the nice leather panels on the door cards are shrinking and pulling out of their tucked-in frames, looking shabby, and the leather seats are cracking and wearing through.
And the cheap paint is making the front of my mature Infinity look like it has had an adolescent pimple outbreak. Every loose stone removes a dot of paint from the front bumper, and the wind is peeling the clearcoat off in strips wherever stone chips break through the covering, which is everywhere--and the headlight covers are slowly turning an opaque pee-yellow.

Each of these incidents took me a baby step further from considering Nissan as a future possession. They have the style, granted, and I get it that cars grow old, but their failing quality seems no better than Chrysler's, or maybe the horrible Hyundais from the '90s. I expected, and have gotten, much more from the Nissans that I've owned, but not recently.
That's why, this weekend I'm visiting the Chevy dealer and the Mazda dealer, plus a few used-car emporiums. And I won't be looking at Nissans.
Sorry...