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Large semi-premium sedans serve two purposes. On rental lots, they attract expense-account customers looking to upgrade from a mid-size. At work, they’re a P.C. statement for people who want all the fancy equipment but not the interoffice sneers brought on by a luxury badge. That guy at the office driving a Toyota Avalon or a Chrysler 300 is probably earning a lot more than you, though you’d never envy his car. Same goes for the Nissan Maxima.
It’s fair to say that even Nissan hasn’t paid much attention to the Maxima lately. Once a big kahuna in the Nissan lineup, the Maxima has languished in recent years. We haven’t tested one since 2008, the last time Nissan overhauled its flagship sedan. Since then, it received a midcycle refresh for 2012 that was so subtle we didn't even write about it. But when the 2016 Maxima made a cameo in Nissan’s Super Bowl commercial, we set down our beers and took notice.
Styled with the same dramatic, sweeping fashion as last year’s Sport Sedan Concept, the new Maxima is either banging hot or bound to age fast. There’s a lot going on, but design chief Shiro Nakamura at least should be toasted for unbuttoning the Maxima’s oxford shirt and exposing raw flesh. Like the new Murano, the Maxima’s visual stimulation never lets up: Boomerang-style lights, double U-shaped grilles, intersecting creases, swooping chrome, blacked-out pillars, bulges, and quarter-panel flares attack the eyes. While Nakamura’s team threw every conceivable trend at the new Maxima, it’s defiantly Nissan and definitely not cobbled from generic European car parts.
Some standout details: The floating, canopy-style greenhouse with its blacked-out C-pillar is said to have been inspired by the U.S. Navy Blue Angels. Designers also tilted the center stack seven degrees toward the driver, as they did for the GT-R, and aped Jaguar’s pulsating ignition button. They even etched 4DSC (“4-Door Sports Car”) into the headlamps and taillamps, echoing the 4DSC window stickers on the circa-1990 Maxima.
In an age when you can get a stick shift in a Buick and Acuras offer all-wheel torque vectoring, Nissan’s four-door sports car comes with front-wheel drive and a continuously variable automatic transmission. The revised 3.5-liter V-6 churns out 300 horsepower (up 10) and the same 261 lb-ft of torque, while the Xtronic CVT gains a wider ratio spread, more aggressive fake shifts, and an rpm-hold function when the car senses hard cornering. Pretty tame stuff, although fuel economy improves, Nissan says, from 19 mpg city and 26 mpg highway to 22/30 mpg.
Nissan’s Drive Mode Selector offers a choice between normal and sport settings for steering effort, throttle sensitivity, transmission tuning, and the piped-in engine noise. The suspension is damper-struts up front and multilinks at the rear—an SR performance trim level stiffens the dampers and the front anti-roll bar. The available Active Ride Control doesn’t perform any active dampening but instead brakes individual wheels to settle the chassis over bumps and dips.
The new Maxima utilizes more high-strength steel, which helps provide 25-percent greater torsional rigidity. Nissan engineers were able to trim up to 82 pounds, despite this eighth-generation Maxima being a bit larger than its predecessor. The car is 2.2 inches longer (at 192.8 inches) and 1.3 inches lower, while the width (73.2 inches) and 109.3-inch wheelbase are identical to the outgoing car’s. Head-, shoulder-, and legroom are up by fractions of an inch for front passengers, although some measurements shrink a bit for folks in the back.
When we drove a 1984 Datsun Maxima and heard a recorded voice chiding us to turn off the lights, we pleaded with automakers to “get over their childish fascination with the bells-andwhistles potential of automotive electronics and simply confine themselves to making cars work better.” Thirty-two years later, the 2016 Maxima remains enamored of tech gizmos. For example, swiping left on the eight-inch touch screen while in the navigation menu will make directions suddenly appear on the seven-inch screen in the instrument panel. The top-level Maxima Platinum also debuts NissanConnect Services, a full suite of telematics that includes remote locking, remote start, location mapping, crash alerts, maintenance reminders, and live concierge services, all accessible within the car or via a smartphone app. Four more Nissan models will see the system this year. Pricing and complimentary subscriptions haven’t been announced.
In lieu of an options list, Maxima models are now divided into five trim levels, all of which will go on sale in June. The S starts things off at $33,235—$1120 more than the outgoing model—and comes standard with navigation, those dual eight- and seven-inch touch screens, push-button start, dual-zone automatic climate control, 18-inch wheels, an eight-way power driver’s seat, and a four-way power passenger’s seat. The $35,215 SV brings leather, heated seats, power lumbar, front and rear parking sensors, and heated side-view mirrors with integrated turn signals.
Driver assist and active safety features such as forward-collision alert, auto-braking, blind-spot detection, rear cross-traffic alert, and adaptive cruise control appear on SL models ($37,715) and above. This trim level also comes with a heated steering wheel, an 11-speaker Bose stereo with active noise cancellation, and a dual-panel sunroof.
The $38,495 SR adds diamond-stitched faux-suede trim and semi-aniline leather seats, aluminum pedals, paddle shifters, 19-inch wheels, and LED low-beam headlamps. Nissan’s Around View 360-degree camera system is reserved for the top-level Platinum—strange, since it’s available on the lowly Versa. The $40,685 Platinum also gets memory settings for the driver’s seat, a power rear-window shade, rain-sensing wipers, and a Benz-style driver-drowsiness monitor.
Nissan stuffed the new Maxima with toys, but we were expecting a spicier powertrain and chassis to match the wild exterior. With 300 horsepower going to the front wheels, torque steer is a major concern, and while it’s somewhat tolerable on a hot hatch, it’s really not acceptable on an upscale car that will crest $40,000. Even if the Maxima can’t fool us that it’s a sports car, it will probably fool the neighbors into thinking that you’re living modestly with a Nissan sedan when you’re in fact living in high-tech style.