Minima

Neither strayed much for several generations. The Maxima gained a VQ engine, first a 3.0-liter and later a 222-hp 3.5-liter in its early 2000s fifth generation. The styling, not as crisp and focused as the fourth-gen archetype, at least continued to visually convey the Maxima’s mission as Nissan’s sporty yet comfortable flagship.

The Altima emerged from a nondescript second-gen larval stage into, arguably, the most compelling mid-sizer of the 2000s. The third-generation L31 Altima debuted in 2001 as a crisp handsome car with (for the time) adventurously stylish taillights–clear outer elements with colored, round interior lenses. At the time, it was thought mainstream buyers would be repulsed by anything with adventurous styling; the Altima was considered daring even if it looks anodyne today.

And more importantly, the Altima got the VQ-series V6, in big-bore 3.5-liter guise. Making two-hundred-forty horsepower. The Altima was a sleeper in both conception and execution. And it was reasonably entertaining to drive, being slightly larger than its competitors but no heavier. The SE-R trim added a few visual and honest performance improvements to the mix, with (much) stiffer suspension and a few extra horsepower, finally backing up the Altima’s power-to-dollar appeal with a well-regarded legitimate sport variant.

It seemed as if, for a moment, Nissan could have redefined its entire sales proposition around a remarkable combination of attributes. The Altima was powerful, handsome, and potentially sporty. The Murano, just a year away and featuring remarkably compelling styling as well as a powerful VQ engine and additional crossover utility, bolstered the argument. Style, power, value.

Nissan approached this opportunity to boldly differentiate itself by carefully placing the Maxima on the ground like a rake and stepping on it. The Altima’s improvement and the Murano’s introduction significantly encroached on the Maxima’s core mission. Nissan responded by changing the Maxima’s mission, making the next generation more luxurious but still muscular, and also hobbling it with profoundly weird styling. Weird is a tightrope walk at best, and Nissan did not execute well.

There was, in my mind, a consistent and worthy case that the Altima could have made to consumers. Better than average power—gutsiness, muscle—at a better-than-average price point. That is a digestible sales pitch, and one that you can see the RAV4 Hybrids making in recent years with some success in a different niche. The Altima might not have needed to evolve into a crossover to survive, but given the addition of all-wheel drive in recent years, it might have moved into an adventure-oriented space as a fastback Outback or Crosstrek competitor, giving the company some sorely needed lifestyle vehicle credibility without too much overlap with the Rogue and Kicks.

The Maxima’s alternate history is less clear to me. The Maxima only briefly matched the promise of its branding. Perhaps it’s a testament to the appeal of that 4DSC pitch at that moment in time that enthusiasts even mourn the Maxima nameplate today. 

Putting myself in that group, it’s also worth understanding the ways in which the enthusiast mindset does and does not move the levers of product development. Our voice is much larger than our actual economic leverage, and enthusiast desires often conflict starkly with more influential interests. Dealership franchise owners, for example. 

Sometimes a company guides its consumers. Ergonomic controls designed by behavioral scientists; the automaker and its experts have leveraged the scientific process to lead you to an interior with benefits that must be articulated to you proactively. Like broader cultural trends, corporate focus shifts. We’re in a moment in which automakers seem to be chasing a prototypical consumer yearning for both novelty and also comforting rationality. 

It’s why model naming schemes are revised when the old one no longer tracks; the notion that the consumer wants to know which one is “the best, the most” at a glance. It’s why most models within a brand’s range no longer have unique styling; instead, it’s a common corporate design interpreted in several sizes and variations. And it’s almost certainly why physical control inputs have been largely replaced by capacitive and touchscreen interfaces, despite solid evidence of their detrimental effect on driver focus.

If Nissan is chasing its forward-looking consumer archetype, which I’d argue it is and has been for several model cycles, the decision to drop the Maxima after the 2023 model year makes sense. And unlike the Altima, I have difficulty imagining how the Maxima’s form factor could evolve in a way that benefitted Nissan on the whole. But I also can’t help but feel that if Nissan had been able to stave off the Maxima’s identity crisis until the present, the easiest possible differentiation might have been to give the Maxima a high-performance hybrid all-wheel-drive system.

Changing the model’s trajectory would have required a clear vision and at least two product cycles—and Nissan’s financial troubles, executive drama, and internecine conflicts between Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance members didn’t help.

At this time, there’s no clear indication of the future that the Altima might have. If it merely continues on, coasting as many older Nissan models do, it may follow the Maxima into oblivion eventually. Know that it didn’t have to end like this. No nameplate is sacred, but Altima and Maxima used to mean something. The slow hollowing out of that meaning wasn’t just an avoidable tragedy, it was an opportunity squandered.