Archive for the ‘Maxima’ Category

A couple of months ago, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety conducted fender-bender tests on a handful of minicars and subcompacts. The results weren't encouraging, with most scoring poorly, and only a few landing in the "acceptable" range. Now, the IIHS has conducted a second battery of tests -- this time on midsize sedans -- and unfortunately, the majority of those underperformed expectations, too.

Models tested included the 2009 Honda Accord, the 2009 Hyundai Sonata, the 2009 Mazda 6, and 2009 Nissan Maxima. According to the IIHS, each of those models showed improvement over its 2007 version, but none earned a rating of "good",...

If you want to get an automatic transmission—as most car shoppers prefer—on a Nissan, you'll most likely end up with a CVT. That's, to put it as simply as possible, a belt-and-pulley system rather than gears and hydraulics.

Nissan has just announced that the CVT it uses across most of its lineup in place of conventional automatic transmissions will soon get some important drivability and performance improvements.

Relative to the current-generation CVTs that are available in most of Nissan's car and crossover lineup, including the 2009 Nissan Cube, plus the Nissan Sentra, Rogue, Altima, Murano, Maxima, and some Versas, the new transmission...

The good times for Hyundai keep on rolling: J.D. Power and Associates has given top marks in its Vehicle Launch Index to the 2009 Hyundai Genesis. The Index "quantifies how well new vehicle models -- including new entries to the market and all new redesigned models -- perform during the first eight months after launch." Among the many criteria that J.D. Power considers during the evaluation process are vehicle revenue, dealer gross profit, residual value, and data imported from the company's Initial Quality Study. In short, the Vehicle Launch Index offers a kind of holistic assessment of the vehicle, measuring how well it performs for the...