Jack Baruth Ranks Nissan Maximas

Finally a good post on t so-called tac, worthy of a re-posting here.

Jack Baruth, the automotive dude, writer and racer extraordinaire, ranks the Nissan Maximas. 

Awesome post, good writing too (if a bit stream of consciousness).

A couple of months ago, our own Mark Stevenson drove the eighth-generation Maxima. He was neither particularly enthusiastic nor needlessly cruel when discussing Nissan’s big sedan. I have yet to drive the Max myself so I have, as of yet, no opinion. However, I have driven all of the previous cars at one point or another between 1988 and 2013. I also have something to say about the Maxima’s true relevance to Nissan, and I’ll be saying that in my next “No Fixed Abode” column. As a warmup for that, then, I thought I’d reacquaint you, and myself, with the history of the Maxima. And since this is the Internet, we might as well rank them, right?

Seventh (And Last) Place: Gen 7 (2008-2014)

It was the last of Maximas, it was the worst of Maximas. When I drove one up the California coast in 2013, I thought it was born to be a rental car. Like its sixth-gen predecessor, this was essentially an Altima Plus. The VQ35 remained a stout engine but it no longer raises eyebrows in a world where even the outgoing Impala could be had with a 306-horsepower V6. Neither sporty nor special, the Gen 7 car wasn’t even a good alternative to an Avalon or Azera.
Sixth Place: Gen 6 (2003-2008)

This was, no doubt, the ugliest Maxima. Its signature feature, the ridiculous “Skyview” wrong-way sunroof that was different just for the sake of being useless, more or less defined Maxima’s awkward place in the Nissan lineup. Victimized by a common Nissan sedan styling theme that worked okay on the Altima but looked bland on the Sentra and bloated when up-sized to fit a 193.5-inch car, the first Maxima to be built and exclusively sold in North America was a tepid affair indeed. So why’s it ahead of its successor on this list? Simple: for the first half of the model run, it was possible to get a six-speed manual and some reasonably sporty suspension settings. If you did that, and if you dumped the SkyView in favor of an actual sunroof, then you had a decent car. But the name “Maxima” once meant something more than decent, so this model will remain unloved by history.
Fifth Place: Gen 4 (1994-1999)

So. You’re Nissan in the early Nineties. You’ve made one of the best sports sedans in history, with the 1989 Maxima. You’re riding a wave of success measured in Additional Dealer Profit and your new 1990 300ZX is the most celebrated Japanese car in a decade. What do you do for an encore?
If you came up with the answer, “Focus on a three-sedan lineup, cut costs, remove excitement, and chase Toyota,” then congratulations! You probably actually worked for Nissan in 1992 or thereabouts. The Maxima that you wanted, the twist-axle ’94, was a cheaper, low-content version of the spectacular ’89. Its mission was to give the Infiniti G20 plenty of breathing space, and it almost succeeded at that mission.
Unfortunately, Nissan made the Seventies-GM mistake of thinking that they had no competition. They were wrong. The Camry of the era was sleeker, sportier, and sometimes faster than this Maxima, and it offered far better build quality at a lower price. The resulting sales decline would ensure that the Maxima would never again truly matter to American enthusiasts. Don’t get me wrong: a stick-shift ’95 SE is still a decent car. It’s just worse than a stick-shift ’89 SE.
Fourth Place: Gen 1 (1981-1983)

Let me describe the Datsun 810 to you, just in case you’re too young to have seen one on the move: 2.4-liter straight-six. Independent rear suspension. Manual transmission. Rear-wheel drive. So far, we’re talking a Jag S-Type, circa 1965. Reliable. Spacious. Fuel-efficient, by the standards of the day. Are you interested? Of course you’re interested. That was the 810, a bigger, more luxurious take on the Datsun 510 that had become the standard-bearer for SCCA sedan racing.
The Maxima was the same car with more luxury, more features, and even voice warning through phonograph or solid-state units. Would you’ve rather had a Celebrity Eurosport? Of course not. Again, the contemporary Cressida was probably a better car, but the Datsun had plenty to recommend it. Most importantly, it was part of the Japanese push upmarket that just five short years later would result in the Infiniti Q45. If you want to know what the pace of automotive change was in those days, just consider that: five years from 120-horsepower, bread-box Maxima to the mighty Q.
Third Place: Gen 2 (1984-1988)

This was one of the cars in which I learned to drive — my father had a five-speed ’87 in black — so I’m sentimental about this generation. But you don’t need rose-tinted glasses to respect the first Nissan to carry the Maxima name exclusively. It could run with a 300ZX all day long, thanks to sharing the non-turbo Z’s 160-horsepower engine and a similar curb weight. It was available as a stick-shift or an automatic, had all the luxury features you could want in the mid-Eighties, and if you were an early-adopter techie there was even a variant with two-tone paint and a “sonar suspension”. It cost much less than a BMW 528e but could easily hang with it on a twisty road.
It wasn’t perfect. At the time, Nissan didn’t really understand damping or even suspension geometry. The Toyota Cressida against which it competed was one of the Eternal Toyotas, while the Maxima was simply average-Japanese-Eighties build quality. They liked to rust. But the biggest problem people have with these 1984-1988 cars is that they were basically Led Zeppelin III: brilliant in their own right but overshadowed for all eternity by what came next.
Second Place: Gen 5 (1999-2003)

For the most part, this was just a facelifted fourth-gen car, continuing the Maxima’s decline into irrelevance while the competition steamed past it at full speed.
Except.
The last two years of the model featured the 255-horsepower Nissan VQ35DE and a six-speed transmission bolted to a limited-slip differential. Blam. The nice people at Car and Driver got one through the quarter-mile at 14.7 @ 97. That was exactly what a 2002 Mustang GT stick-shift could do. Now we’re talking.
The fish-mounted aesthetic wasn’t great, the interior was cheap-ish, and if you just got an automatic GXE there was really nothing to recommend a Maxima over a V6 Camry. But choose the right options, and you got a street mercenary, a mid-price sedan ready to take some scalps. And the enthusiasts of the era knew what you had. Respect was given. Had the Maxima story ended in 2003, we’d remember the car fondly. It didn’t.
First Place: Gen 3 (1989)

All hail the 4DSC. The comparo-test killer. The back-road Baryshnikov. The car where the gauges magically switched from black-on-white to white-on-black at night. Smooth as a soap bar. Upscale like a Q45 inside and out. To see one was to want one. To drive one was to hate your current car. About as fast as the five-liter, entry-level IROC-Z of the era, the ’89 SE was light on its feet. Every control effort was matched. Every detail was sweated. I drove one in my youth and couldn’t believe that it was, truly, as good as they said it was. The Infiniti G20 and M30 of the time did not measure up.
For just a quartet of shining years, the Maxima was probably the best affordable sedan in the world. At least the best one sold here. It made no excuses, inside or out. It was so good that it continues to shine its light on five hapless generations after it. The “4DSC” moniker was resurrected by Nissan for the new one but that’s like them calling the Lumina coupe the Monte Carlo SS. There won’t be another one like this one.
Why not? Well, that’s a simple question with a depressingly simple answer. The 1989 Maxima SE sold to a particular kind of person. He was in his thirties, successful, interested in back-road dynamics, able to drive a stick-shift well, captivated by the Max’s sleek yet basic look. He wasn’t brand-obsessed. He would pay for quality. He didn’t buy more car than he really needed.
That buyer is long gone. Today’s 30-somethings with money to burn lease Bimmers instead of buying Nissans. I suppose the Lexus IS350 gets those buyers too but the IS is an automatic-only rocketship, not a finely-balanced dance partner. As the economy continues to crater, the buyers are getting older and older. All of a sudden the Avalon looks like a nice choice. And the Azera is nice. That Cadenza — oooh, very stylish. Who would buy a car that needed a skilled hand and a back road to truly shine? Who would buy it from the same place your maid service gets its Versa Notes?
They didn’t last. They rusted and wore out and nobody preserved them the way you’d preserve a Ferrari or even a Z-car. Today, the 1989 Maxima is mostly a creature of the imagination. But how it still shines, dear reader, in mine!