-Camry and Accord, they are big dogs in the car business and with the Sonata now getting a lot of headlines alongside them, Nissan must be more than little twisted, but their Altima gets quite a bit less low.
Well, let's visit the last year of the current Altima and check the tech.
The 2012 Altima is the last of the 4th generation cars due for a heavy redesign in early 2012.
the coupe has always had the far better lines, but sedans are what sell in this sector.
Tech is also something which sells, but apparently the ultimate team didn't get that mental as Altimas with the S trim level like this one have almost none.
Now, inside the Altima is nothing special, nothing awful, but nothing special.
I'm not real big on a lot of the plastic they used.
It seems to be kind of hard plastic throw back from like 10 to 15 years ago, but the rest of it okay.
It's all standard Nissan switch gear.
Here is the basic head unit, AM, FM, single optical slot, and an aux jack.
That's it.
There is no USB.
No other iPad connector.
No Bluetooth streaming, even Bluetooth is not standard on 2.5 S. You have to option that in al carte as part of the convenient package.
Now, there is a tech package that will give you a full screen, LCD, navigation system, hard drive base by the way, and that also will include DVD playback I believe and audio video input jacks replacing this audio only or in between these and the full nav is a smaller 4-inch screen premium audio package.
That's gonna get you iPad connectivity, XM satellite radio, Bose digital audio, and for some reason that's how you get in to a rearview camera in this guys as well.
If you like push button start, you're gonna love this car.
It's got it in there even if this kind of lowly price level.
If you like continuously variable transmissions you're gonna love this car because all the 4 cylinder Altima like this one have a CVT, which doesn't have actual gears, but variable pulleys with a big steel belt.
Normally, that's in low power car with very small engines for the most part.
So this car has got a pretty good size for and the CVT does work rather well.
You've got a gait over here to influence its synthetic shift points as well.
Now, the motor in front of that CVT is this guy in this 2.6 car to 2.5 liter inline 4 kind of big for 4, which you normally associate with, you know, smaller engines.
As you can see, it's front wheel drive only, transversely mounted, pretty guarding variety stuff.
No direct injection or other
tricks like turbos or such.
Delivers standard 175 horsepower, 170 foot-pounds in torque, gets this 3200-pound car to 60 in about 8.5 seconds while delivering 23 in the city and 32 on the highway according to the EPA.
Being at the Altima as well it doesn't stand on paper.
It's a very pleasant car on the road, nothing about is, you know, exciting, but it's definitely one of those cars satisfying to drive.
The power comes on nicely without a lot of that
sort of hemming and hawing that a lot of CVT used to do that lubricated with Crisco slippery crap a lot of them go through.
This one does a bite right in and takes on a gear.
It's quite.
It's buttoned down.
It's what you want for this kind of vehicle.
If you buy an inline 4 in the car Camry/Accord class, you're not looking for something that's stands out as much as really good reliable vanilla, but one thing to look for is a complete redo in early 2012 as a 2013 Altima.
So, buying one of these now is a little dicy.
I think they're gonna take it significantly upscale and borrow from maxima and really get this car to have more of a distinctive flavor that might be worth waiting for.
Pricing our 2012 Altima 2.5 S that is one trim level from the bottom their range gets you to 23,300.
As you saw inside, not a lot of tech niceties, but what I'm not gonna is that the package because I'm not that impressed by their hard drive navigation system.
Instead, I'll for the less expensive premium audio package
that will take that $1800 tech package off the plate.
Premium audio gets you all the inputs you want, the USB and iPad and things like that and Bose Audio system plus the rearview camera.
That's a good package and then I will ala carte to Bluetooth hands free for 325 and in terms of navigation, I'll just roll my own with the phone or PND.
