My Mother's Altima

My mother recently purchased a 1995 Nissan Altima with 55,000 miles on it. It is champagne colored and has really good looks.

After she bought it, she let me take it down to Detroit for a few days.

This car does not have a very smooth ride compared to my Intrepid (see my newly updated review), and the back seat is quite lacking in room, but these are things to be expected in a car of this class. Also the 2.4L I-4 is quite noisy, again something to be expected of any 4 cylinder, especially when compared to larger engines.

One thing that particularly impressed me was the extremely efficient engine cooling system. We sat idling in a crowded parking lot for over an hour and that heat gauge DID NOT MOVE. Whether its running on the highway or idling for long periods of time, the engine always keeps a constant temperature. As someone who drives an American car, I find that nothing short of miraculous! My car's gauge moves to about halfway, then i hear the radiator kick on, and then it goes back down, then it kicks off, and the cycle begins anew.

One thing that should have been considered is increasing the gas tank size. It becomes extremely tedious and annoying to have to fill up twice a week, but its kind of justified when you can fill it up from bone dry for $15. We put mid-grade in it, however, and the needle seemed to go down a lot slower.

Many people I know with Nissans have pushed them over 200,000 miles, some even over 250,000. This car is one of the better investments out there and I strongly recommend it for any single person or small family.