The long awaited full-size 2016 Nissan Maxima was revealed at the New York International Auto Show, taking is place as the new sedan flagship for the brand.
And as expected it receives the latest bold and artistic styling that has been seen on Nissan’s most recent products. But the Maxima is the 4-Door Sports Car, so it was bold to begin with.
On paper, competes with Toyota Avalon, Ford Taurus, and Chevrolet Impala, but the Maxima is decidedly skewed to a younger audience. And with its new design, this will likely continue.
Up front it has what Nissan calls a V-Motion front end with new signature LED boomerang running lights. The front fenders are largely sculpted upward in a way that will give them a distinct presence from behind the wheel.
Around the side you see the latest floating roof design that seems to be popular with Japanese brands this year. The rear doors kick-up into the C-pillars in a way that actually channels some Datsun sedan designs from the 1970’s.
For 2016 the Maxima grows 2.2-inches longer and is 1.3-inches lower but Nissan says is 82 pounds lighter and offers 25 percent more torsional rigidity. While it is a significantly large car, the proportions of its new styling make it look smaller than it really is.
Under the hood is significantly updated version of the venerable 3.5 liter VQ-Series V6. Nissan says it has over 60 percent new parts content. Up 10 horsepower from the current Maxima it now has an even 300 horsepower and is said to offer up 30 mpg highway.
The engine will offer a spirited new sound with a combination of active noise cancellation to weed out the undesirable, and active sound enhancement to amplify the good. This means when pushing its limits, you will be rewarded with a soundtrack engineered in the sound lab.
Performance minded drivers might grouse however it is still only offered with Nissan’s Xtronic constantly variable transmission. After all, not many sports cars come with a CVT. It does have a new D-Step shift logic however which seeks to mimic a more traditional transmission and has paddle shifters to help play the game.
The all-new interior also plays its game with a truly more premium look and feel. On the top-grade models there is acres of soft touch materials with contrast stitching to feast your eyes upon. Available two tone leather treatments also bring a distinct sports car vibe not found in competitors.
Its center stack gets Nissan’s latest generation 8-inch touch-screen infotainment system with standard NissanConnectSM with navigation, SiriusXM suite, Google Online and several other services. A 7-inch display in the instrument cluster works in tandem the touch-screen to provide information to the driver.
Like almost all new cars this year, driver-assistance features are the new hotness. It will offer virtually all of the stuff including forward collision warning and braking, rear cross traffic alert and blind spot warnings just to name a few.
The all-new 2016 Nissan Maxima will arrive in dealerships this summer with a starting price of $32,410.
