2016 Nissan Altima 2. 5 CVT Automatic Overview

No question about it--if you think the roads and auto parking lots are filling upwards with tall, view-blocking cars and SUVs, your eye aren't deceiving you. The particular four-door mid-size sedan, once the dominant form of family transport, has lost favor. Call it a sedan recession.

Nissan wants no part of that for its fifth-generation Montgomery County New 2016 Nissan Sentra if the sales rise of its own Murano, Pathfinder, and Rogue all terain SUVs is contributing to the sedan slide. The particular Altima is still the bestselling product in Nissan's lineup, and thus far this year, it's just forward of the Honda Contract for second-place sales honors for the reason that segment (the Toyota Camry remains number one).
Energetic Flow

The fifth-gen Altima was all-new in 2013, so this update leaves the sedan's bone fragments largely untouched. The big change is the move to "Energetic Flow" styling, which involves a more muscular front fascia, Nissan's "V-motion" grille (which looks like a grille overhanging another grille), and boomerang-shaped headlights and taillights.

The particular likely theory being that if crossovers can advertise like hotcakes, then adding some Murano visuals to the Altima should spur sales of the sedan. That doesn't stop there: Energetic Flow design is now found on the newly excited floors of the smaller and soberer Sentra and on the more expressive and expansive Maxima.

In the cabin, the 2016 Altima's refresh centers on growing available technology, as well as hushing unwanted noise with added sound insulating material and an acoustic laminated windshield. The Altima's already pleasing interior gets a Murano-inspired center stack and console, but otherwise the materials, textures, and colors from the prior model continue. Particularly welcome are the Altima's well-padded door armrests and form-fitting "zero gravity" front buckets--cloth-covered in our SV test car--that seem to be to comfortably accommodate a broad spectrum of posteriors.

Rear passengers don't get the form fitting "Zero Gravity" chairs, but ingress and egress to the Altima's aft quarters is simple at least. Backseat headroom and legroom, while not as generous as that in the Fiat Passat, are mid-size-sedan appropriate. Six-footers can ride in back without asking the front-seat occupants to scoot their chairs forward. Collapsible rear seatbacks add valuables space for long items, expanding the 15-cubic-foot shoe, which otherwise is average for the segment.

Almost all but the base Altima come with a 5. 0-inch touchscreen for infotainment. The system has useful knobs for volume and tuning flanking the display, plus a few virtual buttons on the screen and hard buttons alongside. Even better is the 7. 0-inch unit that was inside our test car--it comes with the course-plotting package, which is a $580 option on the mid-level SV and range-topping SL. The larger screen offers easier use of all of the mobile software available in the NissanConnect system. For those buyers who want the latest in linked tech, the absence of Android Auto and Apple CarPlay is a glaring omission, although The apple company users can access their phone's voice recognition through the automobile, a function called Siri Eyes Free. Nevertheless, with an industry bursting with 8. 0-, 9. 0-, and even 12. 0-inch screens, the Altima's appear small.

Skidpad grip with the SV's fuel-economy-optimized tires was a middling 0. 81 g--down from the previous Altima 2. 5 we tested in 2013. Typically the brakes inspired confidence with crisp top-of-the-pedal response, although the 192-foot stopping distance we measured from seventy mph (with some fade) is worse than the performance of its competition.