Nissan Altima - 2006 Review

Let's first talk cheap. If you want a cheap car that's big (it's as big as the Volvo S80 that my neighbor has), you could have a stripped down version for well under $20K - new.

If you want the extras, the price, of course, rises, but not that much. For around $25K (sticker minus standard rebate), you'll get alloy wheels (who cares?), a 6 CD Bose sound system, leather interior, sunroof, butt warmers, auto lights, auto temp control, and some other stuff that I don't use. That's a pretty good package at a pretty good price. In this range, you have few competitors. The Toyota Camry, Mazda 6, and Honda Accord will be about $5K more and there are a host of American cars (to me, lesser quality) at the same price.

You'll have plenty of interior room, including decent back seat room that is uncommon at this price. You'll also get some well-designed interior items like two outlets for a phone or whatever else you'd plug into a cigarette lighter, ample storage space for CDs and such, a well-designed cup holder (you can actually remove the cup holder and put it in the dishwasher!), and sizable trunk space.

Nissan made a lot of these that year so there's considerable wiggle room at the bargaining stage, so you might shave another grand or two off the price in the final negotiation, especially now at the "big drop" used price stage.

At the top of the line for this model is the 6 cylinder engine. When you get into this range, you're in the price range of some formidable competition, such as the aforementioned Camry and Accord. If you really want 6, I'm not so sure the Altima is for you as you're now in the range of the Maxima, in addition to the Accord and Camry, and you're beginning to get in the range of those fancy German and Swedish cars that everyone pays a premium for.

Versus the German and Swedish cars, the Altima does well, if you consider price. Here's what you'll give up... the Altima STILL does not have antilock brakes or side airbags. (It does have a steel bar in the doors which will help you out in a side-impact crash, but it still doesn't have those airbags or those antilock brakes that are so important.)

The 05 model is a re-design and it looks rather like a "pimp" car. Put a plush velvet interior in there and put on your zoot suit. I feel funny driving it!

As for performance, let's be real. If the car accerlates to 100 mph in 2 seconds, that's nice but you'll never do that if you're sane... you'll burn the tires, break the law, and look like a teenager. The 4 cylinder that I have does just fine. It gets me around the city with no probs and given a normal entrance ramp, it will enter a freeway at the speed you want, provided no one is in front of you. The car is fast and performs well at high speeds. It gets to those speeds better than the car in front of you, usually, even with the a/c blasting. At 80 (the max I've driven it), it feels like 60. Nice.

The ride and handling have been just fine. It's comfortable. The controls are easy to read and see. I'm a little lost on some of the readings the car gives, such as average speed (I think?) and it seems to have two trip odometers, neither of which I know how to use. It also has buttons for 3 remotes, but I can't imagine having three garage door openers - maybe one is for the TV at home? I have never been able to get any of those buttons to work.

If you push the lock/unlock buttons on the keyless entry thing it's supposed to do something. From what I understood at the dealership, some combination of pressing things there will turn off the horn when you lock the car, and another combination will roll down all the windows (but not put them up again!). Whatever. Way, way more of a learning curve than I'm willing to deal with.

I like the car, but I'm not ecstatic about it. The gas mileage is great for its class, but it's abysmal at the 23 mpg that the car itself calculates. (This car may even make coffee for all I know - it has a lot of features I never use.) My old Sentra (now rather crappy if bought new) averaged 30 and, of course, was much smaller.

I'm looking at the hybrids right now. In 2007, now that gas prices have risen dramatically, these cars with less than 30 mpg don't reflect the state of the art. 20 years on since I bought my first new car, this nice Altima gets much worse mileage than my old 86 Sentra, piece of **** that it was, and faithful friend that it still is.

I'll keep the Altima for now - it really is a nice car - but if you're in the market for a new car, can you wait 2 years? If so, you should find a wide range of hybrids with twice the mileage at probably the same cost. We had a good run of cheap gas prices and the descending mpg that went along with that, but it's time to go back to efficiency.

Some of the other issues I've had are service (but here I review the car, not dealer service), the battery died after just 2 years, the sunroof I loved so much stopped working at about the same time and the tail lights have blown. It's too soon for this kind of thing.

The Altima is supposed to go hybrid in the 2007 model year in some state. Check it out then, or wait until it hits your state in hybrid form.