Ezra Dyer:The Nissan Altima in My Driveway and Its Thirst for Mayhem

Ezra Dyer|Car and DriverFrom the September/October issue of Car and Driver.A Russian guy delivered the Altima on a one-car trailer at 10 p.m. on a rainy Tuesday night. My wife, Heather, drives a lot for her job as a nurse practitioner, so her company gave her a car. That car is a Glacier White 2025 Nissan Altima 2.5 SV, its window sticker boasting of its 39-mpg EPA highway rating, five-star safety score, and all-in price of $29,375. On its way off the trailer, the delivery guy dragged the chin spoiler on the ramps, giving the vehicle its first scrape. But surely not its last, because this is a Nissan Altima, the most chaotic car on earth.Despite looking so exceedingly normal, the Altima is a magnet for anarchy. If you turn on the news and they’re reporting on a car chase, there’s a good chance it features an Altima. When you see a car rolling on four temporary spares, that’s an Altima move. Altimas get driven into lakes and through storefronts with alarming regularity. Just this morning, I saw a cop pull over an Altima. When I drove back through a few minutes later, there were two cop cars—the police handbook must require a two-to-one ratio when a stop involves an Altima.My sister-in-law used to have an Altima, and one day, she went into work and later heard a commotion about a car out in the parking lot spontaneously combusting. When her insurance company totaled the charred remains of her car, she promptly bought another Altima.Ezra Dyer|Car and DriverEzra Dyer|Car and DriverNow that we’re an Altima household ourselves, I joined the Big Altima Energy (BAE) group on Facebook to keep up with the happenings of the community. The BAE group considers the Altima the sun in the solar system of automotive bedlam, and other Nissans are simply variations of the GOAT. A Sentra is a Smalltima, a Rogue is a Talltima, and a Quest is a Y’alltima. I don’t know what you’d call a Murano CrossCab, but I’d vote for Goofballtima. Thanks to the BAE group, I’m more attuned to the miasma of turmoil that surrounds Altimas. Like, there should be a subgroup called How’d You Get That Dent?So far, Heather’s Altima experience has been resolutely uneventful. When I asked what she thought of her new ride, she said, “There’s absolutely nothing exciting about it.” But there’s nothing terrible either, except that she’s accustomed to the tinted rear glass of her Chrysler Pacifica, so the Nissan interior feels overly bright and sun scorched. To combat this, her Altima now sports stick-on window-tint panels. They are vinyl, cover about 45 percent of any given window, and are riddled with creases and air bubbles. I assume Heather bought them at Dollar General, but it’s possible that the Altima spontaneously grew them as it morphs into its final form—with one bumper half torn off, a fuzzy steering-wheel cover, and a bedazzled license-plate frame that reads “Bigfoot Doesn’t Believe in You Either.”The Altima is Heather’s third-ever company car. She started out in pharmaceutical sales for Johnson & Johnson, which gave her a Chevrolet Impala with a badge that was missing the “a” on the end. The Impal, as we called it, had few redeeming qualities, but it did have a huge trunk. If she’d ever been pulled over by a police officer who asked to search the car, there would have ensued a quick explainer on the J&J product line, vis-à-vis why the Impal’s trunk was loaded to the lid with K-Y Jelly and Tylenol PM. After that, she had a Chrysler Sebring that’s been displaced in my memory, overwritten by more important information such as the chorus to Milli Vanilli’s “Baby Don’t Forget My Number.”Ezra Dyer|Car and DriverThe Altima, by comparison, is a paragon of luxury and sophistication. It’s not bad! Okay, the continuously variable automatic transmission is bad, but most people don’t care. The rest of the car is fine enough: Apple CarPlay, 188 horsepower, automated emergency braking, LED headlights, a real spare tire. The cloth seats are plenty comfortable, and the stereo has actual volume and tuning knobs. And thankfully, the Altima has a fairly big trunk, now filled with wound-care supplies. Last year, Nissan sold 113,898 Altimas. That sounds like a lot but apparently wasn’t enough, because the Altima is dead for 2026.So, regardless of how long Heather’s company keeps its fleet cars, this Altima will be her last, and that’s kind of sad. But even without the Altima, I think we’ll always have ragged-out sedans getting up to no good. I don’t know what the next company car might be, but I’d love an excuse to join Camrys with Dented Bumpers.
Source: caranddriver.com