,
The new Maxima is really ugly. The front end is even more horrible than the side profile. Even though for the most part, the Maxima line has looked good from the beginning, this one looks like something an old person might buy- an old person who doesn't like cars at all. The age of the Japanese Supercar was born with the Nissan Twin Turbo Z32 300ZX, kicking the crap out of Porsche and Ferrari offerings with better quality and performance for a fraction of the price. Soon the MKIV Supra, the Acura NSX, the FD Mazda RX-7 and even the Mitsubishi 3000GT were amazing car enthusiasts everywhere with blazing performance, quality, and good pricing.
On the economy car side, there were cool cars like the Acura Integra, the Celica GT-S, the Sentra SE-R, the Civic Si and others that were cheap, good looking and really fun cars to drive. These are the cars that many of us loved, grew up with and even now still covet.
Then, the Japanese economic bubble burst. The white hot “economic miracle” Japanese economy fueled by sky-high stock and real estate prices born on crazy speculation, crashed in spectacular fashion. This threw the country into the still ongoing “lost decades” of recession. With the bubble economy, the Japanese car market imploded as well.
I witnessed this first hand. As a Nissan employee, I started working under the famous Mr K. He made it a point and walk around the company and personally tried know as many of the 1400 employees as he could by face. On business trips, I sometimes ran into Mr K. at the airport and guess what, he flew coach like the rest of us.
Mr K loved cars, loved Nissan and loved his employees. He also really understood that the cars had to please the customer. He fought many battles to improve Nissans and to make them better suited to the US market. He had the reputation as a troublemaker in Japan, not a yes man.
This is the Civic Si that most of us wanted and admired- even if you hated the Honda scene. Nice, understated and clean styling, peppy performance, good quality and nimble handling. It was reasonably priced as well. It still looks good now. I would rather have one of these than any Honda currently built.At the time, Kume was the President of Nissan Japan and under him, the corporate mission statement was called 0190. This meant that Nissan was striving to be the top auto manufacturer by 1990. During this time, just about all of the great Nissans that we all love to this day were designed and produced.
The game-changing R32 Skyline GT-R and Z32 Twin turbo Z, the S13 Silvia or 240SX, the G50 Q45, the J30 Maxima, the WD21 Pathfinder and even the B13 Sentra were all great cars of this period. Nissan quality was high, and Nissan's Opama plant was touted as the highest quality and most efficient automotive plant in the world.
Then the bubble burst; Mr. K. and Kume retired, the company suffered from both a meteorically declining Japanese economy, and increasingly insipid and incompetent leadership. The products started to suck and so did sales. Carlos Ghosn appeared, cut costs and saved the company from bankruptcy.
Unfortunately, the cost-cutting and decontenting have reflected heavily upon the quality of the cars and the coolness of the product. Nissan lost their way and the last few generations of Nissan reflect upon that with a lack of boldness, performance, quality, and innovation.
Today's Nissan is a chintzy, cheap car. The JD Powers IQS quality rankings are in the toilet, and the latest JD Powers numbers have Infiniti second to last, just above Fiat. Nissan's current products lack appeal. Other than the GT-R and maybe the 370Z, there isn't a single Nissan that I or any of my friends would even consider owning.
Even the awesomely performing GTR is heavy and ugly. The 370Z does not offer great performance for the price. Z buyers are getting Mustangs and Camaros instead and even the base V6 Mustang or Camaro has better performance in many ways. The rest of the Nissan lineup is boring nondescript sedans with class trailing performance and so-so quality.
9 comments
I agree that Japanese cars are really garbages.
Japanese cars are inferior to European cars/
Boycott Japanese cars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
very true
You are the stupidest person in the world. If It was not for Japan, the oil crisis could of never ended. THE S2000, SUPRA OR NSX WOULD OF NEVER CAME OUT.
Maybe you have zero reading comprehension.
The sale of Japanese cars in the United States cost us 60 billion in our trade deficit.
I grew up in Japan, and believe that a lot of Japanese cars “were” reliable. But with the current technology and improvements in the automotive industry, the average car is just as reliable. So, what has Japan done to improve their competition. US and European cars out perform Japanese cars in power, comfort, handling; even Korean cars are bumping up their game to be more competitive while Japan progress has dramatically slowed down. Sure Japan has GTR, new Fairlady, Lexus’s (which every model looks the same) but still does not stand up to the US muscle car,, and Mercedes GT63s, BMW M8 competition (to name a few brand/car), even some of the Kia and Genesis flagship price point give better bang for the buck then Japanese cars. Another thing I hate is that Japan has a monopoly on US, and European cars imported into Japan, some Korean cars are not permitted into Japan for sale (eliminate the competition), The price of all import cars into Japan is literally double the MSRP (including foreign Dealerships in Japan). I under there are cost for shipping and taxation, but really? The Math is MSRP x 2 = price of import cars in Japan. It’s sad that the average person in Japan can’t afford to buying an imported car and end up buying a Japanese cars. I wonder what would happen if Europe and US did the same math for Japanese cars sold outside of Japan.
all jap cars are junk. I don’t hate myself enough to drive one or worse think of owning one. Domestic cars are great. Why on gods green earth would anyone think the pieces of crap made overseas are better than home made cars. Some people are simply too stupid to know what is good for them. We were forced into a war with japan and won. why support their stinking car industry. Let them keep the crap they make in japan where it belongs.
Well domestics sucked amazingly badly in the 80’s and 90’s, they had to improve a lot or the vastly superior Japanese cars of the time would have put them out of business. In fact they did put a lot of the GM brands out of business.
you are not alone bro I hate japan car/automotive too even for their history ww2 to nasty to write, the only reason why because japan very dominant in our market share imagine you have 273 million people and 95% all of them market share owned by japan, they do monopolies! with increase price but decrease quality even their car are shit garbage, overprice and underpower