Ok so this morning I saw an interesting 3rd Gen...I thought it was an SE (had the dual tip mufflers, spoiler etc) but the back of the trunk where it says maxima had the red across it & the maxima was on the white underneath it....do some SE's have the red background like the GXE's?? I couldn't tell what year it was...I still haven't figured out how to do that

 

easy ways to tell SE: if you can look inside -white guages, spoiler, wheels, fogs, grille (body colored), taillights (black on SE), dual tip exhuast, black trim around windows instead of chrome on GXE (you can add a spoiler, change exhaust, rims, but few people would actually go through the trouble to change the window trim)

as for years, 89-91 has the horizontal slats across the front grille like yours (SE in body color, GXE in chrome) and the taillights-the larger top portion says MAXIMA (red for GXE, black for SE)
92-94 different grille (it's hard to describe, but I'm sure you've seen it), taillights-says MAXIMA in the bottom portion and SE/GXE difference isn't as obvious; the GXE is still red, but SE in only smoked instead of just being black

here's a pic of my 93 SE next to my 89 GXE (which had an SE spoiler on it); its crappy quality, but you can still kind of see what I'm talking about
<img src="http://www.geocities.com/craigbrace/maxima/both/b.jpg" height=375>

there are some other differences too, but these are probably the most obvious
also, you could have an SE and get a GXE taillight from a junkyard if it got broken before or somethign like that; I've seen a couple cars like that around here before

 

There are a couple ways to tell the years apart. The grille is different from 89-91/92-94. The 92-94 has a nissan emblem rather then nissan acctually spelled out in the corner of the grill. Also the 92-94 maxes have their maxima lettering on the clear part below the reflector on the trunk. All Maxes that have their maxima lettering submerged under the red reflecter were 89-91's. Thats the easiest way that I have found.

 

Thanxs guys, I think I am able to tell the years apart now..I know it was a 92+ then because the maxima letters were on the lower portion..it just looked different to me because the portion above it was red but all the options on the car made it out to be an SE

 

I have a webpage that describes the difference between the GXE and SE.

http://www.geocities.com/SkyMaxSE/specs.htm

 

cool page skymax! i wonder whether my car still does 9.1 wiath 140000 miles on it..haha. guess ill have to test it out one of these days