Although upset that nissan killed the manual maxima. I don't quite understand, why not supply offer the manual option, but you'd have to pay extra over CVT and it would only be accessible if you actually order a maxima that's manual.?

Only reason i see nissan not doing my option is the cost that would be implied to design another drive train set up along with a set of emissions and testing it has to go through making it unprofitable in the long run due to sales of manual cars in United States.

What a shame.

 

Nissan offered manual Maximas from generation one (1981-84) through 2006, and every year, fewer folks bought them. Nissan really really tried, but by 2004, dealers would no longer accept manual Maximas from Nissan, because they could not give them away.

Making the manual an option that could be ordered would be totally unrealistic for a vehicle for which the entire production run is under 70K, and for which there is no reason to expect more than several hundred or so fun-loving recluses from bygone days to order the now inefficient manual. It will be a long time before Nissan forgets the futility they encountered in trying to push a manual Maxima for decades.

The engineering of an entirely separate drive train, testing, certification, assembly line adjustments, stocking of parts, special assembly procedure, etc, of a manual version of the low volume Maxima would be too costly for Nissan to hope to recoup through a higher purchase price. That might work with a mass-produced vehicle such as the Altima, with maybe 250K cars being built and maybe five to ten thousand or more folks buying the manual version.

Nissan has actually given us two manual playthings in our 7th gen Maxima in the form of a console manual shift option, AND a steering column paddle shift option. Not the same, I know. But still fun to play with.

The ONLY REASON we do not have a manual Maxima option is US, THE PUBLIC, who did not buy them when Nissan made them.

 

It's not entirely the buyer's fault when the AT versions of virtually all cars that offered both transmission types typically brought $800 - $1000 more gross income per sale to the dealership and ultimately in this case, Nissan. At every level, there's a vested interest in at least subtly pushing the pricier option, especially once up-selling the majority of customers to it became so easy. Shooting fish in a barrel comes to mind . . .

I am also wondering if those of us who did buy manual tranny Maximas, did so at somewhat less frequent intervals. IOW, the percentage of MT Maxima owners might always have been slightly higher than the rate at which MT cars were sold in any given year or even over a period covering several years. Small consolation though - Nissan wouldn't likely be paying a whole lot of attention, because it still has the same bottom-line implications with respect to to this year's bottom line (and possibly next year's as well). I'll bet Nissan didn't (doesn't?) mind getting the benefit of MT Maxima owner enthusiasm, though.


Norm

 

And part of the blame may need to go to dealers, also. From talking to the man who owns the two dealerships closest to me (this conversation was back around 2004), he said he would not accept manual Maximas from Nissan because, on average, they sat on his very crowded lot and occupied a parking space three times as long as the average automatic tranny Maxima, and he usually had to let them go at cost in order to clear the needed parking space.

On the other hand, it is tough to blame the dealer when all he is trying to do is make the most efficient use of what he has. Many dealers are locked into lots that were established decades ago, when Nissan had only a few models. These lots are now surrounded by other businesses, so there is no expansion room. These days, a representative selection of around 18 totally different Nissan vehicles need to be crowded onto that same lot. That does not work in favor of any low-volume seller, such as the manual Maxima would be.

I think we don't have a manual Maxima for a combination of reasons:

1. - Traffic is now horrible in many areas, taking away much of the fun of a manual.
2. - The Maxima is now an upscale, lower production volume car, making producing a manual version an economic loser.
3. - More Maximas are being used as family sedans these days, so if anyone in the family doesn't like (or can't drive) a manual, the the manual version is not an option.
4. - A smaller percentage of the general population knows how to drive a manual than at any time since automobiles were first made.
5. - With gas prices near all-time highs, folks are into maximizing fuel efficiency, and the manual tranny is no longer the MPG leader.
6. - Upcoming government requirements for ever higher fuel efficiency have driven manufacturers to CVTs and 7, 8, and (soon) 9 speed automatics in an effort to squeeze out every possible boost to MPG. Most folks understand having a 7, 8 or 9 speed manual is not practical.

In view of all these listed reasons, auto manufacturers understand the manual will soon be nothing more than a plaything for drivers who love to shift, or a holdover for drivers who thoroughly mastered the manual a long time ago, and like to be able to feel they have full control over what is going on with their car. I think the 'fun to shift' group will still be around for years to come, but the 'master shifters' group will gradually die out as us oldtimers pass on.

Nissan is actually aware of those many manual fans of bygone generation Maximas, so gave us the option of 'shifting' a tranny that has no gears by either a console shift lever or a steering-mounted set of paddles. Beginning in '04, they also added a compression brake feature, in that letting the foot completely off the accelerator when starting downhill causes the car to use engine compression to hold speed down.

The manual Maxima is in sort of the same situation as the rotary dial telephone. Brings back memories, and some folks enjoy the positive feel of the rotary action. But companies will no longer get rich making them. Sadly, manuals will eventually go the way of 78 RPM records recorded only on one side, ice boxes that required that blocks of ice be added daily, magneto-sidecrank style phones, black-and-white TVs, and clothes wringers mounted on top of washing machines.

Life moves on, and some of us are forcibly dragged kicking and screaming along with it.

 

very true, both my 97 Maxima 5spd and my 96 I30T 5spd were dealer specials sold at the very end of the model year or in next year as the I30 was. Obviously the dealers really had a tough time selling manual trans Maximas.
Unfortunately I've also seen that when the dealer had people interested in manual trans Maximas, they demanded such a premium earlier in the model year it made no sense to buy them. When the 2k2 6spds came out it was tough to find a dealership willing to work out any kind of reasonable price. The dealers I went to were demanding above list price for them at the time.

I also feel Nissan didn't market the manual trans cars very well, most people I know never knew they were available and even a few sales people had no idea they were made. Not to say this would create a huge difference.

 

carnalc30 - I can't disagree with anything you said. It was not usually easy to buy a manual Maxima, even when Nissan was making them. There were seldom more than a few manuals on the lot, which meant ordering in order to get exactly what we wanted, and dealers do not usually negotiate nearly as well on a vehicle that has to be special ordered. Dealers certainly did not go out of their way letting folks know the manual was an option, unless they had one they were trying to get rid of.

When a new generation arrives, many dealers demand full MSRP plus 'document fees', etc, etc, until the first wave of 'must have' buyers has been serviced, and selling gets more difficult. The Nissan sticker plus the dealer 'add on' sticker on my loaded '09 totaled over $43,000, and had I bought it in June 2008, they would have gotten somewhere near that amount. But when I negotiated with them six months later, I got that car for $34,600.

Timing really does make a difference with car buying.

 

It has been a long time, but when I bought my '95 Maxima GXE back in '95, the Auto trans was a $1000 option.

Like Light always says, a manual in traffic is no fun at all. I'm perfectly happy leaving it in regular mode, or if I want to use "gears", I switch to Sport mode, use the paddles, or even use the Sport shift mode (move the shift **** up and down).

 

Same here. When I reached the 800 shifts per AM and 800 shifts per PM level going to and from my office (35 miles of gridlock each way), I understood my 5 speed manual Datsun 200SX was no longer the fun it once was. That was in fall of '84, and I immediately bought the first of two '85 Maximas I owned. And yes, the automatic was an extra cost option way back then.

I use the manual overrides on my '09 a lot on long, steep mountain descents. Saves lots of wear and tear on the braking system, and gives safer control of the car.

 

My CVT just went out on me at 50,000 miles. Thank God the warranty was good unitl 120,000. I personally do not like that tranny and regret getting the vehicle. Other than that the car is fine and fast as hell.

 

I've heard nothing about Nissan discontinuing CVT. I believe it is baseless hearsay. On the contrary, they are rolling it out to more vehicles.

The 2013 Altima V6, same HP as the 2012, appears to be appreciably faster through nothing but transmission tweaks.

I expect the next Maxima, which we should be seeing quite soon, will be quite quite quick. It will have the CVT still, but surely benefiting from the benefits of the Altima's changes.

 

This is true the 2013 Altima has the CVT and they tweaked it to make it quicker... but we will have to see if this is really true I was talking with a salesmen at my Dealership and he was telling me all about it because they had a demo one on the lot just for the workers I asked if I could see it and they said they weren't allowed to show it to the general public at that time this was about a month ago

 

i hardly ever use my CVT option on my Maxima... i always have my shifter set to the sport setting because it revs faster when its on the sport setting. the CVT was cute for about two weeks until i found that sport setting. now i dont leave home without it...

 

You are correct that the rumored demise of the CVT is hearsay.

I would think you are also correct that the 8th generation Maxima will be quicker than the 7th gen.

But the 7th gen will have a six year run, so we will not be seeing the 8th gen Maxima soon. We can expect the 8th gen in spring of 2014 as the 2015 model.

 

The sport setting is definitely more fun. I sometimes play with it too.

I'm sure you are aware that the simple 'drive' setting gives the CVT its best performance with quicker elapsed time in timed runs, as well as higher fuel efficiency with better MPG. It does those things by eliminating the effect of a shifting tranny, as the point of every shift gives a split second where the engine is running and using gas, but as the gears are shifting, the car is not accelerating.

This was proven in actual track tests by posters here back when the 7th gens first came out. If we think about it, this makes perfect sense.

But there are times when having a little fun makes life a little more bearable, and that calls for the sport setting.

 

You think no chance it's a 2014 model?

 

You are asking if the 2014 model year Maxima could possibly be the introduction of the 8th generation? I say no, because Nissan has as much as hinted that the 7th gen would run for 6 model years.

With the malaise in car sales that set in right as the 7th gen was introduced in summer of '08, most folks familiar with how Nissan operates knew it would be at least five or six years before the 8th gen Maxima would arrive. The way this resession is still hanging on insures the 7th gen production will last through 6 model years.

We can look at the normal phases for a new Maxima generation release:

New generation Maximas are usually preceeded by lots of hype the summer before the release, which is followed by rumors in car mags, becomes wild speculation on the internet, resulting in a few supposed 'spy shots' of a heavily comouflaged 'new Maxima', followed by Nissan releasing a few teaser shots of just a few sections of the new generation (always includes a view of the headlight assembly), introduction of the new generation Maxima in a national car show, followed by the cranking up of the Smyrna assembly line producing the new gen Maxima, followed by the official release to dealers sometime in the March to June period.

Nissan does an excellent job of keeping new generation vehicles under cover until their public intro. If you tour their Smyrna plant, no cameras or phones of any type are allowed anywhere near the assembly line.

By this time next summer, this board will be alive with speculation on the 8th gen Maxima. Will there be a hybrid? Will Nissan go with a supercharged 4-banger? Will there be a diesel option? The only things we can be sure of at this point are that the power will come through the efficient and proven CVT, there will be no manual tranny, the elapsed time to 60 will be the best yet for a production Maxima, the stance will be slightly widened for sportier handling, and the styling will be ahead of its time (it always is with the Maxima).

 

Sportier handling may actually be a fortunate side benefit . . . Third paragraph here for what the real reason might be.


Norm

 

Wow! I would never have suspected that an obscure relation between footprint size and CAFE standards would have had anything to do with widening the stance on the generation 8 Maxima. And here I had been thinking Gohsn had simply developed a craving for a spirited road car.

I am betting CAFE standards and footprint size will never be mentioned when Nissan begins bragging about giving the 8th gen Maxima a wider stance for better slalom times and better road performance. Good old 'truth in advertising' at its non-best.

 

Actually, slalom times vs wider track is a mixed bag. All else the same, a wider car needs to be capable of higher lateral acceleration than a narrower one just to maintain the same run time through any given slalom. The peak lateral acceleration that is experienced at the extreme lateral positions increases as a function of how far those positions lie from the course centerline, which comes back to how wide the car is (and how wide the cones are and how good you are at just barely missing them). It's a calculus thing involving sine curves as the approximate path that the car CGs follow.


Norm

 

Norm - Precisely! You never cease to amaze me. Makes perfect sense. The position of the center of gravity of the car running the slalom will of necessity be running wider tracks to each side if the overall width of the car is wider. That will require sharper turns at each cone.

But we have to admit that the term 'wider stance' has a nice ring to it, and will be used as a marketing ploy. Also, having the car stay more level in high speed turns can sometimes make us feel more in control. A wider stance probably actually helps in situations where a sharp curve is not followed immediately by a curve in the other direction. But, as you correctly pointed out, a wider stance doesn't automatically mean better slalom times.

It is nice to know the likely underlying reason for the wider stance we might see on the 8th gen Maxima.

 

Yup. I'll even bet that there's a couple of guys still working at Nissan who remember slogans like "longer, lower, wider" and "wide track Pontiac".


Norm

 

There are quite a few folks in the county where I live that collect old cars, completely restoring them to their original looks and performance. I see them on the road almost every day, with whitewalls half a foot thick gleaming from tires that stick up from the rim around around nine inches. It is breathtaking to see close-up just how wide, long and low-slung some of those late 1950s and early 1960s vehicles were. At the time those cars came out, I knew they were quite large, but I had forgotten just how utterly huge and unwieldy they actually were.

Vehicles of those earlier eras were often 'under-tired', in that, although the tires were rated to carry the weight of the car, those 84 profile tires meant that, wide stance or not, you never wanted to take those boats into a sharp curve with any speed. I had a '66 Olds Delta 88 with every option. It weighed 4300 pounds, and felt like it took 400 feet to stop from 60 MPH. That thing scared me half to death more than once.

I owned several Pontiacs in the 1950s and 1960s. I guess they are all in 'wide track heaven' now.

I will be surprised if the 'widened stance' of the 8th gen Maxima is as much as 2" wider than the 7th gen.

 

It should be wider, or at least accentuate the coke bottle form a bit more, at least to differentiate from the Altima, which is almost a copy of the Maxima aside from a few things here and there.

Most of us are not auto-crossing our cars, so the sine formulas are not a factor.

 

But you might have to make the same sort of maneuver dodging truck tire treads in the summer . . . pretty much a 3-cone 65 mph slalom maneuver by the time you're back in your own lane past the debris. BT,DT.

Norm

 

Just about everything including the CVT. The engine purrs and sounds beautiful. The CVT makes this car unique in the premium car world and I love the way she never shifts but simply goes quick. I remember the first day I drove in crowded interstate traffic, cruising at 45ish when two semis boxed me in. They must have been attracted by the shiney new max with a drive out tag or something, you know, kinda like when you park in the Walmart parking lot way in the open back with a new car and come out to find it covered up with rusty wreaks, so I pushed down the gas and I was gone in an instant without any wait for a downshift, just gone.

I like how the CVT never shifts from standing starts, to me this is progress and I was looking for a premium car that was very progressive in a meaningful way, like body design and internals rather than electronic bling, and the Max is it.

I have a 2012 S with the limited edition package. A lot for 750 dollars I think.

 

And if you want the electronic bling it offers a lot of that too.

 

If you visit auto ratings web sites such as Consumers Reports, Edmonds etc. you will find that the CVT gets good reliability ratings. This is the trend of the future even the 2013 Honda Accord which is known for its legendary reliability will have a CVT for the 4 cylinder model because they are more gas efficient. Fortunatly Nissan had enough time to debug the CVT and is leading in this field

 

Well said. The CVT is still not perfect, but is has come a long way, and Nissan does seem to have one of the best CVTs of any manufacturer. As I have often said here (maybe too often?), the CVT could be the primary tranny of our future.

 

Checked with Consumer Reports which indicates that from 2008 and on the transmission has been much better than average. Prior years had issues. One problematic item that pops up after a year or two is power equipment. I suppose that this is the electric steering wheel column motor which has been mentioned a few times.

 

Hate it because it restricts the engine too much... Love everything about the car except for the tranny

 

Isn't your complaint more about you noticing that engine rpm is somewhat disconnected from both road speed and what you're doing with the throttle pedal?

IOW, isn't it really a matter of perception?


On edit, give it a little time. Particularly the last paragraph in this post. I hope that light doesn't mind me using this earlier post of his.

Maybe read a little more of this thread. Never know what you might find out . . . or where others stand on this technology.


Norm

 

I am in my late thirties. I drive to and from somewhere on a daily basis. I do not race anyone, as I never ask some to race me or have been asked to race someone. I drive aggressively and faster than most people. I drive in New York City and then take long drives to South Carolina. I have never had a more versatile transmission in my life. I put it it sport and get it done, and I can also cruise down the hwy at 80 mph and sip on fossil fuels.

Would I like a dual clutch in my car? Maybe however I love what I have and that's why I dropped 35.5k on a car.

 

What is the gear ratio range for the 7th gen CVT?
Does it range from 3:1 down to 0.5:1?

 

Does anyone know how long the warrant is for the 09 and new model CVT? I know the 07 and 08 were until 120,000 miles but not sure on the newer ones. I heard 60,000 somewhere.

 

The '09 and '10 Maximas have a ten year/120K warranty on the CVT. Nissan did that to reassure prospective buyers who might be doubting the CVT. Once the '09 and '10 Maximas proved the CVT was reliable, Nissan dropped the CVT warranty back to the normal 5 year/60K miles for the '11, '12 and '13.

I still remember the fun I had during my years in Arizona driving a manual. But that was over fifty years ago, and traffic in the desert of southern Arizona was very light. I just got back home from an extended road trip where I would have enjoyed a manual several times. But not around where I live. It was not fun coming home to the dismal traffic situation where I live.

 

I couldn't imagine a manual tranny in the current Max, it's a bit big and bloated for getting the right feedback to the driver. Go get an Altima Coupe with a 3.5 and the six speed.

I don't hate the CVT nor do I love it but then I've only been driving it for 2 weeks and came from a highly tuned and responsive '03 SE that had instant throttle to transmission response and would snap your head off. Change is hard but in the long run the CVT will be a better setup for longevity of the engine and the FWD components. I can't wait to take mine on a long highway run and see what kind of mileage this thing (CVT) will do on a full tank nonstop.

 

You dont' really have to have a hardcore performance car in order to enjoy it with a manual tranny. The M6 in my wife's Subaru Legacy 2.5GT is very much a pleasure to work with, even though the car itself is suspended relatively softly and is significantly underdamped. IOW, it's not really any more of a "4DSC" than the Maxima in that respect.

However, softly sprung will teach you to be smooth, which is a desirable end in and of itself regardless of transmission type.

Key to the M6's goodness in the LGT is that the gears are very well spaced, with only the possible exception of 2nd being a little too tall. It's enough taller than 1st to catch you off-boost where the engine goes back to being a 2.5L NA engine in a 3400-ish lb sedan - this being something that a NA 3.5L would not suffer from to nearly the same extent.


Norm

 

I've had several manuals, in two different Integras, a VW GTI (that was a FUN one), a 93 Max... but none were as big as the 2012 Max. I don't know, just seems too big of a car to be that busy shifting all the time. Just my opinion.

 

The CVT in the 13 Max hasn't been upgraded to the Altima's Xtronic CVT unfortunately. We will see a redesign next year along with the Murano, Versa Hatch, and I believe the Titan. Maxima will be a complete redesign, wouldnd't it be nice to see a 3.7L in there?

 

The redesigned (8th generation) Maxima will be the 2015 model, which should arrive in spring/early summer of 2014. As to the 3.7L, government fuel efficiency requirements take another step up in 2015, and we may be seeing the beginning of the end of high-powered gas-sucking engines that have been so much fun for over fifty years.

It will be very interesting to see how Nissan approaches the EPA fuel requirement issue with the Maxima. Having less power is against everything the Maxima has always stood for. Maybe a supercharged or turbo four banger that gets 35 MPG when cruising, but can generate around 300 HP when needed? I don't see much need for over 300 HP in a FWD family sedan.