To be fair to those who do love the Max then I would say in all fairness; it's kinda like judging all people to be the same because they are of the same race............you can't ASSume that all Maximas/Nissans will be crap just because you grabbed a bad one of the rack.

I've bought a dozen bananas and just because one was bad doesn't mean that the rest of them were rotten.

 

Let me correct your analogy.

There was one (or more) bad in the rack because it was a Nissan built in the USA. Our/My argument is there are more bad bananas than there used to be when the Maxima was built in Japan. I have a hunch the Nissans (370Z, GTR) still built in Japan have a higher level of fit and finish than our US built Maxima, Altima, Pathfinder etc.

Lexus built a fantastic product during the early '90's to roughly '04. They started to cruise on their reputation and admittedly reduced the quality of materials to cut costs. It bit them in the @$$ and for the first time in 10 years they did not have a top ranking. They now have made a commitment to provide the quality Lexus was known for starting with the '11 models and you definitely see and feel the difference. Lexus is back!

In the case of Nissan, they have made a conscious decision to produce a vehicle that is not up to the same standard it once was.

I'll choose the grade A bananas personally and is why I'm done with Nissan unless something big changes in the future. This hurts coming from someone who grew up with the Datsun 510 and eventually raced 510s. Datsun was a big part of my early automotive years.

 

Hunches don't count no matter where vehicles are manufactured especially with the "Z and GTR" having such low production numbers and limited survey data available.

With Nissan as a brand not having the same reliability as it use to have in general you are arguably correct, yet the 7th gen maxima has shown to be average to above average in overall satisfaction and reliability.
Yes I drove the Japan built B210's Datsun's back in the early to mid 70's and they were a very life limited vehicle in comparison to today's' cars.

 

Problem here is some of us make mistake and we learn from it and there is always people who keep making same mistake over and ocer again. For me unless nissan makes two steps back and build same rock solid maximas they use to make i am done with this cheap crap. Some of you first time maxima owners and you happy because you use to have pontiac and you dont know no better.

 

Damn, you guys are going in on this thread. I'm glad I took a peep in here before deciding to get a 7th gen. I'll just stick with my 5th gen until something better comes from maxima.