Noticed this while looking at the 20th Anniversary Maxima. How come the rear doors don't have lights? I thought it was mandatory for safety reasons. Oh ya, looked at our 95 GLE and it doesn't have lights on the doors either. Our 84 Max does. Any ideas why? Keep costs down?

I noticed that to,
 

and I was pissed because I was going to put a Pair of piaa Plasma's back there but can't with out going custom ahh well,My guess is that they are cuting costs can't see any other reason why not.Also this is what I really wanted to know how many miles on the 84 Datsun MAX and has it broken a lot.LAter

84 Datsun Nissan Maxima
 

It actually has both the Datsun and Nissan (Nissan words in a rectangle without the circle) emblems on it. Has about 130k miles..yeah, very low. Dunno how many miles it had when we bought it, but I'm guessing about 90k and we don't know if someone rolled the dial back. This was back in like 1992 or something. As for the breaking part, I'd hafta say yes. It's been giving us a lot of problems for the last....2 years? It still runs pretty good. Not that good for the highway though. 120hp pulling 3000lbs is not fun hehe. I know someone who has an 84 Max and theirs haven't been giving them problems. So I guess it's like the new ones...some are reliable and some have problems everywhere.

on the rear doors of my 88 there are lights. I took the red covers off and but clear ones and blue lights in it. It looks a lot better at night now. When you open the door, it lights the ground up in blue!

Yeah, Nissan probably got a little ghetto in the mid 90s. Hence Renault buying a percentage of them.

why is there
 

no hood light. WTF was Nissan thinking? Or am I the only one that has an issue with that?

maybe nissan thinks that they wont ever break down at night so we dont need a hood light.

so you custom made your rear door lights out of
 

? what?

Re: so you custom made your rear door lights out of
 

Are you talking to me?
Well if you are and I think you are then I did not do a costum job was just saying that it would be possible,but if you were going to do a custom job then I would get the same door lights from the front doors from a junkyard or else were and then cut a hole in the rear door panels the same size as the door lights and then wire them and install the lights,I would do it but it would be a big pain in the Arse just to have rear door lights.

Well if you think about it, do any Japanese family sedans have lights on the rear doors? I'm talking late model sedans (like within the past five years). Also, I've never heard of a hood light on any car. Maybe they exist, but I've never seen one even on a BMW or Lexus.

BTW, if you think the Maxima is cheap, the current gen Camry doesn't even have a light on the front doors! But the rest of the car (Camry) is built better than the Maxima though.

No door lights
 

So must of the Japanese cars here don't have 'em? That sucks...I thought it was mandatory to have that stuff..oh well..guess not. Never seen a hood light and never knew that existed.

Yeah, Toyotas are usually more reliable. Camry doesn't look sporty though...never liked Camrys for their looks anyways.

MY CAR has them

A hood light??

Yet another advantage of a 3rd gen....
 

The 89-94 Models have lights in the rear doors, while the 4th and 5th gens don't. Recently, though, I've noticed very few cars with lights in the rear doors. Volvo is the noticeable exception, with lights AND reflectors in each door.

I believe my 86 Taurus had lights and reflectors in the front doors and just reflectors in the rear doors.

For safety reasons, reflectors ought to be the minimum requirement for all doors. The 3rd gen Maxes only have lights in all 4 doors, and no reflectors.

As for the hood light, I always attribute this to Japanese/German arrogance regarding their reliability. The Japanese attitude is "It won't break down on you", while the German attitude is "If it breaks, don't bother even looking at seeing what's wrong".

I know all American cars had lights under the hood, but in recent years I'm not sure.....Our attitude is "Something's going to break, so here's a light to help."

My thoughts.