2009 Nissan Maxima Review

The 2009 Nissan Maxima is billed as a return to the car’s roots as the Four-Door Sports Car. With a more powerful engine, smaller dimensions and a sport-tuned suspension, the Maxima is designed to appeal to those who want more performance and luxury than they can get in the company’s Altima sedan.

Acura TL, Infiniti G35

While Nissan has certainly upped the performance and visual punch of the Maxima, it still falls short of the company’s “four-door sports car” goal. It’s good, but doesn’t inspire us like the Maxima from the early 1990s did. With the company’s own Infiniti G35 sedan offering just as much luxury in a better-handling package for comparable money, we wonder if the Maxima has outlived its place in Nissan’s lineup.

Calling a sedan a sports car is a bold move. After all, sports cars are usually everything a sedan isn’t: Small, lightweight, nimble, quick and fun. Sedans are big, heavy, ponderous, sluggish and boring, or so the conventional wisdom goes.

Yet 20 years ago, Nissan unveiled a Maxima that it called the Four-Door Sports Car, even going as far as putting “4DSC” decals on the window of each car. The funny thing is, that 1989 Maxima mostly lived up to the billing, with a willingness to be driven hard that was unusual in a sedan. However, over the years and with succeeding generations, the Maxima gained weight, lost performance, and strayed far from that mark. On top of it all, the Maxima’s smaller sibling, the Altima, is a capable and sporty sedan in its own right. These days, one has to wonder exactly what the Maxima stands for.

For 2009, Nissan says it’s reintroducing that 4DSC concept with the 2009 Nissan Maxima. More than just a near-luxury sedan, or a nicely outfitted family car, the newest Maxima is billed as a return to the car’s sporty roots. It’s smaller than the previous generation, has more power, a stiffer suspension, and Nissan is trying hard to infuse it with the 4DSC genetics of yore.

Yet things have changed significantly since 1989, and we’re not sure the Maxima, even in its newest form, has kept up. It’s a nice car, aggressive and with some unique styling elements, but the suspension’s firmness doesn’t quite translate to the kind of handling we’d expect. The engine is powerful, but mated to a continuously-variable transmission that is a poor match. The interior is luxurious, but at roughly the same price as an Infiniti G35 sedan, it doesn’t offer much value over that luxury brand.

The 2009 Maxima is definitely an improvement over the previous generation car, with plenty of features, good (but not great) handling, and a good (but not great) drivetrain. However, it’s not the four-door sports car we were hoping for.

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Two models are available in the new Maxima, and both diverge from Nissan’s previous model nomenclature. The base Maxima is the 3.5 S, and for $29,950 (including the $660 destination charge) it comes with the new V-6 engine and CVT transmission, dual exhaust, 18-inch wheels and tires, automatic headlights, a power moonroof, and LED taillights. The interior is also nicely appointed, with an eight-way power driver’s seat, four-way power passenger seat, cloth upholstery, leather steering wheel and shift knob, two-zone climate control, and of course power windows, door locks, mirrors and all that jazz.

At $32,650 with destination, the 3.5 SV adds a significant amount of equipment and is the car that Nissan says will be its volume model, accounting for about 90 percent of sales. So it’s not surprising that it’s the only model where you can get the options packages that make Maxima life worth living. You start off with leather seats, an upgraded Bose audio system, a driver’s seat with adjustable thigh support (long-legged drivers rejoice!), driver’s power lumbar support, as well as foglights and turn signals on the outside mirrors.

There are two primary options packages for the new Maxima. The first is the $2,300 Sport package, which adds a sport-tuned suspension with 19-inch wheels and tires, a rear spoiler, HID headlights, heated front seats with upgraded leather, a power tilt and telescope steering column, paddle shifters on the steering wheel, memory for the seats, and a stiffening crossmember behind the rear seats that unfortunately reduces the 60/40 split seatback to a simple pass through. The Premium package costs $3,450 and adds most of the same stuff, but without the suspension upgrades, and throws in a big dual-panel moonroof. A Tech package can be added either as a standalone or on top of the Sport and Premium packages – the price varies from $1,850 to $2,400 depending on what options are already on the car – and adds navigation, a 9.3-GB hard-drive-based music system, and a rearview camera.

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Regardless of which trim level or option package you pick, you’ll get Nissan’s excellent 3.5 liter V-6 engine. The “VQ” engine family consistently wins engineering awards, and for good reason: It offers lots of power, torque and respectable fuel economy all at the same time. For the 2009 Maxima, power was bumped up to 290 horses and torque is up to 261 lb.-ft., all while keeping the displacement at the same 3.5 liters. EPA mileage estimates are 19 mpg city and 26 mpg highway, one mpg better on the highway that the previous model.

Connected to this engine is Nissan’s continuously-variable automatic transmission. Unlike a standard automatic or a manual transmission, a CVT doesn’t actually change gears, it alters the diameter of two pulleys which are connected by a belt, thus giving an infinite range of “gears.” To bump up the sport factor on its CVT, Nissan offers a manual mode, operated either by moving the gear shift back and forth or, on some models, flipping paddles mounted behind the steering wheel. This puts the CVT into a fixed ratio, simulating a manual gearbox.

The suspension for the Maxima is all independent, with struts in front and a multi-link setup in the rear. The steering system is also new, and uses a similar variable power assist mechanism as the company’s 350Z sports car. The brakes are also upgraded, with ventilated rear discs now standard.

The 2009 Nissan Maxima goes against the usual trend of making cars larger in every dimension; this one is actually shorter and lower than the car it replaces. However, it’s also wider, all of it combining to give the new Maxima a wide, aggressive stance. Dimensionally, it’s very similar to Nissan’s other sedan, the Altima, albeit with a smaller interior.