Elhart Automotive Campus

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• Summary

Walk Around

The Maxima has a distinctive look that places it within Nissan styling themes but at the same time gives it an appearance that is all its own.

Every exterior body panel on the car shows adventurous and modern design and shaping. The grille, headlamps and 12-LED taillamps are large and fit well into the whole exterior design, and the fenders and hood have edges and bulges for a very sporty appearance. The wheel arches are pronounced, and the door skins are pulled in from the fenders and flattened out so that the whole body has what the designers call a Coke-bottle shape, with a short nose, a short deck, a long, sloping roof and a BMW-style C-pillar curvature.

The Maxima is a great looking, assertive sedan with high style and fine detailing, and it doesn't look like anything else in the Nissan lineup.

Interior

2010 Nissan Maxima

Inside the Maxima, the design, materials, and execution of the interior are first-rate throughout.

The interior features of the Maxima are all about concentration of controls and information around the driver. The interior includes a few items right out of the Nissan parts bin, like the radio and navigation control panel on top of the center stack, backed up by lower controls with large, very readable labels and markings, daytime-lighted instruments, a hefty three-spoke steering wheel with redundant controls for the audio system, and huge paddle shifters for the CVT transmission, with very long upper and lower arms that assure you will never be out of reach of a quick shift. The floor shifter is located over to the left, for those who want quick shifts using the stick instead of the paddles.

The driver's seat is multi-adjustable, especially in the Sport package version that we drove, and very huggy and comfortable.

In the rear compartment, the seat can be ordered either as a 60/40 fold-down for cargo hauling, or as a fixed seat with a cargo pass-through in the center for occasional hauling or ski trips.

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