Gadgetory

Kamri and the core they're the big dogs in the car business and with the sonata now getting a lot of headlines alongside them Nissan must be more than a little twisted but their Altima gets quite a bit less luck well let's visit the last year of the current Altima and check the tech this 2012 Altima is the last of the fourth generation cars due for a heavy redesign in early 2012 the coupe has always had the far better lines but sedans are what sell in this sector tech is also something which sells but apparently the Ultimate Team didn't get that memo as Altimas with the S trim level like this one have almost none now inside the ultimate is nothing special and looking awful but nothing special I'm not real big a lot of the plastic they use it seems to be kind of a hard plastic throwback from like 10-15 years ago but the rest of its ok it's all standard Nissan switchgear here's the basic head unit am/fm a single optical slot and an aux jack that's it there's no USB no other iPod connector no bluetooth streaming even bluetooth is not standard on a 2.5 s you have to option that in a la carte or as part of a convenience package now there is a tech package that will give you a full screen LCD navigation system hard drive based by the way and that also will include a DVD playback I believe and audio/video input Jack's replacing this audio only or in between this and the full nav is a smaller 4-inch screen premium audio package that's going to get you ipod connectivity XM satellite radio bose digital audio and for some reason that's how you get into a rear-view camera in this guy as well if you like push-button start you're going to love this car it's got it in there even if this kind of lowly price level if you like continuously variable transmissions you're going to love this car because all the four-cylinder Altimas like this one have a CVT which doesn't have actual gears but variable pulleys with a big steel belt normally that's in low power cars with very small engines for the most part but this car has got a pretty good size for and the CVT does work rather well you've got a gate over here to influence its synthetic shift points as well now the motor in front of that CVT is this guy in these 2.5 cars - two and a half litre inline-four kind of big for a four which you normally associate with you know smaller engines as you can see it's front-wheel drive only transversely mounted pretty garden-variety stuff no direct injection or other tricks like turbos or such delivers a standard 175 horsepower 170 foot-pounds of torque gets this 3,200 pound car to 60 in about eight and a half seconds while delivering 23 in the city and 32 on the highway according to the EPA thing about the ultimate is well it doesn't stand out on paper it's a very pleasant car on the road nothing about it is exciting but it's definitely one of those cars it's satisfying to drive the power comes on nicely without a lot of that sort of hemming and hawing that a lot of CV T's do that lubricated with Crisco slippery crap a lot of them go through this one doesn't it bites right in and takes on a gear it's quiet it's buttoned down it's what you want for this kind of vehicle if you buy an inline four in a car of the camry accord class you're not looking for something that stands out as much as really good reliable vanilla but one thing to look for is a complete redo in early 2012 as a 2013 Altima so buying one of these now is a little dicey i think they're going to take it significantly upscale and borrow from maxima and really get this car to have more of a distinctive flavor that might be worth waiting for okay pricing our 2012 Altima 2.5 s that is one trim level from the bottom of their range gets you in at 23 3 as you saw inside not a lot of tech niceties but what i'm not going to do is add the tech package because i'm not that impressed by their hard drive navigation system instead i'll go for the less expensive premium audio package that'll take that eighteen hundred dollar tech package off the plate premium audio gets you all the inputs you want the USB in the iPod and things like that and Bose audio system plus the rear view camera that's a good package and then I will all a cart the Bluetooth hands-free for 325 and in terms of navigation I'll just roll my own with a phone or a pnd you