Test drive Nissan Maxima 2000 - 2004 sedan

Business offer

Do you want to ruin me? The main one postponed the number of the number, looked at the humble group of car testers with an unkind gaze and stood up, leaning on a large, the size of a tennis, table. Lancer Evo VI, Impreza WRX and 3-liter A4! Yes, for such comparative tests, you need to be not a publisher, but the owner of an oil well and, part -time, a tire plant with a body service body of a car service! I need a test of real cars for real life! Enough sports and fingers by fan! Take care!
Business is so business! We dutifully decided. They took three sedans with a common cubature of the engines of eight and a half liters and went to rub the tires on the landfill. Sorry, Anatolich, we are on business! But no one pulled you by the tongue! Any tester with two hands for driving in sports cars. Just imagine: bring the turbine to white heat, twist the motor to ringing and a frantic move, scooping up the remnants of gravel from under the four leading wheels, as if the last time in your life you fly sideways into a narrow forest turn! When it turns out with one hand you steer, and wipe the tears with the other! And if you didn’t come out, you are going to apologize to the forester ... Alas, the motorsport in our schedule takes up very little space. Outside the windows of our houses and offices, life flows that has nothing to do with the Grand Prix of Formula 1 or the stages of the World Rally Championship. Therefore, we dream about machines for the soul, but we buy for the body and business. Today's test attempt to figure out what some importers offer the consumer as crews for family and business.
Peugeot 607, Nissan Maxima and Opel Omega belong to Peru and Kulman of completely different design and engineering schools. By reducing them on one site, we did not try to determine who Rabinovich was to whom. It was interesting to find out what degree of harmony each of these cars is able to offer its future owner, and what money should be laid out in order to feel in the car, as at ease. The hero of our April number, Peugeot 607 The most fresh and extraordinary car in the top three. The elegant, stylish and dignity of the Frenchman is equally different from the predecessor, the 605th as the new, super-modern building of the Airport Charles de Gaulle from the old Terminala, where the Parisians prefer to unload Aeroflot passengers. The appearance of this machine is unlikely to be included in car design textbooks, but it is provided with a bright future among fans of the European automobile industry. And if it is possible to let them look inside and feel how the interior is enveloped, based on the road of the Mediterranean yacht, they are already captured. And they are unlikely to want to be released.
607 The real flagship of the PEUGEOT lineup. This is felt in every nuance of ergonomics, on which the best PSA designers worked. Each trifle looks expensive, high -quality and stylish, which you expect from the car for 45 thousand dollars. Only after several days of operation, you begin to notice that the material of the front panel is slightly rude, and there could be more place above the head of the rear passengers. True, the French know better than the elegant things, stitched by a harsh thread, will not go out of fashion for a long time, and basketball centers still do not fit into any normal car, except in the Kirkorovsky Hummer Stretch, and even then lying. By the level of equipment, our copy had everything, except for the direct connection with the cosmos and the helicopter landing site. There is no doubt about the standard set of additional equipment to speak that one of the readers will call an option, the presence of which the French did not take care of. And about the adjustable double -mode suspension, auxiliary systems that work for the driver in quick turns and difficult road conditions, the steering with a variable characteristic, we told in detail three numbers ago. The novelty for us was only an automatic KP with the ambitious name Tiptronic System Porsche, which naturally possesses sports and winter modes of work.
During the city ride, for which, in fact, these cars are designed primarily, Peugeot has a slow movement from traffic light to a traffic light. He holds well behind the road, reacts indifferently to minor irregularities, confidently reaches for the motor from the bottom and barely noticeably sifting through the most comfortable simply automatic KP mode (without sports, Kick-Down and shameless movements with a handle lever). By the way, an intensive study that we conducted among the owners of machine guns with the possibility of manual switching unequivocally convinced that this is a toy for one week. Try, feel like a beginner racer and understand that the modern machine still switches more competently and in a timely manner than the average driver. After that, relieved to transfer the lever from the parking position to the drive and not to disturb it all the time while the car is moving forward.
Again, we note that the most comfortable mode of operation of the suspension in Russian conditions according to our observations is its sporting rigidity from the rally, but it has an enviable energy intensity and, most importantly, a stable and predictable algorithm of work. And in an automatic, shallow imported electronics goes crazy, trying to analyze where the pit ends and the ditch begins. And why are numerous sewer hatches alternate with equally frequent exploration pits broken in search of metro and hot water. She would have known that Moscow and Luzhniki was still a mirror compared to Peter, Smolensk or Voronezh ...
With dynamic driving, the wad shoots up to hundreds in less than 10 seconds, easily goes out at the mark of 200 and willingly storm the turns of any category of complexity. On the ring track, we were convinced that this large sedan, if desired, can be inserted sideways into the turn and easily controlled in this position by steering and gas. But with a theoretical attempt to figure out how much you need to drink to a sane person who gave a 3-room apartment on the outskirts of the Russian capital for the 607th cost of a 3-room apartment in order to feel like a marcus of Gronholm, the consensus could not be achieved. And all the same, Peugeot Sport specialists who helped set up the car, we still remember with warmth and understanding ...
Nissan was taken for a test with trepidation and confidence in his Japanese strength. It would be not the first year that one of the best -selling cars in the classroom, while in all their evolutions, standing much more than they ask for it. And for someone who is not a snob or Europhile and firsthand knows how Japanese reliability differs from German quality, the issue of choosing a car in this target and price category was only in the Maxima modification that you want to have. We take a 3-liter machine, published by admiring its rapid and aggressive silhouette. Yes Asian! Yes, without centuries -old charisma and vain complaints about being accepted for his own in an alien and arrogant European car party. Samurai has their own pride and aesthetic canons. Therefore, the purebred islander of CEFIRO was sent to the countries of the setting sun under the pseudonym Maxima, which is essentially only the most impoverished European version of the wealthy Japanese. But Maxima never on the shelves was too good for the goods, and the price is not that does not bite, but just rubs against an ankle, like a cat.
The maximum was also expected from the salon. We sit down, equip ... levers instead of buttons in the seats adjustments mechanism? Strange ... Ancient, like a VEF lamp radio, a cassette tape recorder instead of a music center? Some kind of nonsense ... primitive, as on Sunny of the first years of release, adjustment panel ... air conditioning? Not climate control? It is impossible to believe in it! After all, the car costs an order of magnitude more expensive than an empty ALMERA of the Spanish assembly! And when the hands stumbled upon a steering wheel of inexpensive plastic, a skinny wiper control lever and a very ancient-reorage windows control unit, I had to make a couple of breaths so that it fainted. What's the matter? Looking ahead, I will say that the answer crept unnoticed, like an speedometer arrow to 120 km/h. And when at that moment there was a melodic bell ringing from the bowels of the dashboard, warning about a violation of a speed suspiciously familiar trip to the UAE, we stopped, carefully examined the car from all sides and found a driver with Arabic knitting on a driver's bastard. About the assembly of our Maxim for the needs of a completely alien market. We suspect that there the price of this machine is even lower than we have an empty ALMERA Spanish assembly ... So when searching for Nissan Maxima, pay attention to the above little things. Otherwise, there is a risk of stumbling on Nissan Minima!
In fairness, we note that in terms of some parameters, even this maxima was practically not inferior to the test participants, but in terms of acceleration dynamics, the volume of space for the rear passengers and the number of envious views of the owners of 3-5-year-old Japanese sent both Peugeot and Opel. During the ride, he was very annoying with tangible jerks when switching an antediluvian 3-speed automatic, and the suspension was upset with rather lethargic resistance to longitudinal tag of the body, especially when moving at high speeds. With intensive work by the steering wheel and gas, this Nissan willingly fell into turns, however, after hanging the rear wheel, and the brakes boiled before everyone else, after which it was necessary to complete the bullying and postpone the acquaintance with the real maxim to the first purebred machine.
I really want to say about Opel Omega. According to the old anti-German habit, I refused to take it to this company for a long time, and when we still finally settled the composition of the participants, naively predicted inglorious death under the shelling of Peugeot and Nissan. The impressions of the distorted omegs of the first years of release were too fresh, which our fallen compatriots were eagerly selected on the Berlin landfills. Thank God, times are changing! And far from always the worst! Now, after three days and thousands of kilometers spent behind the Opel wheel, I recall this machine with easy sadness to part with the technique, in which smart people have invested so much knowledge, love and labor. For the Elegance version, the list of additional equipment consists of only seven options, five of which already had a copy that fell into our hands. Salon is an example of German ergonomics and practicality, multiplied by comfort, not without a complaint about luxury. And if the bowels of Peugeot are fascinated with spectacular, and therefore not always optimal in terms of using solutions, then Opel does not even strive for originality by the Germans appreciate the suspended utilitarianism much more, and Omega is not inferior to any of their 4-wheeled compatriots. At the same time, the skin, a wooden insert (a single case when I was not irritated by firewood in the cabin!) And such a mass of pleasant and useful in everyday life, on the description of which the guys from the representative office did not less than an hour went very organically! Add here the most spacious and convenient trigger in terms of loading and unloading and it will become clear to you that General Motors is not in vain considered Omega to be its European flagship and even makes Cadillac Catera on its basis! By the way, Omega in our three is the only car that has a station wagon version what kind of America without a backpack is behind your shoulders?!
The ride, despite the weakest engine in the top three (2.6 liters, 180 hp), brought us a lot of pleasant minutes. The flat shelf of the torque, a flexible automatic, the stabilization system of the course stability and the Dynamic Safety Action concept with thoughtful elastokinematics turns on the omega into simple human pleasure. No, this is not a car for a street bully, but for a person with a tower, it does not allow itself to be any surprises or liberties. In the turns, he willingly reacts to a sharp drop in gas with the skidding of the rear axle, but it is almost impossible to tear it into a fan using an open throttle, the electronics strangles a dangerous initiative, and the engine power is not enough for this: Omega is not Speeder, it is not trained to wag the ass. True, it is enough to turn off the assistants with the button on the panel and the rear -wheel drive Euro -American begins to dance lambada on the asphalt, as if a middle -aged Latin lady fled from the carnival. Then only Macho wise with sexual experience can cope with her. By the way, the rear -wheel drive can be the only minus of this excellent car in our latitudes. But do not forget that electronics now easily takes the car under the bridle.
In conclusion, I note once again that we did not set ourselves the task of telling one of the cars yes!, Thereby putting others on the step below. We simply reacted to the top leadership team to do business. I will not hide, it gave us a great pleasure. And soon, if everything turns out, and the Evolution with WRX and A4 will drive to the start. There will also be a business meeting. Only in tracksuits ...
 
Alexey Mochanov,
Photo by Alexander Nozdrin

How they look:
Nikita Rozanov
 
Outside:
All three participants in the test are classic representatives of the business class. In this regard, the design assessment was carried out in accordance with unwritten rules that strictly regulate the appearance of business partners.
Each car is well recognizable, and even the identification of nationality of their design is a simple task. Although the whole three has slanting fara eyes, the Japanese gives out their special incision, the traditional verbosity of the details and the unaware of the style, the Germans are accuracy and the indestructible craving for every detail to be in its place, and France is recognized by independence and freedom-love in the style that is Compared to the Opel design, it just looks like hooliganism. The expression is strict, but at the same time open to acquaintance and dialogue. As you know, one of the main additions to the appearance of a business man is the watch, by the brand and appearance of which a business partner can learn a lot about you. In our case, the clock may well be replaced by the front emblem, which in Opel in full accordance with German accuracy is shown without undertaking in the geometric center of the cladding; Nissan is agreed with eastern mentality and turned into a confused hieroglyph. Peugeot demonstrates his heraldic lion with the dignity of a refined aristocrat, whose PATEK Philippe peeps out from under the sleeve of an expensive costume exactly as much as necessary for identification, but not an inches more. The silhouettes are also different and form the image of the provincial-conservative Nissan, whose style can remind the club jacket with gilded buttons (especially when the car is dark) and looks like the form of Lufthansa Opel pilot. Also, the elegant-energy and very modern silhouette of Peugeot, which can recall something from the men's collection of Brioni. The cars are also very different from behind: from the nostalgia for the 80s of the last century, Nissan and does not call Opel to the perky squinted rear lamps of Peugeot, which provoke to call for the driver, try to catch up and talk about beautiful things, because sitting behind The steering wheel of such a car probably knows a lot about them.
Results:
The Nissan Maxima design of the car, although it bears a seal of goodness, most likely will like people who adhere to conservative views, or adherents of high -quality and inexpensive constancy.
Opel Omega is a verified and clear design in conjunction with high quality completely compensate for some dry style.
PEUGEOT 607 is a stylish and very intelligent design that should like creative professions and those who values \u200b\u200bthe image of a businessman who is coming with the times of the businessman.
Inside:
The interiors of this kind of car are traditionally rich and boring. As a rule, this image is formed by a large -like and richly equipped instrument panel, as well as the style of chairs that relates them with office furniture. The exception of Peugeot, the composition of the panel of which can be called mischievous, and the rear sofa can be installed at home. The skin of the upholstery is high quality, and the decoration for wood in Japanese and German cars amazes with its naturalness. Due to the fact that all three cars use completely different compositions and layouts of instrument panels, interiors are also perceived in different ways. Opel is most conservative, Nissan is quite modern enough, and the most advanced by Peugeot, which, in addition, also looks like a class above. The steering wheels are designed according to the four -spoke scheme, which gives them solidity and reliability. The upholstery of the doors is diverse from soft and plastic on Peugeot to a rigid-cell shape in Opel. The color factory of the Opel interior is strictly and officially and resembles uniforms, and contrasting the two -color decoration of French and Japanese cars, on the contrary, gives a feeling of relaxed and individuality of the image of the most appreciated properties of modern business men's clothing
Results:
Nissan Maxima everything looks sound and quite appropriate the exterior of the car and the money that were paid for it.
Opel Omega is a typically American composition of the instrument panel is very conservative. And even the German thoroughness of manufacture does not save the sensation of a morally obsolete solution.
Peugeot 607 Bright and most modern interior solution. However, the style that dominates rationality (for example, the accented two -story central console) may become an obstacle to safe ride
 

A source: Cars