Between K and me and our immediate family, we have purchased 9 Nissan vehicles
over the last 25 years, all but 2 purchased new from Nissan dealers (two were
"college cars"). While some have been generally decent enough cars, a series of
recent situations have persuaded us that not only will we never buy another
Nissan, new or used, we would strongly encourage others not to do so.

While I cannot and will not say that I believe Nissan builds an inferior product
(at least insofar as vehicles go), I can say that I don't think they build a
superior product, either. More importantly, their customer service and
willingness to correct their own serious mistakes is non-existent. If you
happen to get one of the models that has issues, you are screwed insofar as any
assistance or corrective measures from Nissan beyond those they are legally
forced to do.

The current issue is with an early 2003 Maxima (purchased new, our third one)
that has a design flaw in which a poorly designed "Idle Air Control Valve" fails
prematurely (this vehicle is now on its 4th IACV) and while that is bad enough,
in doing so, it damages the "Engine Control Module" (the ECM or main vehicle
computer). This vehicle now needs its 3rd ECM, at about $1500.00. Nissan's
response? "Tough **** - it's out of warranty now..." (the same response as the
2nd failure, inside the time warranty, but with less than 2000 miles out of the
mileage warranty and a little over 40,000 since the 1st failure). An in-law's
Infiniti-badged vehicle of the same basic model had 2 such failures, both under
warranty. When they replaced it and a Titan truck (which had its own set of
issues - I've heard horror stories about rust issues on Nissan trucks), they
went with Acura and Dodge.

The bottom line is that we'll never buy another Nissan and I'd encourage others
to think long and hard before buying one. A little research will reveal that
when Nissans have issues, they tend to be _expensive_ and Nissan will do
absolutely _nothing_ once the vehicle is 30 seconds or 30 feet out of warranty,
even if their faulty design led to the issue.

Friends don't let friends buy Nissan,
R