Originally Posted by JustN89
I don't think anyone cared about their style or outdated truck platforms- what killed Nissan was the reliability nosedive they took in the mid-2000's and never could get right. They were the first to really bring CVT to the automotive market and it nearly singlehandedly killed CVTs for every other brand, its reliability and subsequent reputation was so bad. Nissan's reliability is so poor that the Maxima has pretty much gone unnoticed despite being one of the best large sedans on the market (that may be due to simply the lack of options, but I will stand by this statement). The redesign in 2016 is one of the best looking sedans on the market today, both inside and out, yet no one cares because no one wants to saddle themselves with Nissan's horrible reliability- even if the Maxima is actually pretty solid in terms of reliability.
This is what the modern consumer cares about, unless you're a domestic (and offer 25% off MSRP on the regular) or have a warranty longer than what most people even keep their cars for (the fact that their warranty is the same duration as Toyota's is absolutely laughable). That's also why Hyundai/Kia have carved out the market that they have, and why one of my family members who's only bought Maximas since the early 90's just purchased a Camry this year instead. Nissan did this to themselves and it had nothing to do with the price of their cars or their styling. It's primarily due to the fact that the only thing that's reliable about the brand is that the CVT will fail both inside and outside of warranty and that somewhere, not too far from you now, there's a mid-to-late 2000's Nissan throwing a CEL for a bad knock sensor.
You left out the Xterra strawberry milkshakes and the Sentra Spec V precat digestion. I totally forgot about the CVT.
An old roommate of mine had a Spec V and had to swap the mill due to the precats. His buddy had an Altima or something that came with a factory LSD, which surprised me.