The Middle Man Would Like A Word

The fully redesigned 2019 Nissan Altima is packing heat in the mid-size segment.

- Josh Jacquot

As ideas go, this one might not make automotive history, but it’s the kind of thing we think about between rounds of office Plinko. Nissan could have executed the most accurate and brilliant car-branding plot in history when it named its sedans. Consider this: After the introduction of its big car, the Maxima, in 1981, a natural next step would have been to call its new small sedan for 1982 the Minima. Without consulting us, Nissan named it the Sentra. Ten years later, when the company trotted out its revised mid-size sedan, it could have completed the trifecta by calling it the Media. Minima, Media, and Maxima are names so easy to remember that even Motor Trend could do it.

But it was not to be. Nissan’s mid-size car is the Altima. Has been since 1992, during which time Nissan dealers have unloaded some 5.6 million of them. Nissan sold more than a quarter-million Altimas in 2017, and the car ranks third in sales among mid-size sedans through August 2018. While it continues to lose ground to the Rogue, the Altima still accounts for more than 17 percent of the company’s total U.S. sales. So this fully redesigned model, the sixth generation of the middleman, matters a lot.

We don’t care how many it sells, because popularity and desirability converge on the same car with Hale-Bopp rarity. But that just happens to be the exact dilemma facing Nissan. Honda’s Accord not only outsells the Altima, it made our 2018 10Best list— and 31 10Best lists before that, more appearances than any other car. That it’s the standard bearer in the class is clear. That Nissan has the savvy required to displace it is less so. “There’s nothing grievously wrong with the Altima . . . We just wish there were more right with it,” we said in a tepid review of the 2018 model.