Quote:
Originally Posted by Tazicon
Any car other than Altima..............lol Maximas are probably to big but their Ininiti brothers come with a V8. Why use a car that comes with nothing bigger than a 3.5 V6 but mostly has a 2.5 4 banger for a V8 Super car?
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It is all about wheelbase (the V8 regulations specify the wheelbase) and frontal area (to limit drag). The Altima was also selected as it is a new model being launched here and Nissan Oz can see that they will get a bigger marketing bang-for-buck launhcing with a new model than they would with the Maxima.
Nissan Australia has factory marketing support from Japan to launch the Altima as the Maxima has never really taken off and has not sold in significant numbers here and the Altima is slightly smaller and intended to take on the most popular segment here which is Altima sized cars (think Mazda 6, Holden Cruze (Holden is the GM brand in Oz), Toyota Camry, Opel Insignia, VW Passat, Hyundai I45 and Kia equivalent plus a whole host of others). I suspect that these cars are "sub-compact" in the US market - here they are the most popular segment as the larger (full-size in Oz-marketer speak) cars are no longer selling in the numbers they used to). Indeed, sales of full-sized cars are dropping rapidly - smilar to the US I suspect.
We can expect the Maxima to be phased out and replaced by the Altima in this market.
The decision to select the Altima wsa a marekting-based decision by the suits at Nissan. Simple as that.