Does a 45 000 price tag belong on this 2019 Nissan Maxima Platinum

All right, so this week, Nissan USA has sent me the all new 2019 Nissan Maxima Platinum. And the Maxima in recent years has been Nissan's flagship sedan. And Nissan also touts it as their four-door sports car. And I don't think people actually give this enough credit when it comes to its sports car-like feel. And you guys may not agree with me, but I promise after you watch the driving part of this review, you're really going to second guess what Nissan was able to do with this all new Maxima. Let's go ahead and check it out. All right, so looking on the outside of the 2019 Nissan Maxima Platinum. Now, first thing is this paint coat. It is this beautiful, beautiful red color. And it looks fantastic. It almost looks like a maroon. And it really does a great job of just highlighting. I mean, really how beautiful this sedan is. I mean, even though this thing has been out for quite some time, it's still a very, very good-looking sedan. And it really does remind me of higher-end vehicles like Lexus, of course, Infiniti, and then, you know, different brands like that. But it does a great job of keeping itself looking the part, especially when you consider the price tag on this thing, which is $45,225. Now, that immediately probably put some of you back in your seats quite a bit, because that is a lot for a front-wheel drive sedan, basically. But like I said, once you guys see how this thing drives, you'll actually be extremely impressed, hopefully, like I was. But coming to the front of the Maxima, you have your V-Motion style grille. And that's basically the design language that Nissan goes with. And so the V-Motion is going to consist of, of course, this V-shaped bar right there in the middle. It's going to be full chrome. You're going to have a chrome lip down here on the bottom. The lights look good. LEDs look fantastic during the day. So your daytime running lights, full LEDs, they look great. And then at night, this thing looks nice and crisp. No longer do you have any sort of projector beams. You have full 100% LEDs on here. And you have almost like that Matrix style LED that like Honda went with. Even Audi had real earlier on, like a few years ago, they had that. But this really does have that real upscale look. And I think it looks fantastic at night. Of course, LED fog lights, as you guys saw there as well. And then as you come to the side, there's really not a ton right here. So for example, let's see if I can brighten this up just a bit. So you've got your, of course, fog light there. You've got this black surround right there. You're going to have more black surrounds here, a little bit like a honeycomb style grille, and then just big openings to feed your radiator for the large V6. It sits underneath the hood of this thing. Then once you come up to the hood, you guys can see this area, hopefully you can see it, where this line is going to go right up there, just like that. It almost forms like a, almost like an hourglass sort of shape. But it does look good. It gives the design of the hood a very unique look because I've never seen that on any other vehicle, to be honest. And then you have the line that goes right there. And it just does a great job of, you know, making the car look the part when it comes to looking aggressive and things like that. Then moving to the side, you do have this character line, which is basically what the Maxima is known for. You see this big line that flows all the way down right there. It's going to sort of dissipate right here. And then this line is going to start and flow all the way down. The side of the car looks great. Then coming to the wheels, you have these wheels here, which are going to be a decent size or 19 inch wheels. You've got this updated design right here, the wrapped in Goodyear Eagle Touring tires. And if you guys want to know the size of these, these are 245 40s right here. And so, you know, decent tire. The Goodyear's actually gripped pretty well. It was raining this week. And even through that rain, this did a great job of just keeping itself composed in on those wet roads. That is a pretty good thing. Then as you come back a little bit, you guys can see that floating roof design, which Nissan always does a great job with. So you're going to have the blacked out pillar here, going to have a blacked out pillar right here. Then you've got more of that red area coming all along the top right there. And you've got some chrome accenting the bottom of it as well. Chrome door handles. Then as you move to the back of the car, that's where you can really see that floating roof design. And I think that looks really good. Now, new for this year model, you do have these slightly smoked out tail lamps right here. So if I get a little bit closer, you guys can see they're smoked out right there. And man, they look great. They really, really do. Obviously at night, they look fantastic because they are full LEDs. Even your turn signals on here are going to be full LEDs front, rear and on the side mirrors as well. So that is a great thing to see. Now being the platinum trim, once again, you do have a little spoiler right here, your platinum badge right there. And then you have these like quad exhaust tips here, which are not going to be true quad exhaust. You have one exhaust down in there. Hopefully if you guys can see that. So there's your one exhaust. And then you just have the quad tips right there, but they're not connected. They're just like faux quad tips, but this car sounds incredible. So let me start it up and let you guys take a listen. All right. So here is the key for the Nissan Maxima. If it looks familiar, that's because literally every Nissan and Infiniti have this same key since like 2008. You've got the Nissan symbol up here, remote start, lock, unlock, trunk release, and then your panic there at the bottom. And then a little release here to release your physical key. So you can get into the vehicle if the battery dies or if the battery on the car were to die. Now you guys can vote up in the top right-hand corner. Actually, I think it's definitely time for Nissan to update this key. I'm not one for progress just for the sake of progress, but this is definitely a case of that. So anyways, you can use the key to get in or you can use the buttons here on the door. You push that. Two beeps is going to mean that it's locked. And then one beep is going to mean it's unlocked. All right, you guys. So coming to the interior of the Nissan Maxima, you have what Nissan calls the Rakuta Tan semi-aniline leather-appointed diamond quilted interior. And I kid you not, that is exactly what it says on the window sticker. It is a mouthful, but it's hard to deny that this is a beautiful interior with incredible material quality. So starting with this Rakuta Tan leather right here, you are going to have really, really supple leather feel. And I'm not sure if you guys can tell in video, but it has this really nice look to it. It's almost like it doesn't have an even tone to it. It has a little bit of darker areas within the leather and it really makes it stand out and look just absolutely beautiful. Contrast stitching coming all the way down here. Now here's where it gets a little bit older. You do have your older Nissan style buttons. These don't even have anything on them nor do they light up. These two will light up and then you've got some hard black plastic with these little chrome pieces here. You're also going to have your window locks, door locks, mirror controls right there. Black leather here with that Rakuta Tan stitching coming across there. Then as you move up, you're going to have more leather here on top and that is also soft touch material you guys can see right there as well. Really good quality stuff. Memory seats, two settings and you have this interesting sort of x-shaped pattern that's going to go all the way down here. Now this isn't going to be metal, it's just plastic, but they do a good job once again of making it look nice and you have this chrome door handle with this gloss black going around that as well. Bose tweeter right there for your Bose sound system as well as your blind spot monitor right there. As you come down, you're going to have your Nissan brushed aluminum kick plate here with this nice little accent right there. It is going to illuminate at night, looks fantastic of course. Your Maxima branded floor mats which once again, interesting to see that Infinity did this with my last review with the QX80 but this is pure metal so the fact that you're going to put your feet on that is pretty crazy, but it's nice nonetheless. You do have a thigh extension right here that you can adjust manually. All of your seat controls here off to the side and once again, extremely just supple leather feel. Quilted stitching coming right here in the middle with perforations. Looks fantastic. Let's go ahead, hop inside and we'll check out the rest of the car. All right, so what do you guys say we shut the door on the Nissan Maxima? Pretty solid shut. Heard a rattle come from somewhere. Couldn't really figure out where it is. Almost sounded like it was above my head which is kind of random. It's a quick look on the inside before I start it up. Start button is going to be right there. Foot on the brake. Nice. And this really has a fantastic startup sound. It's really, really good. It's really hard to beat that Nissan V6 sound. It's fantastic. All right, starting with the steering wheel on the Nissan Maxima. Now you have that Rakuta tan leather coming right here but this time it is going to be perforated as you guys can see right there. Looks fantastic. On the left side you are going to have your buttons for your volume, media, sources and then you have this button to control everything in this screen here and I'll get to that in just a second. Nissan badge here and you've got that sort of V motion signature coming through the steering wheel design as well. And over here to the right, all of your cruise control because this does have adaptive cruise. Turn it on right there. You can set your distance there. Set voice commands and then your phone commands right there as well. Now one thing you guys will notice this does not have paddle shifters. I will talk about that a little bit later. I actually think that was a good idea on Nissan's part and I'll tell you why in the driving portion of the video but you are going to have automatic wipers, automatic lights over here with your fog lights located right there. Sorry, I keep hitting the camera and then coming to this screen here in the middle. So right now you guys can obviously tell we have low fuel but I wish it had more of a digital gauge look. It's very old school in the way that it feels but Nissan and Infiniti right now are really hanging on to that slightly old school vibe. So if you do like that and you're not a big fan of all the hardcore technology upgrades everyone's been making, maybe Nissan is still the brand for you especially if you don't like being overwhelmed whenever you get a new car. This is a decent way to go I feel like but pretty classic needle gauges. Sounds so good. And then you have your speedometer over here to the right, fuel and then like I said right here in the middle you can control all sorts of things. So I can go through, see all of my like average fuel economy, things like that. And it's pretty cool. You know, very simplistic, nothing too crazy about it. All your settings and you can just really see whatever you want to consistently see here in the middle and then your time, speed and that's about it. You don't have a heads up display or anything. I do wish this had a heads up display but the cool thing is not sure if you guys can see this but you actually have a real cool view out of the front of the hood. You've got this one that kind of goes down here. You've got that kind of bulge thing I showed you guys earlier and then you have this over here. So just sitting behind the driver's seat it really almost looks like you're in a sports car. I mean it feels very sporty from behind the wheel and the seating position in here is fantastic. Now coming down here you are going to have a little bit more buttons here. So hopefully you guys can see this. Let me brighten it up just a bit. You're going to have your trunk release, all of your Nissan Pilot 360 safety systems, your heated steering wheel and then you're going to have this for your sunscreen shade there in the back. So if I push that you guys can see it going down right there. Let me push it again and there you go. Coming up you have your interior illumination right here. Your trip reset right next to that. You're going to have more of your vents here. You're going to have some soft touch plastic right here. Some leather here with that Rakuta tan stitching coming along there as well. Really really supple and soft. Speaker back there for your Bose sound system. Speaker in the middle for your Bose sound system. More soft touch not really leather but soft plastic with the molded stitching right here. More of that molded stitching coming over there and this entire dash is going to be soft touch and pretty good quality. Now once you get to this infotainment system looks very very old. You know for a $45,000 car this should have a bigger touchscreen and just more up to date looking things. But once again like I said some people actually enjoy paying for that older look because you know companies move on. They don't stay with the same design and people that fell in love with this design and they don't want to see it go anywhere. Maybe snatching up something like this is an opportunity they probably won't get back again. Now if you get a little bit closer it is a decent touchscreen. Now you can control it multiple ways. Obviously it is touchscreen like I mentioned to you guys earlier and then you can use this little dial down here to scroll left and right and that will control everything on there. Your correlating buttons here off to the side tune knob, volume knob which is always good to have. You actually have a camera button you can click right there to pull up your camera 360 degree camera, backup camera. 360 degree camera is okay just you can really see where they crop in all the images so Nissan does not try to hide that at all. You've got a slightly grainy backup camera right there and of course that will do the same thing if you throw this into reverse. As you guys can see there dual zone climate control all of your fan speeds there of course your start button right there you have a little area right over here and it's a good sized area you have a USB and a USB-C in there as well as an auxiliary you guys can see that and this entire area is lined in felt it's pretty dark in there but you have a little area you can slide your phone in right there hopefully you guys can see that I'm not sure if you can or not but it's right there and you have your cup holders here you're going to have this really soft leather that's going to come all the way right here and you can rest your knees along this area which is nice leather wrapped shifter right here with that, you know, Rakuta tan stitching some piano black silver accents around that solid shifter feel feels really nice and you don't have paddles but you can throw it into a manual mode which I would just never suggest doing unless you absolutely have to for whatever reason heat and cooled seats heated is going to be all the way to the right cooled all the way to the left meat in the middle to turn it off sport mode traction control button right there of course you can press this to select any of your options your menu back right there and then you have your map right here which I wouldn't suggest using I would just use Apple CarPlay if you have it just because the maps on there are a lot better than the ones provided to you by Nissan then you come to the armrest this armrest is the softest thing I've ever put my elbow on look at this that is insanely soft I mean it just sinks right in it is pretty crazy but you lift that up a decent amount of storage space you have a 12 volt right down there lockable glove box right here lined in felt so not going to make any noise you're not going to hear that and you have your auto dimming mirror with your home link right there for your garage sunglass holder LED lights right here so hopefully you guys can see that and you're going to have this dual pane panoramic roof which looks fantastic and the day it rained I opened it up and it's just a really cool look having a pano roof it looks fantastic open this up and you have non-LED but you at least have a light there then of course your vanity mirror right there it's pretty much going to be it for the front seat let's go ahead and hop in the back and we will check out the room all right so sitting in the back of the Nissan Maxima here's one thing I did not expect I thought I would have a ton more headroom and I mean I'm sitting pretty slouched right now and I feel like I still have to put my head down just a bit if I put my head fully up I'm six feet tall behind myself my head is fully pressed into the headrest I'm not gonna lie to you guys I've never had this issue really in this size of car I've been in like the Mazda 6 I've been in the Accord I've been in the Camry I've been in the Avalon I've been in every other vehicle that competes essentially with this and I've never had that issue with headroom now here I'm fine because of the moonroof but as soon as I move back here it's really really low very surprised by that Nissan because I can fit in every other mid-size to full-size sedan so that is basically unacceptable if that makes sense for you guys now you do have that same beautiful Rakuta leather back here it looks fantastic though you do have two mat pockets behind each seat heated seats you have a USB and a USB-C back here of course two vents feet room is great my knee room is decent I have about three and a half inches of knee room so that's pretty good and like I said my feet can slide underneath easily you can essentially fit a middle person here because the hump isn't too big but you just got to make sure they're well under six feet because there's just no headroom back here it's pretty crazy you fold down the armrest you have a nice soft area for your elbow there two cup holders and a little storage area here it's pretty much going to be it you do have handles right here and then because of that glass roof you have a great view out of the front but it's not that great when your head is consistently pressed up against the ceiling so like I said very surprised by that was not expecting that so let's go ahead and move on to the trunk all right so coming to the trunk of the Nissan Maxima getting in is very easy you actually have a button located right here underneath the Nissan symbol that's going to let you into the vehicle of course you can use your key as well but looking back here first of all you have a very wide area so putting things in here shouldn't be an issue because of that very wide opening and it's cavernous back here it's absolutely huge you guys can see the cubic feet here on the screen and you of course have tethers here to pull to fold down the rear seats so you can also put more things back here if you so choose and then you also have this accessory option which is a little net and you can put like maybe cans of Pringles, milk anything you want to put in here to make sure it's not flying around and making a bunch of noise back here in the trunk so you do have that option of course you do have a spare underneath here it's not going to be a full-size spare so it's not going to be a 19-inch wheel like the one you have here in the car it's going to be a 17-inch wheel but you have a spare nonetheless and a lot of people are actually going away from that and then you have a little first aid Nissan kit right here in the back so y'all can see that right there pretty helpful that's pretty much going to be it for the trunk space let's go ahead and see what's under the hood of this thing all right so coming under the hood of the Nissan Maxima you can have a 3.5 liter dual overhead cam 24 valve v6 now if all that sounds pretty familiar it's basically the engine out of a 350z so that means you're going to have 300 horsepower 276 pound-feet of torque coming from this engine now it is mated to a CVT now usually that's the part where I groan and just get upset because this is supposed to be touted as Nissan's four-door sports car and in my personal opinion you can't have a four-door sports car of any kind with a CVT but after driving this for a few days I can honestly tell you I'm extremely surprised at what Nissan was able to deliver with this package and I think that after you guys see me drive it in just a second you're going to be extremely impressed with what they have done with this CVT and it is possibly one of the only CVT cars I would ever truly consider buying best benefit because of that CVT you get up to 30 miles per gallon on the highway which is insane for a naturally aspirated v6 and a vehicle of this size you guys can see the true fuel economy figures here on the screen but yeah of course it is front-wheel drive being a Maxima they've always known for being front-wheel drive really wish they would offer all-wheel drive I think it would really push the Maxima into that slightly sportier category even if it did have the CVT but let's go ahead and get this on the road and I'll show y'all how it drives all right you guys so driving the Nissan Maxima Platinum now the first thing I was genuinely surprised by with this vehicle is how well it handles for this big of a front-wheel drive car this handles a little bit better in my opinion than the Avalon Touring and I just think it handles so so well I mean it really does at least from the front seat you know not consistently thinking about the fact that this is front-wheel drive it consistently handles like a sporty four-door it really really does and right now we're just in normal mode and it's got a decent amount of steering wheel feedback it almost feels hydraulic in the way that the steering feels it's super super accurate very precise you've got tons of feedback coming through the wheel I mean you just feel like little just vibrations coming through the wheel and it feels great now you do have a sport mode and you throw into sport mode it really just makes that steering better it never makes it overly heavy it's just the perfect amount of resistance at least in my opinion and it's not overly done it's still everyday drivable you don't ever have to feel like you're just putting in a ton of effort to turn the wheel though some people may enjoy that it rides very well and it's a good mix of being sporty and compliant so right now on this back road that I take all the time it rides well it's not beating you up it's fairly quiet in here it's actually really quiet in this vehicle and it's just very very composed it feels at least the ride quality feels exactly around the $45,000 price point if you guys know what I'm saying there's not a lot of cars where it drives as where the drive feels as expensive as it truly is but taking around this corner so if I can show you guys handles really really well tires do start to give up a little bit when you start to push it a little hard but these Goodyear Tourings are just you know they're adequate tires for gripping at least when you're pushing the car like that like I said in the rain and stuff it did a fantastic job and yeah they're just good all seasons or decent all seasons you know most people are not going to push this car that hard anyways but just to know it handles corners like that decently well is is great now let's get into the big thing you guys are curious about and that's this CVT so I mentioned earlier I'm actually happy Nissan didn't put paddle shifters on here because I've seen a lot of CVTs that have paddle shifters and it's just there's no point it's a CVT you know that it doesn't have real gears to shift I mean maybe it's fun to still pretend I guess but if I'm gonna pretend drive a car I can just go play a video game so the other thing is that you know I just appreciate that they said you know what it's a CVT and we're gonna treat it like a CVT it's gonna work like a CVT does but do it well and I seriously appreciate that they're not trying to hide anything this is a CVT that they say will make this car feel extremely sport oriented and they are correct trust me guys they are correct in this so let's think real quick about how a CVT works and I'm going to show you exactly what I'm talking about so those of you who are not familiar just speaking to those of you who are not familiar CVTs almost think of it as like a rubber band so as you climb in rpms it's this thing that sort of stretches out and the benefit to it especially with a naturally aspirated engine like this that makes its peak horsepower closest to rpm to redline sorry all over the place my speech so this makes its peak horsepower close to redline so why does the CVT benefit that well it's going to hold you close as close as possible to redline when you floor this thing which means you have almost I'd say 280 to all 300 of your horsepower almost all the time when you're flooring it so right now I am you know just to be honest with you guys I'm going 40 right now I floor it one good time and that's 60 it's so quick it's so ridiculously like fast the way it does that and it's super impressive like I said you hold it there and it just climbs climbs climbs at a very rapid pace when you're on the highway and you really stab at this throttle man you're gonna get up to whatever speed you're trying to pass someone at and then beyond that because this CVT really takes advantage of the power that this thing has to offer and I drove this on about a 50 mile trip and I got like 31 miles a gallon without using cruise control guys that was not cruise control if I cruise control this thing I'm talking I could easily get this in like 33 to 34 miles a gallon on the highway that is crazy for this engine that is just insane so once again get on it this thing just books it is so so fast it's legitimately fast like there are cars when you tell yourself this is quick no this is really really like it's a fast car so from a stop because it is front-wheel drive it's not that impressive you're gentle with the throttle you can get a good acceleration so let's try and see how quickly we can get up to 60 decent start and 60 I mean it's not bad it's not terrible I'm gonna try it one more time just to see what we can do here all right coming to a complete stop brake torque it just a bit oh that was good and 60 not bad it's not bad it really is pretty quick like I said the real magic happens when you're already rolling and you just lay into this thing because it will just throw itself way up there in the rpms it's pretty crazy handling is great and it's a genuinely great car to drive I'm so impressed by this thing out of all the sedans between like the Camry XSE this the Avalon Touring this is probably my favorite to drive it's just really good and it has a CVT that's the crazy part I never truly thought I would enjoy a car that has a CVT but there's no denying when you get behind the wheel this thing that once you experience the CVT really doing its thing it just really takes advantage of the power that this Maxima has to offer it's very very impressive and of course it's appointed very well because it's the platinum trim visibility is great you have adaptive cruise you've got blind spot decent view out of the back large windshield you have this nice sporty seating position which feels great you're really low in the car and I think Nissan really did a great job and though it is front-wheel drive I think that the Maxima in terms of a driving perspective is a lot better than a lot of people give it credit for is it worth the $45,000? not quite sold on that but there's no denying like I said it is a fantastic vehicle to drive but I hope this review helped you guys if it did be sure to give me a thumbs up be sure to subscribe for more car content and I will see you guys next review also don't forget to check out my merchandise below this video it will really help support the channel and get yourself a Forest Auto Review shirt thank you so much and I'll see y'all next review bye