Originally Posted By: css9450
Let's hear more about those Maximas!
The 85-88 Maximas were inspired by Tron and Knight rider. They were as boxy as a Volvo of the time. They had wireframe grid backgrounds on various pieces of the interior, they all had voice chips that sounded like a beautiful woman, and various optional digital displays. The interior was extremely comfortable and solidly built. The stereo systems were extremely good, and featured 7 band equalizers.
The VG30E engine was rock solid and powerful for its day (155-160HP), but a timing belt failure could kill it instantly. It was a SOHC 3.0L 12V V6 and it had multi-port fuel injection. "Check engine light" and smog test failures were extremely rare. It was nearly leak-proof.
However, the cars had some serious flaws:
1. 1980s Front Wheel Drive really sucked. The cars had bad torque steer, and the CV Joints never lasted. Compounding the problem was the price of rebuilt units back then. Transaxles were good, however, and all of them had an overdrive gear.
2. The P/S racks never lasted over 50,000 miles, they were also expensive due to limited number of rebuilders. The amount of labor needed to replace one was bad too because Nissan put a bunch of stuff in the way.
3. The cars had had 4 MacPherson struts, and they all went bad at 50,000 miles, and the job was always costly. A significant amount of the interior had to be removed to replace the rear 2 struts.
4. Nissan crammed everything under the hood so tightly that it would quickly fry to death starters, alternators, and AC Compressors. The kind of compressor they used was extremely expensive to rebuild. After a while, many owners of the car just said "Forget it" and drove with all windows down.
My mother had the '85 sedan, and one kid across the street had a '86 wagon. We had friends with variants too.
There was also an interesting quirk that I came to understand years later. The oil pressure gauge did not read in PSI. It read in lb/in^2! I learned about area in a math class and the teacher told us to use in^2, not sq. in. and then that display made sense to me.
