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About Altima

For three decades the Altima was Nissan's answer to the Camry and Accord, a roomy midsize sedan with a slightly sportier attitude and a sharper price. It arrived for the 1993 model year to replace the Stanza, was built for most of its life in Smyrna, Tennessee, and Canton, Mississippi, and for a time ranked among the best-selling cars in America. It was the default rental car, the default commuter, and for millions of buyers, simply the default.

Six generations brought steady upgrades: a punchy V6 in the 2000s, a short-lived coupe, continuously variable transmissions that divided owners, and in the sixth generation, launched for 2019, available all-wheel drive and a variable-compression turbocharged engine that was a genuine engineering first. The Altima also earned a less flattering reputation online, where memes about aggressively driven Altimas became a genre of their own, a running joke that Nissan never managed to shake.

The market moved on. As buyers fled to crossovers like Nissan's own Rogue, sedan sales withered, and Nissan has moved to drop the Altima from its American lineup as part of a broader restructuring. Its old rivals, the Camry, Accord, Hyundai Sonata and Kia K5, carry on, but the segment is a fraction of its former size and the remaining players increasingly lean on hybrid versions to stay relevant. That makes the Altima's page a mix of farewell coverage, used-car advice, recall notices and retrospectives on models like the V6 coupe of the late 2000s. Anyone shopping a used example will find the service bulletins and transmission stories here especially worth reading, and any sign of a revival, however unlikely, will turn up here as well.