Nissan Altima News

the Kelly-Racing backed Nissan Altima will shatter 20 years of Holden and Ford dominance when the team runs four factory-backed cars in the 2013 V8 Supercars series.

However Nissan¹s entry seems to have stalled. The V8 engine for the Nissan Altima which the Kelly Racing Team will race next year has not even been bench tested yet. However, Nissan and the Kelly brothers, Rick and Todd, are not panicking. Nissan Australia motorsport general manager Jeffrey Fisher - one of the architects of Nissan returning to Australia¹s premiere racing category says he is not getting frustrated by the apparent lack of progress on a Nissan-powered V8 Supercar.“We always knew it was mega job they have to do,” he says. “They’re building a brand new engine from scratch and are building a car that is not even on sale here yet. “They’ve only just started to build the Altima in the US.” Nissan returns to Aussie motorsport next year with four cars built by the Kelly Racing Team for Rick and Todd, plus Karl Reindler and Greg Murphy.They will be driving cars with a five-litre V8 engine that is a “de-stroked” (shorter-cylinder) version of the Patrol’s new 5.6-litre V8 due in December. The car will be shaped like the “large-ish medium-sized Altima” which Fisher says will go on sale here in the second half of next year. “We always went into the race program with a vehicle that we would sell here,” he says.“We will be racing the Altima before we sell it, so it’s a great way to get some awareness for it.” Rick Kelly says he is not concerned that championship-leading team Triple 8 has already tested its first completed new V8 Supercar “Car of the Future” (COFT) for the 2013 season at Queensland Raceway. “Triple 8 doesn’t have the same issues we have,” he says.“Their car is the same shape and has the same engine but we have to design the whole thing from scratch and then get the aero package homologated by V8 Supercars,” he says. “It’s largely in the hands of V8 Supercars and whatever package Nissan is comfortable with.” He confirmed that the V8 engine was still awaiting parts and had not yet been bench tested.However, he said it would be ready for revealing early next month and the first completed new race car rolled out in October. While the double-overhead cam V8 Nissan engine should have better fuel economy than the Holden and Ford push-rod engines, Fisher says V8 Supercars will equalise the engines. “Every advantage that a team can garner they will have a look at,” he says.“The equalisation terms are pretty strict. V8 Supercars will do what they need to so there are no obvious advantages. “We already know that the car will need to run some extra weight to get it up to the minimum.” Fisher says Nissan owners are keen for the brand to re-enter the sport. “This is just the kind of tonic the brand needs,” he says.“There’s a latent fan base out there. “I’m sure it will be a more interesting competition next year.” Kelly says the 2013 series would be more level with all teams having to build new race cars to the new COTF specifications. “This year is unusual with two teams dominating, while last year we won three races,” he says. “Next year (COTF) will even everything out. “However, the teams that are doing well now with managing tyre wear will still be good teams next year so it’s not going to be a free kick for us.” 

The Altima - unveiled at the recent New York Motor Show - has already hasd success overseas."The new Altima is already the second most successful passenger sedan in the USA with sales of more than 20,000 per month," said Nissan Australia CEO Bill Peffer."Its appearance in Australia will be a strategic boost to our ever improving passenger car line up and will offer a compelling alternative to the familiar products in this segment. Altima will also raise the bar in motorsport as Nissan's entry in the 2013 V8 Supercar Championship where it will introduce modern generation sedan styling and technology."Nissan Australia executives were joined in New York by Kelly Racing co-owner and driver Rick Kelly and CEO John Crennan, for a closer look at Altima as the team prepares to build the factory entry into the V8 Supercars Championship from 2013.The new Altima is said to offer numerous segment defining attributes that enhance the ownership experience and provide extra value. It's aiming for best-in-segment fuel economy with a 2.5-litre petrol engine.Altima has an upscale interior rivaling premium luxury sedans, including NASA-inspired "zero-gravity" seats, an Advanced Drive-Assist Display and BOSE premium audio system. Standard Bluetooth hands-free phone system and streaming is included.Next-generation Safety Shield Technologies, including Blind Spot Warning (BSW), Lane Departure Warning (LDW) and Moving Object Detection (MOD) systems Tyre Pressure Monitoring System (TPMS) will be available. 

The Nissan Altima was revealed this week at the New York Auto Show, and will go on sale in Australia in the second half of 2013. Before that it will be seen on Australian racetracks as Nissan’s challenger to the dominant Holden and Ford V8s. Nissan is still firming up local specification, but we can expect the 136kW 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine in a range of models with a starting price under $30,000.A 200kW V6 model may also be offered as a sporting variant to capitalise on Nissan’s V8 supercar participation. But not even the race-car will be as advanced as its road-going sibling. The American version revealed in New York includes the following among its technology highlights:- Seats designed by NASA, that are said to reduce fatigue on long trips and relieve pressure points on the occupant’s body no matter what shape or size.- An ‘Advanced Drive-Assist Display’ 3D-effect digital screen located between the speedo and tacho that puts key information in front of the driver and is said to improve cognition and reduce distraction.- NissanConnect which integrates with Internet music service Pandora, offers handsfree text messaging, and voice-controlled, Google-enhanced satellite navigation.- Tyre pressure monitoring system with ‘Easy-Fill Alert’ that does away with the need to trust dodgy petrol station gauges because it honks the horn when the correct pressure is reached during refilling.In addition to these features, the new Altima has a reversing camera that integrates lane departure warning, blind-spot warning and moving object warning systems, some of which are not currently offered on medium cars in Australia.Questions remain as to whether any or all of these features will be available on Australian models, Nissan saying it comes down to infrastructure support and Australian Design Regulations as much as customer demand.

Nissan believes the Altima has the potential to overtake the Mazda6, Honda Accord Euro and Subaru Liberty to be Australia’s favourite mid-size import, and second only to the locally-built Toyota Camry in the mid-size market.The Nissan Altima sedan is scheduled to arrive in Australia in the second half of 2013 in a range of specification levels and possibly priced below $30,000. The front-drive Altima is classified as a mid-size car and will sit below the Maxima large car even though, at 4.86m x 1.83m, it is longer and wider than the Maxima.  “There’s definitely a place for both cars , at least initially” said Nissan sales boss Ian Moreillon. “They’re two totally different offerings that will appeal to different buyers”. Australian models will get a 136kW, 2.5-litre four-cylinder petrol version coupled with a continuously variable transmission. A 200kW, 3.5-litre V6 is offered on American models, and could come to Australia as a sporting variant to leverage Nissan’s V8 Supercars participation.But it would then raise questions over the sales viability of the Maxima which has the same engine. Moreillon admitted this could be a concern: “We don’t want to have cars overlapping.” Because Nissan Australia is aligning itself with the American market for Altima, there’s little chance of a diesel variant, at least in the first few years.  Nissan believes new car buyers will be attracted to the Altima’s design, packaging, space efficiency and technology. The Altima has what Nissan is calling “NASA-inspired Zero Gravity seats that help relieve pressure points no matter the occupants body shape or size”. Nissan Australia could not confirm whether the Altima’s advanced entertainment and satellite navigation system - which integrates with Internet-based subscription music service Pandora and Google’s POI search - would make it to Australia.

However the carmaker said they had prepared for a backlash when they recently announced a 2013 return to Australia’s premier motorsport category.Nissan driver Jim Richards famously called the Bathurst 1000 crowd “a pack of arseholes” after they booed him and co-driver Mark Skaife for winning the rain-shortened 1992 race in a Nissan GT-R.The GT-R’s twin-turbocharged engine and all-wheel drive gave it a massive advantage over the more popular rear-drive V8s, and it was subsequently ‘regulated’ out of the Australian Touring Car Championship.Nissan Motorsport co-owner Rick Kelly is aware of this dark chapter in Australian motor sport, and said the team prepared for it prior to the announcement of Nissan’s return.“We spent a lot of our time having our guns loaded in terms of fan response. But so far it hasn’t eventuated.” Instead, Rick said the fans have been overwhelmingly supportive.“The reaction has been very positive. It seems to me the whole fan-base felt the category was a little bit stagnant. They really feel re-energised.”Kelly did acknowledge that not everybody was happy to see Nissan come back to Australia’s most popular motor sport category.“So far only three of Kelly Racing’s 400-strong membership base have expressed that they will not continue when Kelly Racing becomes Nissan Motorsport”.Nissan Australia will enter an Altima sedan in the 2013 V8 Supercar series, powered by the Nissan Patrol’s V8 petrol engine.Nissan spokesman Jeff Fisher said the choice of engine was important. “We always wanted to go racing with an engine that was relevant to our market. So it was important to choose an engine that Australians can buy in a Nissan”.Even so, the link is indeed tenuous. Where the Patrol’s V8 is 5.6 litres and produces 298kW, the race car’s version will be ‘sleeved’ to 5.0 litres, and produce in the region of 450-525kW.As for the race car, it will be rear drive and have a six-speed rear-mounted transmission, whereas the production Altima is front drive and has a continuously variable transmission. Only some of the production car’s body panels will be shared with the race car.Some have likened Australia’s new motor sport formula to America’s Nascar racing, where car companies drape different bodies over essentially identical race cars.Kelly says this is not true. He also says that “the will have more Nissan DNA than our current Commodore race car has from Holden. Communicating that to the fan-base will be the challenge.”Nissan MotorSport has said it will reveal the new race car “in due course … later this year”, but would not be more specific.

Nissan says it also plans to overtake Mazda as Australia’s favourite full-line importer in the next 12 months. But wait, there’s more. Nissan expects the unknown Altima sedan to become Australia’s favourite mid-size import in 2014, vanquishing established players like the Honda Accord Euro, Mazda6, Hyundai i45 and Subaru Liberty in the process.  “Our stated goal is to be Australia’s number one full-line importer by March 2013,” Nissan’s sales chief Ian Moreillon told Carsguide, “and we are still on target to achieve this".  “With the plans we have in place, we certainly have the potential to grow our sales significantly over the next 12 months.” Moreillon said car companies that “pulled their development horns in” during the 2009 Global Financial Crisis will be at a disadvantage. “Unlike some of our rivals, we continued to spend on product development during the GFC at the expense of other areas of the business.”  So far in 2012 Nissan has sold 19,902 new cars, up nine percent on the same period last year, but still a long way behind Mazda’s 26,513. Moreillon believes a flood of new models from July this year will sweep Nissan past Mazda by this time next year.  The Leaf electric car arrives first followed by the Micra-based Almera compact sedan in August, and the next-generation Patrol large four-wheel drive near Christmas. Early next year, Nissan’s weak passenger car portfolio gets a huge lift with the Pulsar’s return after a six-year absence. The new Pulsar debuted at the Shanghai show in April last year and will replace the under-performing Tiida as Nissan’s rival to popular small cars like the Mazda3, Toyota Corolla and Holden Cruze.  Moreillon echoed outgoing CEO Dan Thompson’s statement that “Pulsar (will) be number one in its segment”. For Nissan, that could mean a twelve-fold increase in its small car sales from the Tiida’s 270 per month to more than the 3,500 per month that the Mazda3 consistently achieves.  Pulsar will be followed by the Altima mid-size sedan which will also form the basis of Nissan’s V8 Supercar racing entry. “The Altima is a critical car for Nissan both in Australia and globally,” said Moreillon. “It’s the second-best selling passenger car in America and we believe it can be the best-selling imported car in its segment in Australia.”  In a global first for Nissan, the Altima race car will debut at the Clipsal 500 in Adelaide some six months ahead of the production car’s expected arrival in showrooms in November 2013. “Our participation in V8 Supercars will help us create a profile for the Altima,” Moreillon told CarsGuide at the Altima’s global reveal at the New York motor show this week.  Moreillon believes the Altima can carve 600 sales a month from the medium-car market, which would make it the best-selling import model, and second only to the locally-built Toyota Camry.

The venture company Automotive Energy Supply Corporation (AESC), which is owned 51 per cent by Nissan and 49 per cent by the NEC group, will develop and produce advanced lithium-ion batteries with an annual output capacity of 13,000 units.On a capital investment of $120.1 million over three years, AESC plans to expand its annual production capacity to 65,000 lithium-ion batteries a year by 2009.The push into advanced lithium-ion batteries comes as Japanese vehicle manufacturers invest in an array of new, environmentally friendly car technologies amid soaring prices at the pump.Nissan has been slower than rivals Toyota Motor Corp and Honda Motor Co to embrace petrol-electric hybrids, but it aims to become the industry leader in electric vehicles.“Our vision for a more sustainable future is clear,” said Nissan's executive vice-president Carlos Tavares. “Nissan firmly believes the ultimate solution for sustainable mobility lies in zero emission. Electric vehicles will be a key product breakthrough our industry can deliver.”He said Nissan was ready to supply the batteries to any interested company.Nissan also aims to use the batteries in an electric vehicle to be launched in the US and Japan in 2010, along with the first hybrid using its own technology.Nissan has not yet produced a hybrid model car. The Altima gas-electric hybrid sedan marketed in the US adopts the system from Toyota. 

 The reason is simple. Godzilla says everything about Nissan and where it is going. It reflects a bold take on design, a commitment to technology, smart financial planning, global sales success and the ability to produce cars that are uniquely Nissan.But there is much more to Nissan than a limited-edition supercar capable of cranking out the all-time quickest lap around the Nurburgring racetrack in Germany. Nissan 360 is a deep-dip immersion in the world of Nissan that is run for the world's motoring press every four years. There are workshops on future technology, the chance to drive everything in the Nissan family – from the smallest and cheapest to the biggest and most expensive – interviews with senior executives and much, much more on every technical and business front.Nissan had 60-something cars in Portugal for test drives – in all sorts of conditions – from a short city loop to a country run, a four-wheel drive torture track and hot laps at the Estoril circuit.The vehicles ran all the way from the tiny Pino and Otto minicars to the stonking GT-R, but there was also a full family of Infiniti models, a Clipper truck and an LPG-powered Tokyo taxi. With so much choice, we picked a few to see how they are likely to shape up for Australia: 2009 MuranoThis is the bigger new Murano, already out and about in America, and the signs are good.It looks much the same, with the same basic body shape, but is far roomier inside with better quality finishing. It also drives sharper and has a plusher ride, both worthwhile improvements resulting from what Nissan calls its “D-platform” mechanical package.But the Murano still only has five seats, which will hurt it against the Mazda CX-9 and its other rivals, and Nissan Australia still has to decide how to sell it here.Verdict: Uncertain Titan V8The giant Titan is a ripper, even if it was a tight fit through the narrow streets of Sintra, near Lisbon. The test truck was a giant dual-cab V8 easily capable of swallowing five adults and a couple of motorcycles, as well as to wing up to four tonnes.It had plenty of grunt from a 5.6-litre V8 with 236kW and 521Nm, a comfy cabin, surprisingly good handling and rode smoothly for a truck.Nissan Australia should get it here as soon as possible as it is better than an F-Series Ford and there is obvious opportunity Down Under.Verdict: Potential star Cube The boxy city car was designed for Gen-Yers but is surprisingly grown-up. The styling is five-year-old stuff and the front bench seat is retro and cramped, but the Cube drives far better than you would expect. It's not a rocket, but it gets along well enough and the ride is very good for the size. It doesn't take too much imagination to see the potential for Gen-Y buyers in Australia, as well as customisers who would go crazy on the car. But it needs to be cheaper than the predicted range of $28,000.Verdict: Winner X-Trail dieselIt has to come and it will, but the diesel engine in the X-er and Dualis was nothing special.It was noisy at idle, strong, but not outstanding, and way short of the refinement of a VW group turbodiesel. The test cars were fitted with a baby diesel, with 110kW instead of the 127 coming here, so we hope that the upgrade will make the X-Trail and Dualis more than just economy contenders.Verdict: Jury still out Infiniti EXWe expected them to drive like Japanese Buicks, but they didn't – with European-style quality and comfort. Infiniti has been focused on the US but with European sales starting soon, it has been turned into an impressively global luxury brand that, as we reported last week, might come to Australia – but not for about five years. The EX would be a headliner with good looks, comfy and classy cabin, punchy power and smooth ride.The wait, however, could seem like infinity.Verdict: Five years is too long to wait Altima hybridWhy can't the Toyota Prius look this good?The Altima running gear is a straight snitch from the Prius, as Nissan was desperate to have something to sell in hybrid-crazy California. It paid to play. The petrol-electric Altima will only run for a single generation but it's a good drive.Verdict: No chance for Oz GT-RTwo laps on a track does not tell you much about the GT-R. But the GT-R is instantly impressive with speed, speed, speed. Destined to be a sellout success in Australia, just like everywhere else it is sold.Verdict: The business 

The automaker is asking customers driving new models of two of its flagship sedans to keep their car keys and mobile handsets at least an inch apart to avoid disabling the "intelligent keys."Mobile phones kept near Nissan's I-Keys - wireless devices designed to allow drivers to enter and start their cars at the push of a button - can erase the electronic code on the keys, rendering them unable to unlock or start the cars.The problem has occurred on the 2007 Nissan Altima and Infiniti G35 sedans - two of their top-selling models, the company said."We discovered that if the I-Key touches a mobile phone, outgoing or incoming calls have the potential to alter the electronic code inside the I-Key," Nissan spokesman Kyle Bazemore said."The car won't start and the I-Key cannot be reprogrammed," he added.The problem has occurred in a "very small percentage" of cars sold, Mr Bazemore said. He also said a new version of the I-Key would be available in the fall.Mr Bazemore said current owners have been notified of the potential glitch via mail and can get new keys from dealers if they encounter the problem.Karl Gehling, a spokesperson for Nissan Australia, told CARSguide Australian vehicles used a different version of the I-Key technology that was not affected by the problem.