The 1986 Nissan Maxima Was a High-Tech 1980s Sport Sedan

this is a 1986 nissan maxima and don't let its appearance fool you this was a high-tech high-performance car back in 1986 34 years ago this car was on the cutting edge with some cool technology and the engine from the nissan 300 zx sports car and today i'm going to review it [Music] before i get started be sure to check out cars and bids which is my enthusiast car auction website with cool cars from the modern era and we've had some great sales recently including this beautiful c7 corvette zr1 which sold for 158 thousand dollars this audi rs4 convertible which sold for just over 29 000 and this fantastic volkswagen passat w8 manual transmission wagon which sold for 22 000. if you're looking to sell your cool car from the modern era cars and bids is the place to do it you'll find the most interest and the most money for your cool car and if you're looking to buy a cool car cars and bids has amazing selection with daily auctions check it out at carsandbids.com i've borrowed this maxima from a viewer here in southern california and it is pristine just 55 000 miles truly amazing but anyway i'm gonna start with a little overview now the current nissan maxima is the car's eighth generation and it still has a reputation for being nissan's flagship sedan and an excellent performance model with some big horsepower and kind of a sporty feel but it's increasingly being forgotten about as consumer interest shifts more towards suvs and crossovers but not back in 1986 back then the maxima was the star of the show the nissan that everybody wanted but few actually got this is a second generation maxima and it's powered by a 3 liter v6 it only makes about 160 horsepower but it was the same engine from the nissan 300 zx sports car and that was a big deal it elevated the maxima's performance credibility and by comparison the honda accord and toyota camry were only offered with four-cylinder engines at the time and the cool didn't stop there the 1986 maxima was also a high tech car with some impressive new technology features that other cars from this era simply didn't have features which i will show you in this video the maxima really was the car to have back then and it sort of led the way as nissan transitioned from using the datsun name to using nissan for its entire product lineup so today i'm going to take you on a tour of the 1986 nissan maxima and i'm going to show you all of the quirks and features of a special 1980s sedan then i'm going to get it out on the road and drive it and then i'll give it a dug score all right i'm going to start the quirks and features of this maximum by going over some of its high-tech advancements and that means starting with the fact that it talks to you back in the 1980s robotics and automated speech was kind of the new cutting edge cool thing and nissan found warning chimes to be a bit impersonal and too generic so they made the car talk to you there are several pre-programmed messages it will say to you if you meet certain conditions for instance if you leave the key in the ignition and open up the door to get out the car wants to let you know that you forgot your keys so it says to you he is in the ignition he is in the ignition and in fact it says that to you over and over again so you can make sure you understand it take a listen to that more closely he is in the admission he is in the ignition he is in the ignition but let's say you get annoyed by that as everyone would you take your key out of the ignition so i guess it did its job let's say you leave your headlights on when you turn the car off it will then tell you lights are on [Music] again take a closer listen to that lights are on lights are on there were several of these messages that the car would say to you that had been recorded beforehand they were cooler more futuristic than a regular ding ding kind of warning chime that boring regular cars had my very favorite one of the voice warnings was if you started driving with your door open then the car would say left door is open left door is open left door is open the cool thing here is as you can hear it actually tells you which door is open it lets you know so you know which one to close which is unusually helpful and there were a few others too it would tell you if you're driving with the parking brake on or if fuel was low and that way you had a more futuristic kind of party trick warning system than just your regular chimes very modern for 1986 and that wasn't the only cool futuristic feature in this vicinity here's another one on the driver's door handle you have this number pad that allowed you access to the car without using the key this car came out in the days before keyless remotes really became common and so this was nissan's idea if you wanted to get into the car without having to pull the key out turn it in the door like some plebian so what happened was you would type in your code which you got when you bought the car when it was new and then the driver's door would unlock when the code was done being typed in or you had other options if you pressed the open button after typing in the code all the doors would unlock so you can unlock them all from this keypad you could also press a lock and then all the doors would lock from this keypad again no key required but the very best one was that you could enter in your code and then press trk trunk and it would pop open the trunk again you could access every aspect of this car without using the key now by modern standards this is commonplace and you just leave the key in your pocket it senses your hand you open up and get in but this was the predecessor to all that and i believe this was the very first car to feature this keypad entry system now nissan kept this system around on a few other models even through the 2000s and ford still uses it pretty frequently today but no other automaker really does but this was one of the very early keyless entry systems that you now pretty much take for granted because every car has it and next up moving inside the maxima for some more futuristic technology of the 1980s check this out when you turn on the radio in this car the power antenna automatically comes up in back that was common basically every car from this era did it but in the maxima if you weren't getting good enough reception with the radio on and the antenna up there was a button on the head unit you could push to raise the antenna even further it was like a radio plus mode and the theory was maybe then you would get as much reception as you wanted you could literally raise the antenna higher than the factory position kind of funny and speaking of the radio if you look at the radio here in the center control stack you can see the top has most of the usual buttons but below that you also have an equalizer left and right and you can control all sorts of different aspects of your sound experience of course cars now integrate this into a screen if they have it at all but back in the 80s you could use each individual slider to perfectly tailor your sound experience to whatever you wanted very high tech and next up here's another cool feature this car had power seats wasn't that uncommon back in the 80s it only had power for forward and backwards which was again also kind of the norm the cool thing is that these seats also recline there is a little lever on the side of the driver and passenger seat in front if you pull it and then push your weight back you can see the seat reclines back for more comfort or you can put it back in sort of a more upright position so this car had power seats and it also had reclining seats which i've never really seen in any other car obviously you can do that in most cars with the power controls but in this car there was a recliner lever you could pull if you wanted more comfort and next up for more futuristic technology we come up to the front of the maxima here's a cool feature when you put on the turn signal obviously the turn signal goes on but you can see this white light on the side also goes on this is called a cornering light and nissan's thinking was when you were signaling to the left maybe you want more illumination to the left to see where you're turning and so more lights would come on you turn off the turn signal and that light turns off it's a good idea nissan wasn't the only automaker to use this cadillac and lincoln were doing it too but i think nissan was the only japanese brand but the cool thing here is that modern luxury cars have now adopted this feature in mass bmw mercedes volvo they all have it well nissan had it 35 years ago and another thing that nissan had 35 years ago was a sonar system up here beginning with the 1988 model year nissan came out with an option where a sonar system would scan the ground ahead of you and if it detected a pothole or a rough road it would adjust the suspension to make the ride more comfortable this was the first system like this now this car doesn't have the sonar suspension system because it's an 86 model and that came out in 88 and frankly i suspect there are no maximas left with this feature it was a very expensive option and very few people got it and if they still have it it probably isn't working but the point is it was available this really was a very high-tech car and that was the highest tech thing they could dream up back in 1986. that and a car that talked to you when you left your door open but anyway moving on from this car's high-tech advancements and on to the rest of its quirks and features there are quite a few considering it's a 1980s flagship sedan i want to start with getting in the first thing you notice in here is the seats these velour seats with their buttons in the middle intended to look very comfortable inviting old school this is what nissan thought americans wanted in the 1980s and frankly they were probably right a lot of american cars had interiors that looked like this at the time so they were just pretty much copying that but it's interesting to see these sort of old-school overstuffed velour seats in a nissan doesn't seem like it fits and next up some more 80s relics in here one is the steering wheel which looks absurd no controls on it only two spokes both on the bottom this is certainly not a modern car steering wheel but it is very 80s i also love the gear lever in these things this post that basically stuck up and then a horizontal surface at the top for you to grab onto to shift not a very elegant solution not very well integrated into the interior but it was functional it put it in gear you just could never get away with anything like this in a modern car but beyond the 80s relics there are some really interesting quirky controls in this car button switches etc one is for the intermittent wipers to change the wiper speed you would twist the end of the wiper stock and then it would show you your speed with this blue little field on the left you can see as i go up or down it shows you more or less i guess that's time in between windshield wipes when you had it in the intermittent setting but that was your variable intermittent wiper control this little blue field that changed when you twisted the stock next up here's another great old-school control in this car on the radio in the center control stack you have all the dials buttons you'd expect plus there's also a button marked simply loud you want it loud in here you press the loud button and i guess it would do it for you that one is kind of funny and by the way this isn't actually a radio to be clear this is a nissan dynamic sound system and it proudly states that right in the middle so you knew you weren't looking at a typical non-dynamic sound system next up another interesting control in this car is a switch in the center console marked voice that switch allowed you to configure the voice that talked to you and told you that your headlights were on if you pushed it to the right it would turn off the voice you didn't have to hear it if you pushed it to the left it would turn on the voice and it would also repeat whatever it was saying before so if you weren't sure if your fuel level was low whatever you press the voice and it will tell you again just in case you've forgotten what it said which is an interesting touch and next up here's another fantastic control in this interior that would be the map light which is mounted in the usual spot on the ceiling the cool part is it's adjustable so you could turn it on and then position it precisely where you wanted so you could read your map now the funny thing is there aren't two of these so driver and passenger shared a map light meaning if you were the passenger and the driver was hogging the map light you had to twist it and adjust it so it was pointing on you and vice versa if you were the driver and the passenger had the light so you only had one light but it reached both people because it could twist on this ball that's an interesting innovation next up another interesting one is operating cruise control in order to turn it on there was a switch to the left of the steering wheel you could turn it to on or off from there in order to adjust cruise control you use these little switches and dials on the turn signal stock it's a very busy little stock there because there's so many cruise control components but you would use those and then cruise control would operate kind of interesting and next up here's another unusual one the warning lights for this car to let you know your headlights were on your cruise control was on whatever they're not in the gauge cluster like basically every other car instead they're on top of the dashboard and horizontal which means that they go pretty far out your cruise control warning is all the way over on the passenger side so if you want to know if cruise control was on you'd have to ask the passenger can you see that light on and they would have to tell you it's quite far from the driver and quite unorthodox positioning i suspect they did that to make the gauge cluster smaller so they could lift up the dashboard and provide more knee room but it is interesting to see all those typical gauge cluster warning lights so far away from the gauge cluster and next up we move on to the glove box which itself is uninteresting you just open it up and it's a glove box the interesting item in here is the owner's manual quite small you can see and as is common from owner's manuals from this era there are some weird cartoon drawings like this one showing people trying to steal the car and then i guess they're getting scared away by the alarm system or this one showing a guy washing his car but it's some old weird car that looks nothing like a maxima i don't know if nissan like paid illustrators to create more fun owner's manual images but they have them in case you wanted kind of a cartoon theme in your owner's manual and next up we move on to the back seat in the maxima which is surprisingly small you can see the front seat is in a pretty standard spot i'm sitting here my knees are right up against it really don't have all that much space back here the back seat is not large this is certainly a far cry from the maxima we know today as nissan's largest sedan that makes sense because this car is only 181.5 inches long it's actually shorter than a modern honda civic the maxima has changed quite a bit over the years more on that in the driving portion but the point here is it's not very big back here but you do get the same velour seats you got in the front with the little buttons on them to emphasize this car's grand luxury status and you drop the armrest you get a nice velour arm rest which complements the seats perfectly and adds comfort to your rear seat experience now it's worth noting back here this car has lap belts only no three-point seat belts back here this car was built before that requirement so rear seat passengers maybe aren't going to be the safest in the event of a serious collision one other interesting item in the back seat these seats fold down they're actually split folding seats one side folds down 60 the other side folds down 40. that was a pretty big innovation for a 1980s sedan a lot of them just had seats that were fixed in place but they fold down here one cool thing is that the headrests stay in place when the seats fold down so you don't have to worry about readjusting them they're always there not that they're very helpful they don't really provide a lot of head support my head would go completely over them in an accident but they're there and they do stay fixed when the seats fold down and next up we move on to the trunk of the maximum which i can open back here with the key you open it up and discover it is quite a large trunk unusually large actually even by modern standards it's a big trunk especially for a car this size the drawback though was the load in height because of these giant brake lights back here which were a mainstay on 80s japanese cars they all had them you have to lift whatever you're putting in the trunk all the way over the bumper and the lights in order to get it in place which nobody really does anymore but in the age of giant brake lights turn signals reverse lights that were five times larger than they are now that's what you had to do by the way one of the things i love most in the back of the maxima is the speakers on the rear shelf speakers in the back not all that uncommon the thing i like about them is the fact that they say sp7 two-way speaker system as if sp7 was something to brag about no one has any idea what that means now no one had any idea back then either but for some reason japanese companies put all these letters and numbers on stuff to make it seem cool so this had the sp and next up i'm going to go under the hood and talk engine in a second but first i want to discuss a few items on this car's exterior starting with badging now in the back this is badged as nissan maxima as you can see in front the badge at the very front of the hood in the center says only maxima nissan wasn't shy about the fact that this was a nissan but they really wanted to drive home the point that this was the best nissan the maxima the really cool one that you worked hard to save up for and so it was more about selling the maxima than the nissan brand another interesting item on the outside of this car is the wheels which are atrocious they are so 80s and ugly and you would never have any wheels that looked anything like this today but to me they perfectly suit the character of this car on later second gen maximum models the wheels changed and got more sort of rational but i really always loved these with all of the little rectangles and cuts in them although the owner tells me they're impossible to clean not only are there a bunch of spokes but there are areas that are kind of pressed in and so you have to go into each individual area and wipe it down so it's not an ideal wheel but it looks so perfect for this era and for this car next up another exterior item i want to cover is the design of this car which is just so dull you have the front the middle the back all squares three boxes there was no real style to this it was just a car but that's how a lot of sedans were in the 1980s this one included and it's just funny to see it now considering all the swoops and cuts and aggressive grills that modern cars have today very different situation one other interesting item worth noting on the outside over on the passenger side rear window you have a little decal that says okay car companies from japan would put these decals in the window when they left the factory after they had been inspected so that you would know the car has been inspected and then it is okay to be shipped off and sold to a customer very rare you still see an 80s or early 90s japanese car with the okay decal but all the automakers had them honda nissan and this one still says okay by the way this is totally unrelated to this car but check out this parking permit this is a ucsd medical center parking permit expires june 30 of 86. this is 34 years old it's still stuck there and you can still read it perfectly whoever made these parking permits is a fantastic manufacturer of decals so shout out to anonymous company that made ucsd parking permits 35 years ago and finally we move under the hood you can see this car's engine the three liter nissan v6 before i cover that how about the fact that the hood stands up without a prop this was a big deal for an 80s japanese car some of them still don't do it but this one has a big hydraulic to keep the hood in place the mark of an upscale top of the line luxury vehicle like the maxima but anyway back to the engine like i mentioned earlier about 160 horsepower not a huge number but again this was not a big car not long not heavy so that was pretty healthy at the time especially considering most rivals only offered four cylinder engines this one had a v6 and the 300 zx's v6 no less that made the maxima pretty cool by most people's standards and so those are the quirks and features of the 1986 nissan maxima now it's time to get it out on the road and see how it drives all right driving the 86 maxima now before i get into driving experience i want to talk two things kind of about this car and its place in the world one is like i've been saying this was like the car to have it's actually kind of difficult to imagine that now because the maxima a lot more in rental fleets it's still pretty cool as far as nissan sedans go but it's not as cool as it was i remember when i was a kid i had a friend named daniel friedman and his dad had the next generation maxwell from this one but still a maxima and we considered it the coolest thing that one could possibly have it was the coolest parent car that anybody had with a little door keypad a big v6 uh and it was neat and those that at the time it was very aspirational and that kind of continued throughout the 90s and into the early 2000s and people started switching over to suvs and nissan started to not make his great cars and that was that the other thing worth noting about the maxima um is its market position so i sat in the back seat and i told you it's real tight back there in part that's because cars have grown but that's not the only reason back in the 80s the maxima really was kind of nissan's mid-size sedan and the ultima was their compact sedan and there was a shift in the early 2000s late 90s but especially early 2000s where nissan moved the altima into the midsize territory to take on cars like the camry and the accord and the maxima really started its push more kind of up market and so back when this car was new it kind of bridged the gap between traditional mid-sized cars like the camry and the accord and larger sedans like the toyota cressida and the acura legend it was sort of in between those so it wasn't really the kind of large sedan that it became which is another reason why it's so small back here it's not just because cars used to be small and now they're big although that is a factor anyway driving this car uh your first impression we drive this car is i can't believe we all lusted after these things it's just not all that good it's not very fast it's not very fun and it's hard to believe this was like the standard for japanese cars sports sedans back then i mean i'm flooring it right now and it's like okay that's not really all that much and the steering is just so weak vague on center and when you get into corners it still feels vague over assisted you have almost no road feel uh way too much body roll it's just not great it's it's amazing that this was the standard but i have to say you go back to the toyota camry in the honda accord from this period they were four cylinders they were only 120 horsepower they were even slower and worse than this and they didn't talk to you and they didn't have power seats in a lot of cases and blah blah blah this car really was kind of a pinnacle it's just that it was a totally different world back then it's very interesting to go back to this period when i was born a kid my dad had an 87 toyota camry had that up until i was 10 years old and this really brings me back to that era and it really was different things happen incrementally and you don't really realize when my dad replaced that with a 98 camera you know things changed it wasn't that big but then there was a newer car a newer car and then you go back and you look and you see this car and it's like wow we came from that that was the norm it's almost hard to believe that this was like what everybody wanted back in the 80s this interior this driving experience this slow but it is it was and if you ask any kind of middle class kid from the 80s they didn't want a bmw mercedes that stuff was unreachable at the time we wanted maximas that was cool those were fast it was the four-door sports car they started calling it later it's just hard to believe as i look on it now that this is what i lusted after this thing was the car of choice and so that's the 1986 nissan maxima you don't see these anymore in any condition but especially not in this condition and it's amazing to spend the day with this car and see what the cutting edge looked like back in 1986 may not seem too high-tech or fast by modern standards but this was an aspirational car back then everybody wanted it and now it's time to give this maxima a doug score starting with the weekend categories and styling the maxima is just three boxes front middle and rear doesn't have much style to it and it gets an average five out of ten acceleration is slow and it gets a one out of ten handling is mediocre and it gets a 3 out of 10. same deal with fun factor it's not particularly thrilling to drive and it gets a 2 out of 10. finally cool factor and that's a little higher you never see these especially in this condition it would really turn my head and it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 17 out of 50. next up are the daily categories and features this has some decent equipment but nothing crazy and it gets a 3 out of 10. comfort is nice better than most mainstream japanese cars of the day but not quite on the level of luxury models and gets a 5 out of 10. quality is ok the interior is fine and reliability is likely strong and it gets a 6 out of 10. practicality is normal for a mid-sized sedan and it gets a 5 out of 10. finally value and it's good enough these are available for not much money if you can find one and it's a neat relic from a bygone era it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total daily score of 25 out of 50. added up and the doug score is 42 out of 100 which places the maxima here against some relevant cars this is a neat sedan and it was exciting for me to film it and take a trip back to the 1980s the maxima technically loses the dug score to the lexus ls400 and acura legend but those are way more common than this in nice shape it's impossible to find one of these maxima models in nice shape anymore and i'm thrilled i had the chance to film a video with this one [Music] you

Channel: Doug DeMuro

Views: 1,436,496

Keywords: nissan maxima, maxima, 1980s nissan maxima, 1986 maxima, maxima review, 1980s maxima review, doug demuro, demuro, doug de muro

Id: rcKjCzd4Pyw

Length: 28min 23sec (1703 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 22 2021