My girlfriend and I are in the market for a new or newer car for her. She has an '89 Acura Legend with 210k miles on it. The car's in pretty good shape for an '89 with that many miles on it. She needs something with a V6. We drove the new Honda Accord EX with the 4 cylinder and neither of us thought it had enough power. She would possibly consider the new Acura TSX. These are the cars we're considering. Let me know what you think.

 

Price is no object?

 

Price is an object. The new TL is pushing the envelope on affordability, and is probably not realistic. $25k - $30k would be a ballpark estimate for new cars. For a used car, we're looking at a ballpark of $15k.

 

TL ..... Nicest looking of the bunch. FWD bleh

 

I chose either the new Maxima or the new Accord V6 EX. My mom has a v6 accord. It has 240hp and isn't too bad as far as power. I think it could prolly take a stock z32NA. The New Maxima has was 265hp. So performance is gonna be similar. The Maxima is Nissan...so that's always a plus. The Accord actually has a pretty luxurious and nice interior. The Maxima looks pretty good. They're both good cars...I'd chose between one of those.

 

Maxima. I've owned a couple and damn things are almost bullet proof and it's a Nissan. The TL would rank at the top as well. Great quality, power and style.
Nice list of choices you put together here.

 

She was going to drive the Altima today, but I don't think she wanted to be harrassed by the salespeople at the dealership. We drove the V6 Accord and the Maxima. The Maxima is quite a bit more expensive and feels much faster, but it feels like a much bigger car. It weight 500 lbs more! That's why we kinda like the Altima idea. It's supposedly quicker than the Maxima, primarily because it's lighter. The downside with it are the tail lights and that fact that those cars are everywhere. Accords are very common, but not quite as bad as the newere Altima's. She likes the older style TL's because it's fairly similar to the Legend in looks. The newer TL's ('02ish) look a bit more like a Mazda 626 (bleh). The problem is this....she wants and needs a new or newer car, but doesn't want the payments to go with it.

What year did the Maxima go from the VG30 to the VQ35 motor?

 

Hmmm. I see a trend developing here. It seems that you guys like the new cars better than the used cars (there's a shocker). Let's change it a little. Place a vote for a new and a used car. If you had approx $15,000, which of the used cars would you buy?

 

i voted new Maxima.
my second choice would be a used Maxima.
btw, 1995 is the first year that the Maxima had the VQ engine.

 

350z



or one of those whachumacallits ... O yea, evo/sti

 

Was that the 3.5 or 3.0?

 

3.0 VQ
3.5 VQ wasn't offered until just recently with the new model change in '04.

 

That's what I thought. We were in San Jose looking at a couple of '01 Maxima's. We may have considered buying one if the salesman wasn't such a *****. He was telling me that they have the 3.5 motor in them. I said to him..."You sure about that? You may want to check under the hood." I didn't know it had the VQ, but I was pretty sure about the engine size. The guy said to me something like, "well, since you know so much about these, then why am I here." I didn't know, so we left. A-hole! Car shopping is so much fun.

 

I go looking at cars for fun. I'm always blown away by how many salesmen know so little about the products they're selling. I love giving them a hard time.

 

Another goon at this same dealership couldn't tell the difference between a new Altima and a new Maxima from the front. We walked up...I told him that we wanted to look at the new Maxima's. He walked us over to a line of brand new Altima's on the lot and started regurgitating all of the info his boss had given him about the new Maxima's. I said to him, "Um, these are Altima's." He had to walk around to the back of it to double check. Not likely that we're going back there.

What pisses off Amy is that the sales people assume that it's me buying the car. They walk up to us and start talking to me. I tell them the car is for her, but they still talk to me. One of these guys tried to sell me on a new 350Z. He had no idea what I meant when I told him I have a Z32 TT in the garage at home. He looked at me like I was form Mars.

 

!!!LMFAO!!!

yeah, according to most salesmen, if it's not on their lot - it doesn't exist.
They're just there to move cars. Don't get me started about car dealerships. I've got too many stories.

 

I love messing with sales people, one day me and my friend were bored and went to a local nissan dealership and told them about their cars for awhile... my friend was there looking for a 240sx (he wants my z but can't afford one so a 240sx is a good rwd nissan car) and the lady walked up to a z32 they had there and went... "yeah I think this is a 240sx" I quickly responded letting her know she was dead wrong... lol who doesn't know the z cars, the flagship car of nissan for the longest time, o well

 

Get the Maxima! I was so close to getting a 02-03 model but picked up a Z32TT instead.

FYI Maxima model year changes:
1995-1999: VQ30DE, 190hp

2000-2001: VQ30DE-K, Basically same as VQ30 but added better cyclinder heads and variable timing, 222hp and 227hp (Anniversary Edition)

2002-2003: VQ35DE, 255hp, HIDs standard

2004-: VQ35DE, 265hp

 

TSX I looked at one of thoe...pretty sweet

 

She's still deciding. She really wants something with a V6. She's deciding between the Accord EX V6 and the Altima 3.5 SE. Both of use really dislike the Altima tail lights. The damn thing is rice out of the box, but it's faster than the Accord. The EX V6 Honoda comes with leather; which she really doesn't want. So it comes down to leater, or ugly tail. She may wait till her Legend goes BOOM.

 

 

I already talked to her about it. It comes with leather only. That car looks pretty awesome.