2.5 SL 4dr Sedan
2018 Nissan Altima

The Altima, Nissan's top-selling sedan, was for years its top-selling vehicle, until the Rogue drove it off its perch amid crossover mania. First introduced in 1992, the midsize sedan slots in-between the larger Maxima and the Sentra in Nissan's car lineup. It's built at Nissan's assembly plant in Smyrna, Tenn. Now at the end of its fifth generation, Nissan offers the 2018 Altima in four trim levels — S, SR, SV and SL — plus various option packages. For 2018, Nissan added safety features like automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning. Standard on all models are a 5-inch color display audio system with rear-view camera monitor, intelligent key access for all four doors, and voice recognition compatibility with Apple's Siri. Know, too, that Nissan is prepping an all-new, more design-forward version of the Altima for 2019, with orders starting in the summer and the new models arriving in dealerships late in 2018. With this buyer's guide, Autoblog aims to help you make an educated decision about whether or not to buy the 2018 Nissan Altima. We'll touch on safety and reliability ratings, engine specs, horsepower, fuel economy ratings and pricing, and we'll conclude with a summary of Autoblog's most recent Altima test-drive. Nissan Altima safety ratings The 2018 Altima earns an overall five stars from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the agency's top rating. NHTSA also gives the car five stars for frontal- and side-crash protection, and four of five stars for rollover crash protection. It earns a "Top Safety Pick" award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which puts vehicles through its own array of crash tests. IIHS gives the 2018 Altima "good" marks in all crashworthiness metrics, but it rates its headlights — one of its newer areas of scrutiny — as merely "acceptable" and its child-seat LATCH anchors' ease of use as "marginal." Be sure to visit the NHTSA and IIHS websites to review ratings on the specific vehicle you're researching, since ratings may differ for Altimas from other model years. Is the Nissan Altima reliable? J.D. Power most recently evaluated the 2017 Altima, which is largely the same car as the 2018 model. It gave the sedan four of five stars ("better than most") for overall quality, five stars ("among the best") for overall performance and design, and three stars ("about average") for predicted reliability. The Altima won high marks for its powertrain, transmission, and features and accessories but less-than-stellar marks for certain mechanical issues with both the powertrain and the body and interior. Autoblog, we should note, has raised some concerns with how J.D. Power weighs serious and less-serious reliability issues. You can read about that here. There have been no recalls of the 2018 Altima reported by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. How much interior and cargo room does the Nissan Altima have? Headroom in the 2018 Altima is 40 inches in the front and 37.1 inches in the backseats, with 45 inches of leg room up front and 36.1 …
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