Rumors of the Nissan Altima’s demise have been greatly exaggerated. Despite the waning popularity of mainstream sedans in general over the last decade, Nissan’s mid-sizer is sticking around for another year. Where the Altima’s road ultimately leads is still uncertain, but one thing’s undeniable: the early-2020s meme ecosystem wouldn’t have been the same without it.
But as the Altima takes what might be its last lap around the dollar-store parking lot, we pose the question: What made a once-respectable sedan such a cultural touchstone of mockery and derision? How did a humble family car become synonymous with reckless driving, bad credit, and internet memes?
We try to unpack the concept of “Big Altima Energy.”
Rise Of The Altima
Photo by: Nissan
The Nissan Altima wasn’t always the butt of the joke. When the US’s first Altima rolled off Nissan’s Smyrna, Tennessee assembly line on June 11, 1992 (Nissan used the Altima name for a trim level in Central America previously), it drew praise for its 16-valve engine and sporty driving dynamics.
While not quite the “four-door sports car” its Maxima sibling’s 4DSC badges promised, the Altima finished ahead of the Mazda 626 and Ford Taurus in a July 1993 Car & Driver comparison. Reviewers gave it good marks for its “powerful engine” and “sharp steering.”
In that same comparison, the Altima fell short of the Mitsubishi Galant, Dodge Intrepid, and first-place Toyota Camry. “The Altima was born to hustle. It’s so spartan in its appointments, though, and so short on interior space that it seems out of its league here,” testers concluded.
Still, sales were strong enough to convince Nissan execs to renew the Altima for a second generation—and, crucially, a third. That third-gen Altima, produced from 2002 to 2006, is where Nissan struck gold.
Photo by: Nissan
Suddenly, the Altima was no longer spartan. The third-gen sedan had more interior space than the Camry, Accord, or even the upmarket Maxima. You could have it with leather seats, 18-inch wheels, and a 240-horsepower V6. It earned the 2002 Altima North American Car of the Year award, surpassing 200,000 US sales that same year. From 2005 on, Nissan even gave us a 260-hp SE-R model with legitimate enthusiast credibility in the form of a six-speed manual, big Brembo brakes, and forged alloys.
The Altima held the crown as Nissan’s best-selling car for an impressive 18-year run from 1998 until 2016, when the Rogue surpassed it. But pride always comes before the fall.
Carlos Ghosn & The Descent Into Chaos
Photo by: Nissan
During the Altima’s rise to prominence, something else was happening at Nissan: an alliance-slash-merger with French automaker Renault, championed by ambitious leader Carlos Ghosn. As executive vice president of Renault, Ghosn had orchestrated a dramatic turnaround of the company’s finances.
In March 1999, Renault bought 36.8 percent of Nissan, and in June 2001, Ghosn took over as CEO of the struggling Japanese company. In May 2005, he became CEO of Renault, holding both positions in tandem for over a decade.
While Ghosn’s corruption allegations and action-movie escape from the Japanese justice system are the subject of another article, there is one relevant point here: his obsession with cost-cutting. Early in his tenure, Ghosn cut 21,000 jobs and shuttered five Japanese plants—slashing R&D budgets and eliminating 14 percent of Nissan’s global workforce with the stroke of a pen.
Ghosn cut 21,000 jobs and shuttered five Japanese plants—slashing R&D budgets and eliminating 14 percent of Nissan’s global workforce with the stroke of a pen.
These cuts may have saved Nissan’s bottom line, but they had lingering effects on the company’s product lineup and customer base. The fourth-generation Altima debuted in 2006 as a largely cheapened version of its predecessor with a continuously variable transmission (CVT) replacing the standard automatic.
That CVT—which quickly spread across Nissan’s lineup—would become the subject of numerous lawsuits in the following two decades, as customers experienced transmission failures and were forced to pay for costly replacements.
Disinvestment & Decay
As Nissan disinvested in its core product, people with other options moved on. According to Edmunds data, residual values for three-year-old Altimas have trailed those of the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry since at least 2015, often by double digits. The Altima also trailed its key competitors in brand loyalty, sliding from a respectable 51 percent in 2015 to just 39.1 percent in 2025, even as the Camry and Accord posted slight increases. This number means fewer Altima owners traded their cars in for another Nissan.
| Model | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
2025 |
| Honda Accord | 62.3% | 62.4% | 63.5% | 63.2% | 79.7% | 89.1% | 84.3% | 77.4% | 78.8% |
| Toyota Camry | 58.1% | 60.2% | 61.4% | 62.4% | 74.8% | 84.7% | 78.2% | 73.3% | 75.3% |
|
Nissan Altima |
53.5% | 53.7% | 54.4% | 53.9% | 68.3% | 77.6% | 73.5% | 67.4% | 66.3% |
Source: Edmunds.com Insights.
| Model | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
| Honda Accord | 58.4% | 60.2% | 61.9% | 61.6% | 61.6% | 53.4% | 58.7% | 59.7% | 57.1% |
| Toyota Camry | 62.4% | 63.4% | 62.4% | 64.0% | 63.7% | 63.4% | 61.4% | 62.0% | 63.6% |
| Nissan Altima | 49.4% | 43.3% | 41.8% | 39.4% | 42.5% | 43.0% | 38.0% | 41.7% | 39.1% |
Source: Edmunds.com Insights.
This can have ripple effects on a brand far beyond new car sales, as Edmunds’ Director of Insights Ivan Drury explains: “Once you lose trade-ins from your own brand, it makes it harder to keep used models on your lot … which can kill any chance at offering high quality used units or implementing an effective Certified Pre-Owned program that can help to boost both image and residual values.”
While 26 percent of people who visited Edmunds’ website to look at an Altima also viewed a Camry and 22 percent also looked at an Accord, only 4 percent and 5 percent of Camry and Accord shoppers, respectively, checked out an Altima. This tells us that for Altima buyers, the car was less of a choice and more of a last resort.
“Unfortunately, when you don’t invest in the product, you just invest in the price; that’s where it leads you,” Drury said. “Being known as a discount brand, that’s not good for the long-term.”
During this decade, a new set of hungry competitors burst onto the scene: The Koreans.
‘Unfortunately, when you don’t invest in the product, you just invest in the price; that’s where it leads you.’
In the 2010s, the Hyundai Sonata and Kia Optima offered fresher styling and more features than the Altima at a similar price point. While neither matched the Altima’s sales outright, they both took pieces of the pie and competed on merit, not just price.
Lackluster residual values, poor loyalty numbers, and low cross-shop potential left Nissan to foist Altimas on anyone who would take them: increasingly, rental-car fleets. As crossovers gained popularity in the 2010s and the Rogue took the Altima’s volume-seller crown, Nissan pushed Altimas hard on fleet customers, a move that hurt residuals and brand perception even more.
But there was another, even more problematic demographic Nissan went after.
Subprime Scandal
As a cornerstone of its profit strategy, Nissan worked with subprime lenders such as Santander to go after low-credit shoppers with car loans carrying interest rates as high as 20 to 25 percent. Saddled with bad credit, these customers often didn’t have financing options with any other brands. Nissan’s finance arm formally called this program the SignatureAccess Sub-Prime Dual Pass-Through Program in a 2021 dealer memo.
A 2015 New York City Department of Consumer Affairs report on subprime auto lending poignantly illustrates an example of Nissan’s sales strategy in action. Emphasis ours:
‘Mr. Kissoon visited Nemet Nissan in Jamaica, Queens in December 2011 after seeing an Internet advertisement about the dealership. It isn’t a coincidence that Mr. Kissoon was drawn to Nemet, as it is a dealership that caters to foreign-born consumers with limited English proficiency by offering advertising in at least six different languages. Without any credit check, Mr. Kissoon was advised by Nemet’s staff that he could not purchase a car with a $5,000 down payment and to return with $10,000.
After having returned with the additional money, he was told to wait for over two hours until closing and then rushed through the financing terms of his car purchase. Despite paying a $10,000 down payment on a $23,844 Nissan Maxima, he was required to finance the remaining $13,844 at a rate of 24.9 percent APR. In sum, Mr. Kissoon contracted to pay a total balance of $42,342 for a car worth $23,844.’
These sales tactics were apparently part of a years-long pattern, with Automotive News reporting a federal lawsuit against Chicago dealer Western Nissan in May 2025 on strikingly similar grounds. Per the story:
‘The lead plaintiff, Tanisha Burress, found a used vehicle within her budget on [Western Nissan]’s website. She was unemployed at the time and intended to pay cash.
When she went to the store, however, she was told the vehicle “was not operational and, thus, she could not test drive it,” the May 8 complaint said. Instead, a salesperson steered her to a more expensive 2019 Nissan Sentra although she said she couldn’t afford it.
The complaint said Burress was “overwhelmed by pressure sales tactics” and agreed to buy the Sentra only after being told she would qualify for financing despite having no job.
But the salesman was persistent and told Burress she could get a loan and pay for it by driving Uber or Lyft,” the complaint said.
She “relented” and signed a three-year retail installment sales contract for $14,912 at 24.9 percent interest that was assigned to Santander, the complaint said.
Burress predictably fell behind in her payments,” it said. And when she asked Santander why it approved the loan when she was unemployed, a representative of the lender responded that her application listed an employer where she hadn’t worked for about eight years.’
Nissan and its financial partners made big money on these high-interest loans, but they were left holding the bag when things went wrong. High repossessions and reputational damage followed these programs in a vicious cycle that ultimately hurt Nissan’s stock price and reputation.
Big Altima Energy
Photo by: Nissan
With Altimas (and other Nissans) being sold new and used to customers with few other options, the last step came into play: Social stigmatization. More and more Altimas found their way into households with fewer financial resources to keep them on the road. Hubcaps fell off. Check Engine lights burned bright. Crash damage wasn’t repaired properly, or at all. And memes ensued.
It started around 2021, when a mockery of Altima drivers took hold online, culminating in places like the 230,000-member Big Altima Energy Facebook group (now paused) and the 185,000-weekly-user r/NissanDrivers subreddit. The prevailing theme was pure chaos, with strong undertones of classism.
A 2022 post in the r/NissanDrivers subreddit with nearly 4,000 upvotes titled “Random drawing I made” shows a clapped-out third-generation Altima with stick-on accessories and body damage. Above the drawing, large text says “Average Altima on the road,” while colorful descriptors like “cracked windshield” and “expired tag, fake paper tag, or no tag” surround it.
Commenters chimed in with cheeky additions like “monthly tow bill higher than car payment” and “preferred lane is the shoulder.”
Shared from Reddit across the internet, to TikTok, car forums, and even Korean social network DCinside, the “Average Altima on the road” meme distills the spirit of Big Altima Energy more clearly than any other I’ve seen, and there are thousands.
The paused “Big Altima Energy” group has more members than people who bought Altimas in any year since 2017, when Nissan moved 254,996 of its mid-sizers. Other Nissan products earned derivative nicknames. The Rogue became the Talltima; the Sentra, the Smalltima; so on and so forth.
Photo by: Nissan
Altima sales peaked at 335,644 in 2014 before falling steadily to a measly 93,268 last year—barely a third of what Nissan sold two decades earlier in 2005. Altima sales haven’t broken 150,000 since the pandemic, and it seems unlikely that Nissan will invest much in the model going forward.
Given that context, perhaps the most obvious reason Altimas are falling apart on US highways is simple: Age. The trend away from sedans is undeniable, and the average Altima on our roads is now between one and two decades old. In an uncertain and expensive vehicle market where people are keeping cars longer than ever—12.8 years on average—holding onto that battle-worn Altima is looking more and more like a sound financial decision.
So, the next time you see one of these once-venerable sedans roaming our highways, don’t judge. Give it a wide berth if you must, but remember that there’s a person behind the wheel of every Altima just trying to get through the day. And if that person happens to be you, please, for the love of God, remember to change your CVT fluid.
