2016 Nissan Altima: First Drive

The refreshed best-seller in Nissan’s car lineup matches up well to the cutthroat competition.

What is it? A midsize, front-wheel drive, mainstream sedan.

Starting price: $23,325

Competitors: Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Ford Fusion, and Hyundai Sonata

Pros: Sharp looking and nimble handling. Excellent gas mileage.

Cons: Sometimes feels underpowered under heavy acceleration.

Would I buy it with my own money? Yes. The midsize segment is full of nice cars and the Altima stands out with its aggressive exterior compared to the Accord and Camry. It should definitely be on everyone’s consideration list.

We’ve all seen those teen romance movies where an allegedly ugly duckling is transformed into a beauty queen by someone removing the girl’s glasses and letting her hair out of the ponytail. Her beauty, we learn, was there all along, someone just needed expose it. If only the real world was so easy.

Perhaps it was for the Nissan Altima, which underwent a similar transformation with its refreshed exterior. Designers straightened out the Altima’s front end, eliminated its bugged eyes, and reworked its backside to bring out the car’s inner beauty. Better yet, engineers changed the suspension, added some power to the base engine and upgraded the car’s technology to prove that beauty truly is more than sheet metal deep.

The 2016 Altima will also offer a sportier SR model along with four- and six-cylinder engines in all models. Many carmakers have abandoned V-6 midsize models completely in the midsize segment, opting to use turbochargers for more power. Fortunately, Nissan has not.

Nissan needs the Altima to continue to perform well on the road as it does at the dealership. It’s the Japanese carmaker’s most important car in America, where one out of every four vehicles sold by Nissan is an Altima. It’s also the No. 3 best-selling car in the midsize segment, which is more cutthroat than AMC’s “Into the Badlands.”

Indeed the cosmetic makeover replaces the front and rear sheet metal, added new headlamps and LED tail lamps to create a more elegant and aggressive car, but other changes are more important.

The 182-hp 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine was tweaked to increase its compression to 10.3 from 10. Some parts in the engine were replaced to lower friction such as a new coating added to the pistons and a new variable displacement oil pump. These incremental improvements helped the Altima gain 1 mpg on the highway to 39 mpg. It achieves 27 mpg in city driving.