Blog Category: Nissan

The school year is rapidly drawing to a close, and graduation day is just around the corner. Just as mortarboards will be soon be cluttering the afternoon sky, the internet is cluttered with articles about the best cars for teens and grads. A quick search turns up more than you can shake a tassel at.

All of these articles identify safety and reliability as key factors in selecting a car for your kid, but some include other considerations such as insurance costs. Considerate of your bank account, half of these lists look at used cars, but for you big spenders, there are a few lists that feature reasonably priced new cars. Let’s take a quick look at some of these articles, understand their criteria, and see if we can identify some consensus.

Nissan debuted the new mid-size Altima sedan. It's their best-seller and has been redesigned from the ground up.

 How's it look? If you like the Maxima, you'll probably like the new Altima. Sorta. If the Maxima is Peyton Manning, then the Altima is Eli. Clearly brothers, but one just doesn't look quite as sharp, and doesn't perform as well as the other. Don't feel bad for the Altima, though. Just as Eli has more rings than his multi-MVP brother, the Altima outsells the Maxima handily.

If you were in the market for a green car ten years ago, your choices were few and far between. The Toyota Prius and Ford Escape Hybrid were newly available -- and rarer than hens’ teeth. Now it seems like every third driveway has a hybrid in it, and all-electric cars are moving from hobbyists’ garages to the mainstream vehicle marketplace.

When Kelley Blue Book, a well-known authority on vehicle prices and buying trends, published its annual list of the Top Ten Green Cars for 2011, it had lots of eco-friendlier cars to choose from, and they’re not all limited to that one special dealership in Los Angeles. You can find most of these cars most anywhere.

Their name is a little hard to remember, but if you are in the market for a new or used auto, you definitely do not want to forget who the IIHS is.  Formed over 50 years ago, the mission of the Insurance Institute For Highway Safety (IIHS) is to help reduce deaths, injuries, and property damage. 

One of the most complex concepts consumers will encounter when trying to decide if buying or leasing is the best option for them, is “residual.”

What is residual value?

This number is the projected market value of a vehicle at a given point in time in the future.

So, when it comes to leasing, the residual value is used to help calculate how much a vehicle will depreciate (lose value) during the lease period…and thus how much the consumer should pay every month to lease the vehicle now.