Here's some in-car video from the Members Only car last weekend (before it was knocked out of the race with a rod knock), showing a dramatic battle between the 928, the Scuderia Flatpack (Some Assembly Required) V8olvo, and the U.S. BureauCRAP Nissan Maxima. All three cars show remarkably similar performance as they roar around Thunderhill Raceway, and along the way you'll get a nice tour of many of the Arse Freeze's more interesting entrants, including the Über Bird, the Saleen Renault Alliance, and the IOE-winning Purple Lemon Racing VW Beetle.

A lesson to those who think that going fast is the key to winning LeMons: all three of these super-quick machines were knocked out of contention over the course of the weekend; the 928's engine went kablooey, the Maxima was buried under an avalanche of black flags, and the V8olvo went onto its roof. 74th, 104th, and 27th place, respectively. OK, let's watch the video now:

Here's another video showing some "close call" highlights. The action never stops on a LeMons track!

I was scoping the junkyard for interesting stuff when I spotted this '87 Nissan Maxima. I figured I'd check for a Voice Annunciator Phonograph Unit within.

It appears that Nissan had gone solid-state for their "talking car" feature by 1987, so no tiny phonograph. Disappointing. But then a row of dash controls caught my eye.

You can tell that engineers came up with this arrangement, not a bunch of Apple-worshiping designers and their focus-group-wrangling marketing overlords. No doubt the Japanese version of the "SECU- RITY" light (which I assume has something to do with a primitive mid-80s alarm system) sports a graceful kanji character, and when the engineers got their English translation it just made sense to hyphenate the word to make it fit. What the hell, right? You can still understand it! We gotta move these Maximas out the door, ASAP!

The IIHS tested 2009 models of the Honda Accord, Hyundai Sonata, Mazda 6, Nissan Maxima and Chevrolet Malibu along with the 2010 Ford Fusion. Each car was was tested with low-speed corner and straight-ahead crashes in the front and the rear. Costs were estimated for each accident and averaged to determine how well each car did. The best of the bunch was the Mazda6, the only mid-size to score "acceptable" with a weighted average cost of $871. The worst was the Chevy Malibu, which will set you back more than $3,400 for a 6 MPH rear-ending. None of the vehicles scored a "Good" rating.

Click "next" to see how each of the cars performed overall as well as in individual tests.

[IIHS]

Ford Fusion
Overall: Poor
Front Full Cost: $2,529
Front Corner Cost: $1,889
Rear Full Cost: $2,610
Rear Corner Cost: $1,073
Weighted Average: $2,207

Mazda Mazda6
Overall: Acceptable
Front Full Cost: $742
Front Corner Cost: $1,437
Rear Full Cost: $768
Rear Corner Cost: $767
Weighted Average: $871

Honda Accord
Overall: Marginal
Front Full Cost: $941
Front Corner Cost: $1,461
Rear Full Cost: $974
Rear Corner Cost: $1,507
Weighted Average: $1,133

Hyundai Sonata
Overall: Marginal
Front Full Cost: $1,791
Front Corner Cost: $1,019
Rear Full Cost: $1,131
Rear Corner Cost: $729
Weighted Average: $1,265

Nissan Maxima
Overall: Poor
Front Full Cost: $997
Front Corner Cost: $1,787
Rear Full Cost: $2,494
Rear Corner Cost: $1,352
Weighted Average: $1,687

Chevrolet Malibu
Overall: Poor
Front Full Cost: $2,092
Front Corner Cost: $1,685
Rear Full Cost: $3,494
Rear Corner Cost: $1,116
Weighted Average: $2,329

My friend had come out to the West Coast to check out the Maker Faire, and since he has the World's Coolest Engineering Job (fabricating and installing hidden surveillance gear in vehicles for an organization I'm not allowed to name) I figured I'd see what he could do with the Datsun Talkbox. After a few minutes with a multimeter and some wiring diagrams, he had some good news and some bad news for me. The bad news was that the device's control circuitry was pretty much fried; the good news was that the motor, stylus, and amplifier circuitry were all fine, and it's a pretty easy hack to control the whole mess manually. You know what's coming, right? Datsun Talkbox Scratching! Get ready for DJ Murilee Maxima, world!

I'd always assumed that Nissan just liked cool gadgetry so much that they'd gone ahead and used $1,278 worth of first-gen Mesoproterozoic Era solid-state digital audio circuitry, no doubt with a shoebox-sized brain packed with 128 whoppin' kilobytes of data.

But no! They created a miniaturized, shock-resistant phonograph, using a 3" white plastic record cut with six parallel grooves (one for each voice message, including "Left door is open," "Right door is open," "Parking brake is on," "Fuel level is low," "Keys in the ignition," and "Lights are on."), and a super-precise stylus that drops in just the right groove when triggered by the device's control circuitry. We're talking about the very pinnacle of analog automotive devices here, and I never knew it existed until a recent junkyard trip. That's when I found an intriguing box labeled "Audible Warning - Don't Drop" under the dash of a 1982 Datsun 810 Maxima.

The Datsun 810 aka Nissan Maxima and the 280ZX could be purchased with this system. You had a dash switch to disable it, in case you found it more maddening than gratifyingly futuristic.

Naturally, I had visions of rigging up this fine retro device in my Civic (or maybe hardwired into the Junkyard Boogaloo Boombox), but the vast number of wires coming out of the thing meant that I couldn't get anywhere without a wiring diagram. $10 later, I'd purchased a factory shop manual on eBay and got down to business.

Sadly, the friendly Japanese Audible Warning Box seems to be garbooned; I've wired it up in a manner that should convince it that it's still in a Maxima, but the stylus arm never moves when I trigger the "door switch" or "fuel level sensor" conditions. All I get is a forlornly spinning phonograph record and some little clicks from the mechanism. The only thing I'm not certain about is the mysterious item labeled simply "Audio" on the schematic; I'm guessing it's a circuit in the stereo that cuts the music during announcements. I've got these things on my junkyard shopping list, so I'll make one work yet!

It seemed like utter madness when Nissan decided to ditch the Datsun name they'd spent so much to build up, but that's what they did in the early 1980s. At first, they just added an inconspicuous "By Nissan" to their vehicles' emblems, and apparently they figured that, while they were at it, they'd also do a gradual transition for the model name of their big six-cylinder machine. So, for 1981, the full-luxe top-of-the-line 810 was sold in North America as the "810 Maxima."


I found this car, with its brake lights in 24/7 "on" mode, parked on the same commercial strip that gave us the 1968 Mercedes-Benz 280SL. It's rough, but it's the first non-junkyard 810 I've seen in years.


The 810 Maxima for '81 came with a smaller-displacement version of the Nissan L engine found in the 280Z. With 120 horsepower moving 2,800 pounds, the car performed reasonably well for the Late Malaise Era. The price tag? $10,379, which was more than three grand costlier than a new '81 Chrysler Cordoba (though a couple thousand cheaper than a BMW 320i).

All-New 2009 Nissan Maxima Recaptures Its Place as the True "4-Door Sports Car" Premium Performance Sedan

The 2009 Nissan Maxima, which makes its world debut at the 2008 New York International Auto Show, marks a return to the longtime Nissan flagship sedan's roots as a commanding 4-door sports car - a vehicle that is unique in both appearance and driving feel, with renewed relevance for today's active and ambitious sedan buyers. In other words, the Maxima is back.

The all-new 2009 Maxima will be offered as two well-equipped models, Maxima 3.5 S and Maxima 3.5 SV, and is scheduled to arrive at Nissan dealers nationwide in early summer 2008.

"Maxima has always enjoyed a certain 'duality' - a unique fusion of sedan practicality with the soul of a sports car," said Al Castignetti, vice president and general manager, Nissan Division, Nissan North America, Inc. "In recent years, however, competitive vehicles have caught up with Maxima in 'sporty' looks and performance. For 2009, Nissan is reclaiming its rich 4-Door Sports Car heritage with an infusion of emotional design, driving excitement and advanced technology - creating a silky, stimulating sports sedan like no other on the road today."

2009 Maxima: Reborn at the "Ring"
"Do-overs" are sometimes allowed in sports but rarely in the automotive industry. Yet midway through the development of the new-generation Maxima a mulligan was indeed granted. Rather than continue with an evolution of the previous highly successful Maxima design, the creators of the 2009 Maxima stopped and rethought the entire direction.Inspired by the concurrent top secret development of the 2009 Nissan GT-R supercar, they threw away positioning words like "conservative" and "balanced" and concentrated instead on new concepts like "addictive performance," "striking," "commanding" and "powerful."

High targets were established, including the goal of creating "the best performing front engine, front-wheel drive car in the world," along with class-leading acceleration, braking, handling, workmanship and cockpit design.

"We aren't walking away from the strengths of the last generation Maxima, which was rated the top-ranked vehicle in AutoPacific's 2007 Vehicle Satisfaction Award for Luxury Mid-Size Cars and a winner of Strategic Vision's 2007 Total Quality Award™ for Best Medium Car Ownership Experience," said Castignetti. "However, complacency breeds complacent vehicles. The new Maxima demanded taking risks in order to ultimately come up with a much more exciting and rewarding vehicle."

Three key areas were singled out for change: exterior design, which needed to be more aggressive, with more personality and attitude; a "super" cockpit, creating an interior that combines a driver orientation with high quality, roominess and user-friendly technology; and class-leading performance, enhancing what previous generation owners called "Maxima-ness."

To further push the performance envelope, the development team challenged themselves to concentrate their efforts on "emotional engineering" - to experience Maxima with the five senses in a purer, more visceral manner, rather than through CAD drawings and computer simulations.

As each designer and engineer set and exceeded higher and higher targets, they realized that confirmation of the results would require validation on the road. But not just any road. Members of the development team traveled to Germany's famed Nürburgring Nordschleife circuit - not coincidentally the site of much of the GT-R's performance development work - to test Maxima prototypes. Special attention was placed on body rigidity, suspension and steering, along with honing Maxima's competitiveness against some well-established European sports sedans.

We also hear poorly substantiated rumors of a diesel engine. We'll believe that when we smell it.

We've just caught the 2009 Maxima, a month ahead of it's New York Auto Show introduction. The seventh-generation Maxima will arrive next fall, with a Renault-Nissan diesel powerplant to follow a couple of years later - likely in time for the 2011 model year. In addition to the diesel motor, a Toyota-developed hybrid system may also be available - and we're expecting this as early as the 2010 model year! Watch for the uncloaked version to debut next month! Photo Credit: Chris Doane for Brenda Priddy & Company