Originally Posted by alexnds

By and large, Maxima is a good car all around, even at high mileage. However, you must be careful in buying a 16 year old car, because with any car, with age, things start to happen. If the car is a GXE (SOHC) motor, it has a timing belt. If it is a SE (DOHC), it has a timing chain. If the SOHC engine, the belt and waterpump should be changed every 60k miles. Which means, if you buy this car, be sure to replace the timing belt and water pump immediately upon purchase, since you don't have any idea when the owner did it, or if he did it at all and was simply lucky not to have an issue. I also would check the exhaust. On my recent 1993 purchase, it was all corroded, from Y pipe to muffler. It wasn't loud, just so much road salt over 13 years, that I needed to completely replace every part of the exhaust. An exhaust lasts 10-12 years. At 16 years of age, it's hard to say what it looks like. A muffler shop might charge you around $600 to replace the entire exhaust system in parts and labor combined. Yet another problem is that the early Maxima (1988-1992) had a problem with fuel injectors going bad and had a recall. Nissan did release a newer type of injector (yellow dot) from 1993-1994, but in my case, I had bad fuel injectors. Yet another area of potential weakness is the exhaust studs on the back-part of the V, not the front part facing the radiator. It wasn't a problem on my car, but it is a problem on these cars with age. Also have the CV joints checked out.

So in sum, these are very, very good cars and are designed to last 20 years, which is far, far more than many other cars on the road. I still see plenty of them on the road and I still have one. But, as with any car that is over 10 years of age, you have to do your homework: exhaust, fuel injectors, suspension, and timing belt/timing chain (GXE/SE) as applicable.

By the way, I have injectors for sale, (the ones I initially bought incorrectly) that would work in a 1990 Maxima.