2016 Nissan Sentra Automatic

It is a widely held belief that, in 2016, there really is no such thing as a “bad” new car. That’s essentially correct, if you define bad cars by disintegrating interior pieces, rusting frames, finicky engines, or exploding gas tanks. True, factory-fresh lemons may have been largely swept away by automotive progress, but that doesn’t mean the auto industry has become a Montessori program. There are good cars and there are not-so-good ones, and the Nissan Sentra is squarely under the bar for acceptable small cars.

In today’s continually improving compact-car segment, there’s no room for participation awards, and the Sentra suffers for seeming to exist for no reason beyond giving Nissan a four-door between the subcompact Versa and the mid-size Altima. Nissan last fully redesigned the Sentra for 2013, a lackluster update that we described as “half-baked”—just as its competitors were yanking their small cars sharply upmarket in terms of styling, features, and driving manners. Now, after three years of playing from behind the segment leaders, Nissan has swapped its subpar compact’s mini-Altima styling and crummy dashboard materials for mini-Maxima styling and somewhat less-crummy dash bits. We drove the updated 2016 Sentra earlier this year and found it barely whelming; now, having spent more time in the car and gathered objective test numbers, it’s clear that a smearing of lipstick was not enough to make us want to ask this wallflower to the prom.

Let’s Discuss the Good

While the whole isn’t something we’d describe as “good,” there are aspects of the Sentra that may appeal to the (mystifyingly) large number of car shoppers who comparison-shop online but don’t take multiple test drives before buying. It has a huge back seat and a similarly spacious trunk, it’s inexpensive—a fully loaded top-spec SL like the one tested here retails for $25,545—and it offers an impressive array of standard and optional features. (Our test car carried adaptive cruise control, automated emergency braking, heated front seats, leather, a sunroof, navigation, and more.) It isn’t surprising that Nissan sold more than 220,000 Sentras in 2015; the sedan offers so much content at such a low price that it can make anyone second-guess spending the same money on a similar car with less stuff.

Yet it’s pretty obvious that the Sentra is little more than a vessel for goodies and pricing. The car feels as low-rent as ever, and cost-cutting is evident in the hollow-sounding hard-plastic door panels, the clunky action of the shift lever, and the chintzy controls for the heated seats. Even the SL’s luxury touches are presented poorly, with the touchscreen head unit and the separate widget for the climate controls jammed into holes in flat, featureless expanses of plastic and inconsistent, single-stitch seams on the seats that, in places, crumple the adjoining slices of leather. It’s as if Nissan expects budget shoppers to just be grateful to get a touchscreen and leather upholstery at this price.

Incredibly, the seats are both flat and lumpy, the driver’s seat cushion boasting an odd peak at its center that slides butts to one side or the other with no bolstering to rein things in. And besides the power lumbar adjustment, there’s a permanent, lumbar-support-like bump higher up that jabs your torso at shoulder-blade level. Luckily, the high-mounted seat and the steering column’s limited telescoping range force the driver to hunch forward anyway. It’s an appropriately masochistic perch from which to experience the Sentra’s dynamic envelope, such as it is.

Small Car, Retrograde

It takes only a brief journey to detect the Sentra’s shortcomings on the road. Nissan stiffened the suspension slightly for 2016, but to little avail beyond nudging the lateral grip around the skidpad to 0.84 g, up from the 0.81 g we recorded in the 2013 model. As before, the chassis is flaccid in terms of body roll and harsh over merely mild road imperfections, while road, tire, and wind noise remain omnipresent despite work done to quiet the car. Push the Sentra hard, and the chassis responds unpredictably; the rear end might go light and heel over disconcertingly, or it might only do a weird shimmy while the front tires wash out.

The steering works in that it turns the front wheels, but there’s nothing in the way of feel. Similarly, stepping on the brake pedal does stop the car, but you get no indication of how much braking force you’ve called upon. More important, stopping from 70 mph requires 191 feet, much longer than many cars in the segment and in fact the same distance required by the Mercedes-Benz G550, despite that nearly three-ton SUV being more than twice as heavy as the Nissan.

The Sentra’s 1.8-liter engine still employs port fuel injection (many cars in the class now feature power- and efficiency-enhancing direct fuel injection) and makes just 130 horsepower, both of which would have been class-competitive statistics in 1998—although the Sentra itself had a stronger 2.0-liter available in 2012. The growly four-cylinder still teams with a continuously variable automatic transmission (only the base trim level can be had with a six-speed stick), and flooring the gas pedal at any speed nets pained noises and little discernible change in velocity. When the CVT eventually rallies around a new ratio, the engine stays pegged above 5000 rpm, slowly building revs until the computer deems your persistence worthy of a “shift.” At that point the transmission sharply raises the ratio to mimic a slurry upshift in a regular automatic.

This powertrain drags the Sentra to 60 mph in 9.5 seconds, slower than the last Sentra SL we tested and everything else in the class save for the milquetoast Toyota Corolla. There is a Sport driving mode that raises both the engine revs and questions about why Nissan fitted a Sport mode. It also lights a dashboard indicator, but we wondered if perhaps another light comes on somewhere in Japan to delight engineers, who might laugh that they’ve fooled another customer. There’s also an Eco mode, which makes the Sentra feel even dimmer by dulling throttle inputs. We did locate our version of a Comfort mode, which we activated by using the door latch and exiting the Sentra.

It may seem as if we’re clobbering the Sentra like a slow pitch over home plate, but rarely do we encounter a car so lackluster in execution, performance, styling, and general refinement relative to its competitors. Judged by any measures but price and roominess, the Sentra disappoints, and its failure to move the needle relative to its predecessor while its competitors have moved on has the net effect of making it a worse car. Nissan has the ability to build competitive products—look no further than the Maxima and the Murano—and it shouldn’t take the Sentra’s price-driven sales volume as an indication that it has done well by this car. Here’s hoping its eventual replacement, which is some two to three years in the future, is executed far better.

Specifications >

VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, front-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door sedan

PRICE AS TESTED: $25,545 (base price: $18,665)

ENGINE TYPE: DOHC 16-valve inline-4, aluminum block and head, port fuel injection

Displacement: 110 cu in, 1798 cc
Power: 130 hp @ 6000 rpm
Torque: 128 lb-ft @ 3600 rpm

TRANSMISSION: continuously variable automatic

DIMENSIONS:
Wheelbase: 106.3 in
Length: 182.1 in
Width: 69.3 in Height: 58.3 in
Passenger volume: 96 cu ft
Cargo volume: 15 cu ft
Curb weight: 2951 lb

C/D TEST RESULTS:
Zero to 60 mph: 9.5 sec
Zero to 100 mph: 32.2 sec
Rolling start, 5–60 mph: 10.0 sec
Top gear, 30–50 mph: 4.8 sec
Top gear, 50–70 mph: 7.1 sec
Standing ¼-mile: 17.4 sec @ 81 mph
Top speed (drag limited): 120 mph
Braking, 70–0 mph: 191 ft
Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.84 g

FUEL ECONOMY:
EPA city/highway driving: 29/38 mpg
C/D observed: 31 mpg