Nissan Sport Sedan Concept angles for a more forceful Maxima

Nissan wowed the 2014 Detroit auto show crowds with its striking orange Sport Sedan Concept. The swoopy, orange four-door is the third in Nissan’s series of show cars signaling Nissan’s new design direction, this time showing how it looks in family sedan guise. And by family sedan, we mean the next-generation Maxima, which is expected to appear by the end of the year styled very much in the ilk of the not-so-cleverly named, four-passenger concept car you see here.

However little effort Nissan put into naming the Sport Sedan Concept, it sure worked hard styling it. The front end is dominated by a protuberant metallic V-shaped bar poking through what’s essentially a large hole in the orange bodywork. Boomerang-shaped combination headlamps reach halfway up the hood and contain LED daytime running lamps on their inner edge flanked by quad LED primary bulbs. Numerous carbon fiber panels, ancillary lights and no fewer than six grille apertures with various mesh textures also clutter up the nose.

The sculpted bodysides are defined by a hard line that drops down aft of the front fenders, then continues back to the rear wheel opening. Two more hard lines appear elsewhere, one in the lower doors and another above the rear haunches.