What ownership is like, what breaks at what mileage, what the repairs cost, and what to check before you buy one.
← All Nissan Altima generations
NHTSA complaints per catalog listing run from 17.83 for 1997 (107 complaints across 6 listings) to 180.00 for 1995 (180 across 1), against a generation median of 30.67. The highest year, 1995, is 5.9 times that median. No year reaches the 2.0x our rule needs together with an above-median ad share and 30 or more listings, so nothing is flagged. Our catalog holds very few cars of these years, so a complaints-per-listing figure is mostly a small-denominator artifact and our rule cannot fairly flag them. Read the raw complaint counts, not the rate.
| Miles | Item | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| any | Passenger air bag deployment (1994 and early 1995 cars) | Free at a Nissan dealer when open | NHTSA recall 03V150000 covers 1994 and early 1995 Altimas for passenger air bag deployment. In our NHTSA pull, air bags are the largest complaint component for this generation. Confirm the recall by VIN. |
| any | Engine movement and the airflow meter/speed control (1993-1994), shift lever lock plate (1995), rear brake hose routing (1995), seat belt buckle (1997) | Free at a Nissan dealer when open | NHTSA recalls 94V035000, 94V165000, 95V008000 and 96V185000. Several predate the cars' second owner and may be long done. Confirm each by VIN. |
No year in this generation was flagged. A year is flagged by our rule only when all three hold: (1) its NHTSA complaints per catalog listing is at least 2.0x the median for its generation, (2) the share of ads that mention a problem is above the generation median, and (3) we track at least 30 listings for that year. The cutoff was fixed before we looked. Ad mentions are not failures, and a flag is a reason to inspect harder, not a verdict on any one car. We also re-ran the ad test with the 'rust' flaw left out, because the ad reader counts phrases like 'no rust' as mentions, and publish a flag only if it passes both ways.
| Year | Complaints | Top components | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | 125 | Vehicle Speed Control, Seat Belts, Air Bags | |
| 1994 | 113 | Air Bags, Electrical System, Engine And Engine Cooling | |
| 1995 | 180 | Air Bags, Power Train, Engine And Engine Cooling | |
| 1996 | 92 | Air Bags, Engine And Engine Cooling, Electrical System | |
| 1997 | 107 | Air Bags, Visibility, Suspension |
source: NHTSA complaints database (api.nhtsa.gov). Complaints are owner reports, not confirmed failures.
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We don't tell you to skip a year; we flag by a fixed rule, and it flags 2009 and 2019. 2009 has 13.68 NHTSA complaints per catalog listing (1,601 complaints across 117 listings) against a 2007-2012 median of 5.25. Third-party lists most often name 2002 (24/7 Wall St) and the CVT years. 2002 has 1,047 complaints across 7 listings in our NHTSA pull, but only 7 catalog listings, so the rule cannot flag it. 2013 has 2,314 complaints across 325 listings, the most of any year.
CoverageX puts it at about $4,800 to $5,500 at a Nissan dealer. DMV JDM Depot gives a wider $1,500 to $8,000, and I-90 Nissan says $5,000 to $8,000+ for a remanufactured unit. One 2015 owner reported a $5,900 AAMCO quote at 202k miles. These are search-result snippets, not full-page reads.
Yes. Nissan's May 2020 bulletin extends the CVT warranty on 2013-2016 Altimas from 60 months/60,000 miles to 84 months/84,000 miles, and its May 2023 bulletin does the same for 2017-2018 Altimas. Both say owners who opted out of the class action may not be covered, so check the VIN with a Nissan dealer. Coverage is measured from the original in-service date, so many of these cars are now past it.
CarComplaints counts 131 catalytic converter failure complaints for the 2002 model year, with an average repair of $2,360 at 102,500 miles. RepairPal's average for an Altima converter is $1,577 to $1,682. Go-Parts warns a new converter will not clear a P0420 code if the cause is an oxygen sensor or exhaust leak. These are snippet reads.
We don't rank reliability. The 2019-present generation has the lowest complaints per listing in our data (median 0.29 against 2.00 for 2013-2018), but newer cars have had less time to collect complaints, so that partly reflects age.
NHTSA lists the 2007-2011 Altima Hybrid under its own name. We merged its complaints into the Altima counts and did not analyze it separately.