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Tuesday, June 02, 2009

The new Nissan Maxima headlights - are they serious?

Personal File: As much as I am impressed with Nissan's new design language established with the 370Z and Maxima, I'm not a big fan of the headlight and tail light design. These so called "boomerang" headlights on the Maxima, for example, look completely alien to me. They are so over styled that I cannot appreciate the rest of the vehicle from any front or side angle.

I couldn't resist the urge to remove the "boomerang" hooks and decided to make some improvements. I think the car is much easier on the eye with these adjustments. What do you think?

Original Photo Copyright Nissan Motors Corporation, USA

4 comments:

  1. I think removing the "boomerangs" looks nice & ties the headlights with the backlights quite well, but I think the designers @ Nissan were trying to give the Maxima (& 370 Z) a Nissan family look to differentiate it from an Accord, Camry, Malibu, Fusion, etc., so that no one would mistake it for anything else but a Nissan. I'm surprised that there are no aftermarket pieces yet where a customer could change his Maxima to look like your facelift above. Maybe there's an idea there?

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  2. good point. I see what you are saying about differentiation...

    ...but maybe something a little more subtle would have been in order haha :)

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  3. After the treatment Nissan selected for the Altima's tail lights (one I find equally ludicrous), I don't think Nissan's design team understands the value of subtlety.

    I'm not entirely sold on the Maxima's grille, either -- the GT-R influence seems out of place with the rest of the design.

    That having been said, brillant work on the headlights; couldn't agree more.

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  4. good call on the Altima tail lights... I almost forgot about those. Might do those next ;)

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