Given how much I travel, I spend more days than I care to admit behind the wheel of a rental car. In fact, my family’s daily driver—you know, “fam” for you kids—is straight out of a rental car fleet. It’s white, it’s featureless, and it blends into the background like a lost sock in a hotel laundry room. And that’s the problem with rental cars: they’re not about excitement, they’re about efficiency. They exist to get you from A to B with the enthusiasm of a DMV clerk on a Friday afternoon.
That’s been my exact experience with the Nissan Altima over the years. Since 2016, Nissan has been kind enough to send me the latest model, and every year, it’s been an automotive equivalent of oatmeal—functional, predictable, and completely devoid of thrills. No fire-breathing turbo, no track mode, no quilted leather or massaging seats, no colored LED interior lights. It’s the vehicular embodiment of “that’ll do.”
So when Nissan sent me a 2025 Altima for yet another week, I expected more of the same. And, well, that’s exactly what I got. Not much has changed since the 2023 model. Last year’s update was digital—a longer trial period for NissanConnect Services, which lets you lock your car remotely, start the engine from your phone, or call for help when you inevitably doze off behind the wheel from sheer boredom. Not exactly groundbreaking.
But this year, there’s a problem. A big one.
For 2025, Nissan killed off the only thing that ever made the Altima remotely interesting: the 248-horsepower turbo engine. Gone. Vanished. Like a good movie on a transatlantic flight, never to be seen again. What remains? A sole 2.5-liter engine wheezing out 188 horsepower (or 182 if you opt for all-wheel drive). Paired with a continuously variable transmission—otherwise known as the automotive equivalent of nails on a chalkboard—it delivers all the excitement of watching beige paint dry.
My week was spent with the SV trim, the middle child of the lineup, featuring the Special Edition package. This meant I got a few nice upgrades, like a 12.3-inch touchscreen and a moonroof—neither of which did much to distract from the gutless powertrain. It’s almost like Nissan’s marketing team is shouting, “New for 2025: even less power!”
And just to twist the knife further, my tester arrived in—you guessed it—white, with a black cloth interior. If that doesn’t scream “rental car anonymity,” I don’t know what does.
My week with the Altima might have been my last, and not just because it bored me to tears. Rumor has it that the Altima and its smaller sibling, the Versa, are on their way out. And maybe that’s for the best. Or maybe, in a final act of destiny, they’ll live on exclusively in rental car fleets. So the next time you find yourself half-heartedly scrolling through the options at the Hertz counter, just know: the Altima isn’t dead. It’s just waiting for you at the nearest airport, where it belongs.
Greg has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, a Masters degree in psychology and is currently a PhD candidate majoring in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek.
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