Recall: Is the Hood on Your Nissan Altima Flying Up While Driving?
Nissan makes cars that many people love, but, like any other automaker, Nissan has made a few mistakes in the past. And sometimes these mistakes just keep happening and happening. That’s exactly what’s going on with the Nissan Altima’s latest recall, which isn’t actually that new of a recall to begin with.
Nissan recalls almost 2 million Altimas
As Car Complaints reported, this latest recall affects the Altima, and it affects its 2013 – 2018 model years. A total of about 1.9 million Altimas are affected by this recall. The main issue that this recall is addressing is the fact that sometimes, the hood on the Altima will fly up while it’s driving. Sometimes, this issue will get so bad that the hood will fly off the car entirely.
Obviously, none of that sounds pleasant, and as a result, Nissan said that at least 16 minor crashes and injuries were caused by this issue. That said, Car Complaints wrote that it’s not clear what Nissan means when it said “minor crashes and injuries.” In any case, Nissan said that the reason why this issue is happening isn’t because of Nissan, but rather, it’s because of another company.
According to Car Complaints, Nissan blamed a supplier for making errors in how it made the latch on the car hood. These errors cause the paint to not stick to the latch, which, in turn, could cause the latch to erode. When the latch erodes enough, then that’s when the hood can fly up or detach entirely from the car.
Not the first recall
This is the fourth time that Nissan has had to issue a recall with the Altima’s latches. Nissan recalled the car in 2014, 2015, and 2016, and each recall affected more and more cars. Car Complaints reported that the 2014 recall affected 220,000 cars, and the problem with their latches was exactly the same as the problem with the latches on the other model years of the Altima.
The 2015 recall affected 625,000 cars, and the 2016 recall affected 936,000 cars. The reason why Nissan had to do so many recalls for the same problem was that dealerships weren’t dealing with the problems effectively. Nissan told its dealerships to change the angle of the hood levers and then to clean and lubricate the latches.
Nissan continued monitoring the recalled cars, and it became apparent that some dealerships weren’t lubricating the latches right. This meant that the latches could still fail even after being recalled. With this fourth recall however, Car Complaints said that Nissan wants to end this problem for good. Dealerships will be replacing latches with brand-new latches that have anti-corrosion coatings.
The Nissan Altima is still a good car, though
Other than this annoying and persistent problem that Nissan is hoping to fix, the Altima is still a very good car. As Consumer Reports said, it’s one of the best cars in its segment; it scored 84 out of 100 in terms of its overall rating. This makes it the second-best car in the midsized sedan category.
Consumer Reports called the Altima an “unremarkable midsized sedan,” but that it also “gets the job done.” This is a good description of the car, as it’s a relatively normal sedan that doesn’t have many flaws, other than that latch issue that Nissan is hoping to fix.
For example, the Altima has some decently powerful and fuel-efficient engines, and these engines help give it some pretty good performance figures. On top of that, the Altima is an affordable car as it starts at about $24,000. For that price tag, Nissan also loads it up with plenty of standard features, including automatic emergency braking.