February 14, 2005 - Nissan has spent the past few years reestablishing itself as one of the world's premiere sports car builders. Well, at least has in America. We can go on for days about the lack of a Skyline GT-R or SR20-powered Silvia in the States -- but we won't. For now, let's focus on what Nissan has been getting right in the U.S.A.

Those of you old enough to remember the early 1990's may recall Nissan's original Sentra SE-R. Even though it shared the same "blah" styling of its tamer Sentra cousins, the SE-R packed in a beefier motor (a naturally-aspirated SR20), transmission and a sport-tuned suspension. While this little sports coupe failed to steal any of Honda's thunder in the sport compact arena, it quickly became a favorite among road racers.

In the mid-1990's, Nissan decided to kill the SE-R. After that time, Nissan had no vehicle in its line-up that could appeal to car enthusiasts. There were a few trucks, some so-so sedans and a neutered 240 SX, but enthusiasts wanted more.

After a major shake-up within Nissan, one that saw an infusion of new executives (and cash), the automaker started returning to its performance-car roots. In addition to the triumphant return of the Z, Nissan brought over NISMO -- and reintroduced its SE-R edition vehicles. The first SE-R to be resuccitated was the Sentra SE-R Spec V, an outstanding small performance sedan.

But Nissan needed a performance-oriented vehicle for those that may have "outgrown" the smaller Sentra, but needed more room than what the 350 Z could provide. Enter the Nissan Altima SE-R -- our test vehicle for the week.

Pricing
Nissan's plan for the Altima SE-R is to cram a lot of power, features and performance into a sub-$30,000 package. Our test car comes in at $29,300. While that is over $10,000 more than the 2.5-liter base model Altima, it is almost $3,000 less than a comparably-equipped 350 Z.

The Altima SE-R comes with so many standard features, we would fill up a couple of pages just listing them all. We're too lazy to do that, and it makes for a very tiring read for you, so we'll just list some of the highlights.

These highlights include: redesigned front fascia, 18-inch forged aluminum rims wrapped in sticky rubber, heated leather sports seats, premium Bose 6-disc sound system, a three-pod center gauge cluster, and power everything.

Oh yeah, the Altima SE-R also comes with a 260 horsepower V6, six-speed tranny, and a multi-link rear suspension derived from the Japanese-spec Skyline. Not a bad package for under $30,000.

Styling
Our test car came in a color that Nissan likes to call "Super Black". That may be a fitting color, but being the Spinal Tap-nerds that we are, we prefer to refer to our test car as "None-More-Black". You see, it would be hard to make this car any more black. The front grille: Black. The headlight housings: Black. The taillight housings: again -- black. Moving to the interior of the car: it's mostly black. Even the wheels, though they would more accurately be called "gunmetal", are such a dark gray, they almost look black. Again: this Altima is the "None-More-Black" edition.

Adding all this black to this sedan makes it look very menacing. The girlfriends of the IGN Cars and IGN Babes staff claim that the Altima SE-R looks like a VIP sedan -- ready to hit the freeways of Tokyo. While we're not sure about engaging in any "highway battles" in this car, we just think it looks mean. And by "mean", we mean "really freakin' awesome". We can feel our testosterone levels increase by 10% just by looking at this car.

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