Nissan's Fake Altima Racer Stunt

This is a clever video. To save you the trouble of watching it, the story works like so:

Nissan took a bunch of people whom the average TTACer would probably not characterize as “automotive enthusiasts” for passenger rides in “the new Altima race car”. At the end of a day filled with some faux-racing action, the assembled passengers are treated to a tear-down of one of the Altima racers. It turns out that all the “race stuff” — the aluminum interior, the spoilers, the graphics — is removable and that underneath is an Altima 3.5 SL.

You can look at this one of two ways:

0. The Nissan Altima is indistinguishable from a race car. That’s what the video is meant to convey. That’s obviously not true, as long as the person doing the distinguishing has actual experience with race cars. There’s no rollcage in the thing, it rides and steers softly, and it has real glass all the way around.

1. Most people have no idea of the actual handling limits of the modern automobile, and therefore they interpret a car being driven at the actual limits of the modern automobile as a race car. I’d say that’s a solid BINGO. When I took a Camry to Summit Point last year, my passengers were frankly amazed by what it could do — and some of them had plenty of track time under their belts already. My Accord can break 120mph on the front straight at Putnam. A few years ago, you needed a Corvette to put up that number. Not any more.

So what’s the moral of the story? It’s simple: whatever car you’re driving, as long as it’s a car and not a CUV or SUV, is probably faster and more dynamic than you think it is. It wouldn’t be a waste of your time to try a HPDE or two to find out for yourself. Why not do it this year?