The 2006 Nissan Sentra follows the latest concepts in vehicle design for a medium sized four door saloon, which is to take the three box design that comprises a saloon, i.e. engine compartment, cabin, tail compartment and merge the three in a distinctive sweep that is both angled and curved. Some manufacturers achieve this with a lot less success than the designers at Nissan. The 2006 Nissan Sentra looks good.
The Nissan designers approach for the 2006 Nissan Sentra has been to provide a nose that slopes downwards, subtly making the nose appear short while actually providing a deep windshield that encroaches into the nose space. This has allowed the windshield to provide panoramic line of sight visibility. In order to maintain the front sloping appearance large curved oblong headlights have been used, combined with the indicator flashers which stretch the length of the headlights making them highly visible. To the naked eye the nose provides a sense of purpose that was never quite made it with the 2005 Nissan Sentra. That said, it could be argued that the 2005 Nissan Sentra was popular to enthusiastic tuners for this reason. Because people do enjoy taking a mild looking family saloon and turning it into a fire breathing road racer.
At the point where the nose and cabin merge the designers were not satisfied to simply allow the metal to blend at what might be considered the natural points. For the 2006 Nissan Sentra the metal of the front door design sweeps upward from front to rear with the window area occupying what might ordinarily have been metal space. By dividing the front door space in this way Nissan's designers have produced front doors able to trick the naked eye in to initially believing it is seeing a straight line of metal. Only by looking more closely at the front door design will you appreciate the subtle way in which it is able to allow more light into the cabin. The nose of the Nissan Sentra has been completed with a largish, new grille sited above molded bumpers and a wide engine air-intake.
The front and rear door combination continues the upward sweep so the front doors contain less metal than their rear counterparts. This attractive angular side view is cleverly blended with a stubby, rounded tail that has its own angles going outwards from top to bottom. The door handles are chunky with a dip in the metal to allow fingers easy access. While the wide wing mirrors have been fairly well disguised by tapering them in a way that doesn't appear intrusive.
The roofline design is a half arc that sweeps from front to stern with door windows squared off at either end rather than following and finishing with the true roof curvature. Today, the reason rooflines in general follow this design technique, relates to aerodynamics as much as it does to the designers intention to make a car look good. Good aerodynamics equal good performance and economy and any argument against those is pointless. A glass sunroof is provided over the front passenger seats which helps with the cabin light.
The petrol tank fill up is on the drivers side.
Pricing will probably begin at a little under $18,000.