2002 Nissan Sentra SE-R review from North America

First, was the crank shaft position sensor..which was a recall. That was done in the first month of owning the car.

At about 35K miles, the mass air flow sensor went bad and I had to have it replaced. It was covered by my warranty, but left me without a car for 5 days due to problems with the dealership.. which wasn't Nissan's fault b/c I bought the car from a Honda place.

Then, the car started rattling every time it started from a cold start. The dealer couldn't find any problems because it didn't do the same thing for them. When they finally heard it, they just said the drive chain was a little loose, but it was nothing to worry about.

The cover for the visor mirrors have both broken off.. that occurred in the first year of owning it.

In general, the car HATES starting in cold weather. It's very hesitant even in the summer and I have to crank it a few times to get it to turn over.. but in winter... it may take 15 times to get it to start.. then it'll shut off if I don't give it a little gas.

My trunk latch also broke.. no idea how and I basically had to take it apart to fix it. It's like the bolts weren't tight enough and it slipped down into the opening so there was nothing for the trunk to latch to. It was on there good and tight and then a week later.. it did it again. So.. I had to buy a whole new latch mechanism.

Most recently, while driving to work, the car lurched and the check engine light came on. I kept hitting the gas, but I kept slowing down.. so I shifted into neutral and tried revving it.. but nothing happened, so I pulled over and turned off the engine. I restarted it and that seemed to fix it. Another mile down the road, the same thing happened. Turns out, the accelerator sensor went out and they also discovered that I have a leak in my EV AP unit (part of the A/C).

I'm also having problems with the moon roof. I'm not sure if it just needs more grease in the tracks or if it's the motor going bad... but it's reallllly slow.

When this car is working, it is a lot of fun to drive, but the problems it's had just isn't worth it.

It's fairly comfy for a small car, but could use some lumbar support on long trips.

The maintenance on this piece of crap is constant. My Honda could go every 6k miles for oil changes.. this one has to be every 3K miles or it starts having problems.. the rattling at start up gets worse unless you have the oil changed, which makes no sense since they told me it was the drive chain.

There's no room for anyone's legs in the backseat, so if you're behind a driver who's tall, you're screwed.