Start with what the Nissan Cima is: a 4-door hardtop Sedan (automobile) / sedan (1988–1991) / 4-door sedan (1991–2022) with Petrol engine, built from 1988 to 2022, in the age of turbocharging and the first electronic engine management. What it meant takes a little longer.
How it came about
The Nissan Cima (Japanese: 日産・シーマ, Nissan Shīma) is a luxury sedan manufactured and marketed by Nissan across five generations for the Japanese market — and for three generations as the Infiniti Q45 internationally. The Cima nameplate derived from Spanish for "summit" or "top." Earlier generations featured a hood ornament with an image of an acanthus leaf that gave the Nissan Laurel its name. The acanthus leaf was commonly used by classical Greeks to make a wreath for use as a crown — notable, as the Cima's chief competitor in the Japanese Domestic market was the Toyota Crown. The Cima in its first two generations was a more luxurious and larger version of the Cedric and Gloria, with the Cima sharing its V8 engine with the earlier flagship President, Nissan's competitor with the Toyota Century. The Cima was introduced in 1988, based on an elongated Cedric/Gloria chassis.
With its sales success, about 64,000 units sold the first year and 120,000 in four years, the Cima became a symbol of the "bubble economy". The Cedric Cima was marketed at Nissan Store, while the Gloria Cima was marketed at Nissan Prince Stores. Later generations of the Cima shared the same platform as the President, with the Cima being a shorter version, thereby allowing Nissan to continue offering the Cima at Nissan Prince Store locations. The last three Cima generations were marketed in the United States as the Infiniti Q45. The Q45 was discontinued after 2006, however the Cima and the President continued in production until August 2010, leaving the Fuga to become the flagship for the Infiniti line. Apr
The hardware
The engine is Petrol engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. On the scales it comes to 1640 kg. Drive goes through a 4-speed automatic. The layout matters: a front engine drives the rear wheels, the classic proportion — long bonnet, cabin set back — that most people picture when they picture a sports saloon or a grand tourer. The wheelbase is 2735 mm. These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Family and rivals
In the Nissan line-up the Nissan Cima has a clear place: the factory was Kaminokawa, Tochigi, Japan. The cars a buyer would have weighed it against include the Mazda MX-5, the Ferrari F40, the Lexus LS. Its Nissan stablemates include the Nissan N6 and the Nissan N7.
Owning one today
There is no federal ownership record for the Nissan Cima — it predates the complaint database or was never sold in the United States — so MotorJury publishes no running-cost figure for it. For a car of this age the price is set by the collector market and the condition of the individual example, not by a formula.