It was a cold and rainy day when we went to purchase a vehicle. We truly had not decided upon which vehicle to purchase and we ended up paying dearly for that mistake. When we arrived at our local Nissan dealership we were turned onto the Nissan Sentra because of price and looks. We needed a low payment, and we wanted a four door car.

Within the first couple of months we began to experience major problems with the Sentra. During ours and the Sentra's partnership it seemed that we both stayed at the shop more than we did in the road! We did enjoy the compact nature of the four door car, and the payments were within our monthly budget. However, when you consider our time and frustration in dealing with the mechanical and visual problems we would have been better off to purchase a couple of Schwinn 10 speed bicycles.

We took all of our concerns to the local dealer that we first purchased the car from and after many, many attempts to correct the problems we just finally gave up. Calculating our time, effort, and money that we put into the Sentra we definitely believe in the long run we saved nothing by purchasing a cheaper than average car.

Within the first four months of owning and driving the Sentra we experienced batteries with an attitude, power windows with a mind of their own, as well as a daily onslaught of flying wheel covers. It seems that every time we would turn a corner we were having to stop and pick up at least one (once it was three) wheel covers and throw them into the trunk, embarrassing and aggravating to say the least. We would go out to crank the car up in the morning and sometimes (good attitude ones) it would actually crank without so much as the hood being raised or the battery cables being wiggled. Other days however, we were not so fortunate. Sometimes it would crank after several attempts and sometimes we just gave up. The manual as well as the original window sticker said the driver side window had an automatic down feature where all you were supposed to have to do was push and release the down button after one second, the down feature seemed to work fine, the problem was if you wanted the window to return to its fully up position sometimes it would, mostly it just stayed down.(Many a hairdo ruined by this one!) The passenger side window would decide on its own whether it wanted to be in the up or down position. We might be riding down the road in the pouring rain and all of a sudden have a window slowly start descending, though you could let it up with the push of a button.

As far as the visual aspects of the car upon first inspection we felt that the car was cute but also had the 'young family' appearance. Both aspects we wanted. However, after owning the Sentra for about a year not only the body side molding but the window weather stripping as well began peeling off. After this we definitely decided to cut our losses and buy a new car.

In closing, I would recommend that you as a consumer do a lot of research before purchasing a car. And, I definitely WOULD NOT recommend a Nissan Sentra. The purchase price might be attractive at first glance but in the long run you will probably wish you had just walked to and from work. (If you purchase a Nissan Sentra, you might end up having too anyway!)