Tested: 2009 Maxima Sport- Get the summer tires!

Call us suckers for the word "sport." You could slap a "sport" badge on a pair of roller skates and our eyes would light up at the implied promise of higher cornering speeds around the Things Remembered kiosk at the local mall.

No sooner had we completed a test of the 2009 Nissan Maxima 3.5 SV than we learned of another 2009 Nissan Maxima equipped with a Sport Package lurking in Nissan's garage.

There was that word again. How could we not test it?

Life Begins at SV
To recap, the 2009 Nissan Maxima is available in two trim levels: S and SV. The S is, relatively speaking, a stripped-down model that exists so that Nissan can say that the Maxima starts at under $30K — $29,950 with destination, to be exact.

Really, life begins with the uplevel Maxima SV, which starts at $32,650 and adds leather, a better sound system and a few doodads. The SV trim also grants you access to your choice of a Sport Package or a Premium Package, which share a slew of features and are separated by only a few key differences that are presumably intended to separate the sybarites from the enthusiasts.

Opt for the Sport Package and you trade away several of the frills found in the Premium for a metallic interior trim, sport-tuned suspension, 19-inch wheels with 245/40R19 Goodyear RS-A all-season tires, and a spoiler on the deck lid.

Oh, and by choosing the $2,300 Sport Package you save more than a grand compared to the Premium Package. More go for less dough is the kind of value proposition that's right up our alley.

But does the Sport Package really provide more go? To find out, we fired up our RaceLogic VBOX logging equipment and took the Maxima to task.

Our test car was equipped with the Sport and Technology Packages and assorted mats, bringing the total to $37,380 with destination. The first 2009 Nissan Maxima we tested had been equipped with the Premium Package among other items. (Hereafter, we'll simply refer to said first Maxima as "Premium" and the subject of this test as "Sport.")

Get the Summer Tires
Before we get into the numbers, let it be said that the Sport is communicative and eager when it comes to handling the road. The impression is now of robust confidence, and if it is not the quite the spry Four-Door Sports Car that it was 20 years ago, it is far more engaging than more recent iterations of the model. Midcorner bumps do little to skew the Maxima's path away from the ideal arc, while the friction-free steering provides a level of precision not typically found in powerful, heavy front-wheel-drive cars. This 3,609-pounder moves with Germanic authority.

Unfortunately, we found that the Sport's all-season tires wave the white flag well before the fortified suspension underpinnings are ready to call it quits. Our first clue to this came at 128 feet, the braking distance from 60 mph, which is no better than the Premium. Tires are truly what deliver a short stop for a car (more so than brake hardware, really), and the ones on the Sport don't appear to stick to the pavement any better than the entry-level 18-inchers.

The Sport didn't show any improvement in our slalom and in the skid pad tests, either. The Sport's best slalom attempt was 65.2 mph, which trails the Premium we tested by 1.2 mph. The Sport likewise generated 0.80g of grip on the skid pad compared to the Premium's 0.83g result. Neither of these are bad results, but hey — this is the Sport Package, right?

Bridgestone Potenza RE050A summer-type performance tires are a no-cost option on Sport Package-equipped Maximae. We'll bet both of the dollars in our bank account that these are the tires for which the tauter Sport underpinnings have been tailored.

Feel the Burn
After the Maxima Sport's fifth run through our slalom testing, the transmission decided it couldn't take the heat and defaulted into failsafe mode. The car assumed command of the manual shift gate and refused to serve up revs higher than 4,100 rpm.

All functions returned to normal once the Max had a time out and things cooled off. Given a cool transmission and a few more attempts, it's possible that the Sport's slalom speed might have edged closer to the Premium's result.

With the same 290-horsepower 3.5-liter V6 under the hood of every Maxima, the acceleration runs promised to be interesting. The Sport found more traction than the Premium, hitting 60 mpg in 6.3 seconds (6 seconds with 1 foot of rollout as at a drag strip) and clicking off the quarter-mile in 14.5 seconds at 95.9 mph. For those keeping score at home, these results better those the Premium turned out by a few tenths of a second. Torque steer is remarkably absent, even though the 261 pound-feet of torque from the V6 is substantial.

Part of the Maxima's confident personality is due to its pairing of the powerful yet tractable V6 with a brilliant continuously variable transmission (CVT), with which Nissan has proven that it is possible to merge the benefits of both a manual and an automatic with only a few of the downsides of either. Whether you're snapping off "downshifts" for engine braking, plodding through traffic or making a quick getaway, the CVT makes everything so effortless that you wonder why other automakers bother with traditional automatics anymore.

We love the multiple personalities a vehicle can adopt thanks to a CVT, though this particular one's tendency to wilt in the heat suggests that the boys in the lab coats need to whip up a tranny cooler, stat.

4get About 4DSC
The 2009 Nissan Maxima SV is a sports tourer par excellence. The cabin itself doesn't put a patch of leather wrong, and its seats are sinfully cosseting while still providing the reassuring "don't worry, I've got you" support required for enthusiastic driving. And though its list of features is staggeringly long, the Maxima remains user-friendly and honest.

Some of the styling details are fussy, as if the designer's chair was kicked while they were being penned, though the sharp 19-inch wheels of the Sport Package give the 2009 Nissan Maxima a shot of presence.

Maybe that's the reason to tick the box for the Sport Package, then.