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Underneath, the Exalta shares the same chassis as the outgoing Sentra Series III. A fact made more obvious when the car doesn’t increase in terms of wheelbase: it retains the familiar and rather short 2535 mm measurement. Though on paper the McPherson Strut and Multi-Link Beam suspension may seem a bit crude, it actually translates to a relatively good ride on highway roads. In fact, the Exalta is probably as refined as its bigger brother Cefiro when it comes to highway cruising. However, unlike say the Honda Civic, the Exalta feels a bit more wobbly and doesn’t have the point-and-steering accuracy of the Civic. Normal everyday driving won’t produce the faults of the Exalta. The Exalta works as fine and dandy as your toothbrush on the normal commute to work. When pushed to the limit, the Exalta exhibits a generous amount of understeer that requires more work on the steering wheel to keep the car on the correct path. What makes it worse is that there is absolutely no steering feedback, which makes it harder to gauge its limit. If the Cefiro’s steering already felt like the column is submerged through porridge, then the Exalta feels as if its connected to absolutely nothing—an arcade machine has more feedback than this. If the handling isn’t that good on the Exalta, I could say that it’s saving grace (in terms of driving) has to be its engine and transmission. The 1.6-liter engine is an all-new unit from Nissan. Although it shares the same engine block as the Series III, everything else is new. In fact, it’s designation has already changed. Now known as the QG series engine, the 1.6-liter 16-valve inline-4 is as smooth as the famed VQ V6 engine from its Cefiro bigger brother. Much more, the 1.6-liter engine features two new innovations from Nissan: a gasoline direct-injection engine and their version of VTEC, simply called Valve Timing Control or VTC. The horsepower rating has bumped up by 6 bhp and the torque rating is up 0.9 Nm because of these changes. On the road, the combination of the QG engine and the 4-speed ECT transmission is simply sublime. Smooth and efficient all the way to the engine’s 6,500 rpm redline. Though there’s a bit of hesitation during a hurried acceleration attempt, the Nissan transmission adapts more quickly and more effectively than Honda’s automatic unit. During highway cruising, the passenger is subject to what feels like the best leather to fit a Japanese car here in the Philippines. Though the piping is a bit on the cheesy side, the seats feel very good both in feel and driving comfort. Lateral support is great, beating out the outgoing Toyota Corolla and probably pips the the Civic’s front seats. Ergonomically, all the controls fall into place with the exception of the ventilation control which is placed too low and is usually blocked by the automatic shift gate. What’s more is that the vent controls are too small and too cluttered to be used effectively—the Cefiro’s is a lot better with chunky and easy to understand controls. |
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