muranoman2012 
1998 Nissan Maxima Sedan GXE 4dr Sedan
Sporty road hugger with terrible cruise control!!
 First, the good parts. This car handled the corners really well (like a sports car). The steering was also good and the a/c vents were flat with a vertical dashboard that brought more air to your knees when you needed it (unlike the newer cars with their aerodynamic dashboards). Mine also came in a deep teal that looked best in the evenings. Now the bad. The rear seat wasn't made to fold down to allow for more storage space. It didn't come with ABS brakes (the SE and GLE do) so stopping ability in snow and ice was horrible. The ride was fairly stiff and without sound insulation rough roads would produce a lot of noise. The cruise control would cause the car to jerk you 2 or 3 times just accelerating up a small hill because it wouldn't constantly stay in lower gear until getting over the hill (so using the overdrive button on the automatic shifter was used a lot to stop this problem). No one seemed to know how to fix the A/C for summer use. Bottom line. Get the GLE for the standard automatic transmission and the SE for the standard manual transmission but either one should be used for a second car since cargo space isn't there best feature or maybe as a gift for a high schooler. These were reliable front wheel drive cars (at least until the year 2000 and on) so 1997's to 1999's were good choices and the standard V6 engines (no whimpy 4 cylinders available) had 190 horsepower which was plenty of power without causing any torque steer that the newer maximas and altimas (with there too powerful V6's) have a constant problem with!