Pretty good for an abused car

My husband does not take care of our car. The only time it gets maintance is when I do it in secret. Which isn't very often. Seriously. We bought this car new in August 1999 and it's probably had 5 oil changes. AND IT STILL RUNS!

The interior has not held up well though. The seats have holes, the sun visors fell off and were lost years ago, the carpet is gone in the front two feet areas, and the plastic on the thresholds were long ago broken.

A couple of buttons fell off the stereo years back and something broke inside the dial for the switch on the air that picks where the air flows (but it still works).

The only major thing that has happened breakage wise that I am convinced is a lemon-issue is that we've had to replace the dual fans for the radiator not once, but twice, and they are out again. The first time it broke with in the first 12 months, and now breaks every 2 years. They just quit running and the car overheats if it sits still longer than a minute at a stop light. We can't even take it through McDonalds drive throughs. You don't even want to know what happened when we tried to go see the holiday light display this year.

Oh, yes you do! Well, the car overheated and boiled over,and we ended up sitting in the car, in the dark in a parking lot for at least an hour while waiting for it to cool down. We ended up sticking our feet out the door to push the car along just to get out of the park. Not fun. And the kicker was that it was below freezing outside. We had thought that we'd be safe with it that cold.

But other than that, she's given us no problems. Everything else still works.

Our car has been hit 2x by idiot drivers. The first time was in the rain at a stop light when I popped the clutch and the car died. An older corvette came tearing up behind me and slammed my car (her name is Betsy) into the intersection. The front of the corvette was destroyed. Betsy had a little crack in the back bumper.

Betsy didn't fair as well when she got plowed by a Pathfinder. We were sitting in the car, in the parking lot, and hadn't even started the engine when BANG! A SUV came out of nowhere and smashed in the driver door, and the left front fender. The idiot got out and said "I didn't even see you" Well, thankfully we were all IN THE CAR, and safe, and Betsy still drives, she just has duck tape holding on the side mirror.

SO for being abused at our hands, and at the hands of others, she's still a mean, lean road machine!

**************UPDATE*************************

I was asked about Betsy as a performance vehicle. I wouldn't say that in her prime that she was ever a performance vehicle aside from the good gas milage, which still is over 400 miles to a tank.

She gets up on the highway with plenty of speed, but we no longer really push her over 65 for extended periods, as she starts to shimmy and shake. That probably has to do with neglect, I suspect. Still, in a pinch, we can get away from crazy drivers with quick excelleration. Nothing breathtaking, though.

The car doesn't have anything spectacular on it feature wise, even though it is the Limited Edition model. What that involved that I've noticed that other Sentras don't have are:

Chrome Mag wheels (that incidentally cost about $275 each to replace new from Nissan- we know from experience- check your junk yards, we got them for $75)

CD player and stereo, and I suppose air conditioning is still considered an extra. I've noticed that the fabric colors we have are different than others whose windows I have peeked into, but again, I'm not too jazzed on the fabric, as all the seats have torn and the carpeting is worn away to metal. My first car in 1991 was a 1979 corvette, and the interior was in much better condition, and it had been mechanically abused as well- so I think that our car has lower quality materials used in the interior.

Other than that, I don't have any technical specifications to share, just your average housewife opinion on the car.

Hope this helps!