Nissan Celebrates The AWD Altima By Giving It Tracks

Nissan is hoping the Altima’s newly available all-wheel drive system will help it stand out from competition and the company is highlighting the feature by unveiling the new Altima-te AWD.

Set to be shown at the Montreal Auto Show, the Altima-te AWD is a one-off project vehicle that follows in the footsteps of the Rogue Warrior concept. As you can probably tell by now, the Altima has been equipped with a heavy-duty track system.

Created by Quebec’s Motorsports in Action, the Altima-te AWD has a Dominator track system from American Track Truck. Each track measures 48 inches (1,220 mm) long, 15 inches (380 mm) wide and 30 inches (750 mm) tall.

Since the tracks were originally designed to be installed on trucks, Motorsports in Action had to make some extensive modifications to the Altima. One of the most noticeable changes in the addition of a bespoke wide body kit which features fender flares that are 7 inches (180 mm) wide. Creating them was a time intensive process as Nissan says the fenders took 150 hours to complete.

That isn’t the only change as Motorsports in Action dropped the the front and rear chassis by 1.18 inches (30 mm), while raising the suspension components by 1.96 inches (50 mm). The company then had to adjust the suspension geometry to accommodate for the increased ride height.

While all-wheel drive comes standard on the Canadian Altima, it’s a $1,350 option on the US-spec model. That’s relatively affordable, but all-wheel is only available with the 2.5-liter four-cylinder engine that produces 182 hp (135 kW / 184 PS) and 178 lb-ft (241 Nm) of torque. As a result, customers can’t get all-wheel drive with the company’s new 2.0-liter variable compression turbo (VC-Turbo) engine which develops up to 248 hp (185 kW / 251 PS) and 273 lb-ft (369 Nm) of torque.