Malaysia may have only recently welcomed the arrival of the blind spot monitoring-equipped Nissan Teana, but our 2013 model still belongs to the J32 family, which has existed in world markets from 2009 and end-2010 at home. The local D segment hasn't stood still since - with offerings from Japan, Korea and the Continent relentlessly springing up all over the place, Nissan will not, and cannot, rest on its Laurels for long.
As is often the case, the crystal ball to gaze into is to be found overseas. But sometimes it's a blink-and-miss case, as it was with us and this car. When Nissan launched the 2013 Altima last summer in the US, we thought little of it until Dongfeng-Nissan unveiled a very similar-looking vehicle in China that bore the Teana badge, suggesting a conformity to the more cost-effective 'global car' trend.
But they've actually been related underneath all the while. The original J31 Teana sat on the same FF-L platform as the L31 Altima, and when the L32 Altima switched to the D platform, so did the J32 Teana. But because they looked so different from each other, few knew of their kinship. With the new '33' generation, although they retain their respective maiden names, Asia and America finally wear the same dress.
Unsurprisingly, Columbia has more to fill up her dress with. In addition to a 2.5 litre QR25DE four-cylinder engine, the American Altima is also offered with a 3.5 litre VQ35DE V6. The Chinese Teana gets the same four-pot, plus the 2.0 litre MR20DE unit from the second-gen Sylphy.
So to date, we know of three engines available in two major car-buying nations, and the J32 Teana's smooth 2.5 litre VQ25DE V6 isn't one of them, suggesting that, where this engine displacement is concerned, the V6 has been replaced by the QR-series four-cylinder.
If this is indeed true, is it good or bad news for the Teana? I try to find the answers to this and more in a short drive at Nissan's quadrennial 360 event, held this year in sunny Orange County, California. I only had one day there and time was tight, but I managed to try out the new China-built, China-spec Teana 2.5 on a makeshift course at the disused El Toro Marine Corps airbase (after all, the car wasn't road-legal there).
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