2014 Nissan Altima

The 2014 Altima sits in the second model year of its fifth generation, and the federal record shows it is still firmly inside the early-generation trouble window: with 1,110 complaints, 8 recalls, 5 open investigations, and 316 TSBs, it trails only the launch-year 2013 (2,304 complaints, 12 recalls, 369 TSBs) within the 2013–2018 generation, while running well above the 2016 (545 complaints, 4 recalls) and 2017 (384 complaints, 3 recalls) mid-cycle years. The arc across the generation is a clear and steady decline — complaints fall to 941 in 2015, 545 in 2016, 384 in 2017, and 223 in 2018, with recalls dropping to a low of 2 by 2018 — which means 2014 is positioned before Nissan had worked most of the kinks out. The leading complaint cluster is Exterior Lighting (268), followed by Air Bags (158) and Power Train (153), and the 51 crash-related and 8 fire-related complaints for the year are non-trivial safety indicators even though the underlying root causes are not specified in this dataset. Compared with a used 2016 or 2017, a 2014 carries roughly two to three times the complaint load and double the recall count, so a buyer should expect to verify that all eight recalls and the lighting-related issues have been addressed. The concrete takeaway: a 2014 Altima is a workable budget buy, but it is not the sweet spot of the generation — if you can stretch to a 2016 or 2017, you get a meaningfully cleaner federal file for only a modest price step.