What Car Defined The 2000s?

Image: Nissan

Every era or place has an official car. Today’s Question Of The Day is simple: when you imagine the 2000s in your mind’s eye, those halcyon days of pop punk and bling rap, what’s the vehicle that appears?

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For me, it’s the third-generation Nissan Altima for two reasons. First, it was downright unavoidable in the Northeast. Second, it had those “Altezza lights” — clear taillight housings with colored lamps within them — that were all the rage at the time. And while the Altima did not introduce this trend (or else they’d be called “Altima lights”), I believe Nissan’s bread-and-butter sedan was the gateway to the design trend for many drivers and onlookers. There were just so many on the road.

That wasn’t the worst thing in the world, though, because this was a pretty car for its day. I know it’s really hard to see through the rust on the beige base model example that’s been decomposing on your street corner for 15 years, but Nissan had its finger on the pulse of 2000s design, especially early in the decade. This Altima was elegant but a little blocky, and repurposed a lot of the flagship 350Z’s motifs in a more accessible package. That’s what a volume-selling midsize sedan’s got to do for a brand, right?

That said, I do not recall ever seeing an SE-R, like the one posted above, in my life. Nissan reportedly made just shy of 10,000 of these according to our old friend Mercedes Streeter, equipped with a 260-horsepower V6, six-speed manual, sport-tuned suspension and, incredibly, forged wheels. Forged wheels on an Altima! Nissan really used to be something, huh?

Anyway, that’s my pick for the official car of 2000 through 2009. What’s yours? You know what to do, and I’ll round up the best answers in a compilation for Friday.