Compiled by an outside contributor to Maxima Net.

Back in 1985 and 1986, when the Japanese were flooding the U.S. with cars, a backlash began to develop. American manufacturers were complaining loudly (remember Lee?), and Congress was talking about import restrictions. To avoid this, the Japanese agreed to voluntarily restrict imports to the U.S., with each manufacturer limited by their previous market share. At that time, Nissan was only building trucks in the U.S.

For Nissan, this caused a problem. The Maxima and Z were hot sellers, and by February of '86, they had already used up their entire quota for the year. So the first thing they did was introduce the 1987's in March of '86 (as I type this I'm looking at a 1987 Maxima brochure - printing date 3/86). Of course, at the rate the cars were selling, they would have sold out their quota of '87's by the fall of '86. Enter "floaters".

Because the Japanese are the world's largest exporter of motor vehicles, they have to build each model in many different configurations, to satisfy each country's rules and regulations. For some small markets, this is too costly. For instance, in the '70's Japanese cars sold in Canada had 5-MPH bumpers and catalysts, even though Canada didn't require them, because it was cheaper for the Japanese to give Canadians U.S.-spec cars than build them special. The same held true for a lot of other small markets, primarily Guam (a U.S. possession) and Panama. Those two markets received U.S.-spec cars first because they were small markets, and second (because of the strong U.S. military presence in both places) because a lot of the cars sold there wound up in the hands of servicemen who would want to bring them to the states once the tour of duty was over. Each Nissan distributor is an independent entity. Nissan verified their U.S. export numbers to the U.S. government by showing how many cars they had sold to the U.S. distributor.

Now, thousands of U.S.-spec Maximas and Z's were sold to the Guam and Panama distributors. They in turn sold them to the U.S. distributor. As far as Nissan (and the U.S. government) was concerned, those cars went to the Guam and Panama markets. Of course, in reality, they never left the boat until they hit the U.S. Most of the paperwork was routed through Panama. The only problem was that the cars didn't have a U.S. warranty (just like gray-market cameras). No problem. Once the dealer received the cars, they purchased a U.S. warranty from Nissan for about $200. It reduced their profit on each car, but it's better to make a couple of hundred less on each car than to not have any cars to sell at all. The other thing missing was the Monroney sticker (U.S. required), so the dealers would have blanks printed, and type in the information themselves. The buyers never knew that they had bought a "floater", but the attitude was "no harm, no foul". Now you also know why there are so many '87's out there. The model year ran from 3/86 to 10/87.

How do you know if you own a "floater"? Nissan continued the practice for a few years (Toyota did the same thing), until they were building enough Sentras in the U.S. to offset the imports. I only sold Nissans for a short time (made a lot of money, but despised the business), so I can only tell you about the '86's to '88's for sure. Because most of the Maximas were Panama cars, the first indication of a floater is that the car doesn't have the voice-warning system (Panamanians don't speak a lot of English, so Nissan just left it out). Also at that time there were only two models, the GXE and the SE. GXE's came with power seats, SE's with a power roof. If you have an SE with power seats, you have a floater. Third indication is the stereo system. U.S. cars had a power antenna override button, so that it could be shut off to prevent freeze-up in the winter. Because Guam and Panama don't get snow, there's no override button in the floaters. I'm not sure about post-88 floaters, but if you have a Maxima that differs slightly from the advertised specs and equipment, it's probably a floater. By the way, the '87's built in '86 have manual seat belts. Those build in '87 have automatic shoulder belts.