Is your car affordable? In the modern age, the very nature of affordability in a compact car has changed to become rather complex. In the past, efficiency has been the biggest factor of affordability in a vehicle, but times have changed. Nowadays, there are a plethora of different types of costs associated with owning a vehicle, from a car’s deterioration rate to its required maintenance and expensive technology that might need service. One vehicle, the 2021 Nissan Sentra, has provided one of the best modern affordability experiences among compact cars, with high efficiency, a high value in features, and a low starting cost.
What Does Complex Affordability Look Like?
When talking about affordability, the decision of whether or not something is affordable is actually more complex than just the initial vehicle cost. Affordability relies on both direct and indirect spending. For the purpose of this article, we will define direct spending as the expenses for the vehicle (whether a lease, loan, or cash payment), associated fees like registration, fuel costs, vehicle insurance, and recurring maintenance. These are the things that you pay for upfront and frequently to be able to own and operate your vehicle on a day to day basis.
Indirect spending, for our purposes, focuses more on the costs you don’t necessarily control, like the costs associated with an accident. One of the largest forms of this kind of spending is vehicle depreciation. If you buy a vehicle that depreciates rapidly, like a brand new car, you may end up spending more than you would with another model, or you won’t be able to sell it for as much as you hope. Another type of indirect spending is enjoyment and comfort. Basically, these two factors will help determine if you want to continue to invest in your vehicle or if you will want to replace it quickly. While not something most people focus on when purchasing something affordable, indirect spending is something to consider.
What Makes The 2021 Nissan Sentra So Efficient?
Nissan has always had a high standard for affordability in all of its past models, like fuel efficiency in the Nissan LEAF and optimized material design in the Nissan Altima. However, very few past additions have been able to maximize affordability in such an advanced way as the 2021 Nissan Sentra. The new addition does this in a variety of intuitive ways, such as by increasing efficiency using traditional avenues like fuel mileage, increasing the durability of the Sentra’s overall value.
Traditional Efficiency
Efficiency is one of the most crucial factors for understanding the overall value of your vehicle, or at least it is the easiest to see and understand. Fuel efficiency is the best example of this, given that it can be read as an objective value in dollars. Every vehicle has to burn fuel to function, and the amount of miles that can be driven per gallon of gasoline is what we mean by fuel mileage. The 2021 Nissan Sentra, for one, is incredibly efficient in this way, with overall fuel mileage of 33 miles per gallon combined. This means this compact car will be able to save money by driving more miles per gallon than other cars in its class, meaning fewer stops at the gas pump and more money in your wallet.
Fuel economy is the most traditional means of understanding the affordability of a vehicle in the long-run, but there is more to affordable performance than meets the eye. Fuel efficiency is a good thing, but if the vehicle is sold at a high price with only fuel efficiency backing this up, then the vehicle is not affordable at all. Luckily for the 2021 Nissan Sentra, its price has been rather low for the market, and better yet, its other performance features do not suffer either. With the 149 horsepower, 2.0-liter engine in the 2021 Nissan Sentra is still a powerful choice on the road. What this means for you as a car buyer is that the 2021 Nissan Sentra is a compact car that offers one of the best fuel economies on the market with high power and acceleration, all while being sold at a reasonable market price.
More for Your Dollar
Next, we are going to focus on the value you find in enjoying your vehicle. After all, many of us spend a lot of time in our vehicles, and we are willing to pay a little bit more for extra comfort or entertainment features. This is important because if you enjoy your vehicle and feel like you are using all its features, you are more likely to keep it longer (and hence not have to spend money to replace it as quickly), saving you money in the long run. It might not be something you initially associate with affordability, but comfort and entertainment can play a significant role later down the line.
The 2021 Nissan Sentra is a very valuable compact car because it provides all of the features that a driver could want in a compact car. To start, the car’s design makes for a very smooth drive due to its careful attention to detail. The 2021 Nissan Sentra looks stylish, but this design also carefully balances the mass of the vehicle in a way that feels good to drive which is always a plus in the hard value sense. The reason being that this comfort will not deteriorate over time at as fast a rate as other features, given that it is tied to the design of the vehicle and not to technological features that can become obsolete. To put this short, a car that drives well by design will almost always be valuable to some degree.
On the other hand, the 2021 Nissan Sentra does not exclude other comfort features; rather, the vehicle is valuable because it innovates in all areas of comfort. In addition to a smooth drive, the vehicle also hosts a wide variety of technological comfort features like zero-gravity seating and increased connectivity with mobile devices. Granted, technology is prone to becoming obsolete at a faster rate than design features, but a vehicle without these features is less valuable from the get-go. The Sentra’s comfort experience is incredible even in terms of short-term comfort, with a climate system that works very well and is simple to use. Of course, because the 2021 Nissan Sentra bypasses this long-term value versus short-term value issue by implementing both, it is clear that the 2021 Nissan Sentra is the most long-lasting compact car on the market today, given its very reasonable pricing.
Good Safety Features Are Worth a Lot
Regardless of when you bought your vehicle, accidents have always been a concern for car buyers. Accidents are one of those areas that can fall into indirect spending as they are unplanned and can end up costing a lot. Put shortly, accidents cost money for insurance, and they could mean the most important people in your life getting hurt, so a compact car that can avoid accidents is incredibly valuable.
In recent years, this has meant a heavy increase in technology designed to make driving safer. Most vehicles nowadays provide an array of safety features standard, and the 2021 Nissan Sentra isn’t any exemption to this rule. The Sentra includes features like automatic braking to prevent usually unavoidable accidents and a pedestrian warning system to alert drivers to people that are difficult to see on a normal basis, as well as many other features. The 2021 Nissan Sentra definitely can stand on its own feet and has a solid safety net to ensure that everybody inside and outside the vehicle is safe.
Safety technology is, of course, not everything that is important when designing a vehicle that stops accidents. Safety performance is also a very big factor, essentially ensuring that the functions needed to stop accidents, like braking and turning maneuvers, are in perfect working order. Luckily, the 2021 Nissan Sentra excels in safety performance. In the end, what this means is that when an avoidable accident does come up, the 2021 Nissan Sentra will have no problem either stopping or swerving out of the way. When coupling this strong performance with the standard suite of safety technology, the 2021 Nissan Sentra is a master at avoiding indirect costs associated with accidents.
What Does This All Mean?
As we’ve mentioned before, affordability in a vehicle is a rather complex topic that utilizes a multifaceted equation different than any other feature in a vehicle. Overall, the 2021 Nissan Sentra has been the successful result of careful planning to increase affordability. That said, the big picture of everything that makes the Sentra affordable and fun to drive is just as complex as the level of planning needed to design it.
If we are rating the 2021 Nissan Sentra in terms of direct spending, then the compact car is easily among the top of its class with its excellent fuel economy saving you money whenever you head to the pump. This is all done while being offered at a reasonably low MSRP for a compact car. The 2021 Nissan Sentra has an entry price of just $19,410, brand new for the base model. Put together, the 2021 Nissan Sentra rates very highly in direct spending because it offers top-tier long-term efficiency that saves in the long-run, while still offering a reasonable price per unit.
On the other hand, indirect spending is a little bit more complex to analyze. Unlike direct spending, which can be found in a handful of clear costs, indirect spending focuses on a wide variety of factors that can be hard to keep track of. That isn’t to say that soft costs are impossible to calculate, but they will show a trend rather than an exact number rating. When talking about indirect spending with the 2021 Nissan Sentra, the resulting trend has been very positive. The Sentra’s comfort and performance features have been very long-lasting, and the safety technology found in the vehicle makes for a drive that is preventative of accidents and injuries. What this means is that you will have less indirect spending throughout your ownership of this vehicle.
Is the 2021 Nissan Sentra Worth It?
The short answer is yes; the 2021 Nissan Sentra is a high-value compact car and is worth it if you’re looking for an affordable vehicle. The long answer is that the 2021 Nissan Sentra is a compact vehicle that revolutionizes the concept of affordability in a vehicle. The 2021 Nissan Sentra is a high-value, reliable, compact car because it offers money-saving performance, features that balance short-term and long-term comfort, and technology that helps offset the indirect costs associated with avoidable accidents. Ultimately, the decision is a no-brainer: the 2021 Nissan Sentra is a top-tier compact car and more than enough reason to visit a Nissan dealer near you.
