It's a great car we bought a year ago at Carmax, where they did a comprehensive inspection. But we were just driving in our neighborhood (between home and our voting station 1 mile away on side street speeds, thank god not on the freeway yet and the car conked out and wouldn't start again. It would just whine, not really click or crank. The check engine light and the traction control light came on when trying to start. We used our car insurance company to tow it to the dealership who said they couldn't start it either.

The dealer first swapped in a different cam location sensor (tells the computer the position of the engine) from another car they had nearby, but that didn't fix it. They concluded the engine was cracked, probably the cylinder head, and got Nissan authorization (corporate) to replace the engine under the 60K mile power-train warranty (thank goodness because the sensor would only have been covered by the bumper-to-bumper warranty that expired a week earlier!). They got authorization and ordered the parts on Friday, which should arrive early next week and be fixed by end of next week. Shouldn't cost me a dime and I get 3 years of wear knocked off my engine.

So no complaints about how it was handled, but... how does an engine die after 36K miles in Washington DC autumn weather (previous owner was in Georgia) and no excessive strain on it, regular oil changes, etc.? Isn't that all solid steel? Maybe steel tariffs are to blame, I don't know? The Nissan tech said in 5 years working there he had NEVER seen this type of problem.