Nissan’s Max-Out Concept Is What We All Imagined The Future Would Look Like

It’s been a few years since Nissan’s been weird. The Cube died ages ago, the Juke has been normalized due to so many manufacturers hopping on the split-lamp treatment, and it’s been ages since “coin slot” and “Maxima” were said in the same sentence inside a Nissan showroom. Happily, signs of weird have started to appear again thanks to the gloriously-named Max-Out EV concept.

The Max-Out looks like the future of the past. It’s a concept sports car seemingly styled by Pepsiman, then accented in the same colors as an old Taco Bell. It feels like it’s built for a future where Half Life 3, 4, and 5 were launched to critical acclaim, which makes it that much more astonishing that it’s been built at all.

There’s more wedge to the Max-Out’s front end than on a Reliant Scimitar SS1, and Tron-like illuminated mesh elements show up everywhere from the surface under the elongated windscreen to the hubcaps. However, the Max-Out shrugs off ‘80s nostalgia in favor of something more ‘90s. The Fiat Coupe-like slashes in the front fenders and restrained use of hard creases point more towards the PlayStation era.

The weirdness continues on the inside, which we get an excellent view of thanks to the Max-Out lacking any semblance of a roof. The digital display in the dashboard looks a bit like a WinAmp skin, the steering wheel has two directional pads, and the wheel itself is shaped like a half-formed Mad Catz N64 wheel. Of course, the Tron-like pattern continues through the floor of the Max-Out, but strong post-Cold War optimism vibes are here.

It’s perplexing that the Max-Out was built at all. Sure, it was shown off in a few renderings back in 2021, but as far as I can work out by reading the press release, this car isn’t a concept car as we know that term to mean today. It doesn’t explicitly foreshadow future styling direction, nor is it a film tie-in, nor does it conjure up Nissan’s own past and act as a tribute car. While the Max-Out is said to be an EV, no further powertrain details are provided, which means we could just be looking at a rolling model. In fact, its official purpose is to explore “the fundamental concept of being one with the car,” but little more has been said by Nissan. The Max-Out seems to be a pure show car, a design team’s flight of fancy and a flex of what Nissan is capable of. A more classic definition of a concept car, which fits right in with the retro styling.

Think of the Max-Out as the new Z’s foil. Forget bringing up the distant past, this is longing for a future that never happened. Of course, romanticizing the decade that gave us Woodstock 1999 is the same sort of out-of-context nostalgia our own Adrian Clarke is so against, but we’re doomed to repeat trend cycles until a greater shift happens. For now, the Nissan Max-Out is a glorious sign that somewhere deep down inside Nissan, the same weirdness that gave us the Pike cars, the Cube, and the orange-on-orange Infiniti FX45 is still alive. Long may it continue.

(Photo credits: Nissan)

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