A grey 2020 Nissan Maxima is shown from the front driving on an open road.

Finding Your Family’s Perfect Road Trip Vehicle

Planning your family’s weekend getaways or vacations is an exciting task. Whether you are planning for the whole family, including the kids, or just for the adults and possibly good old Fido, excitement is inevitable. Who doesn’t look forward to a staycation or weekend day trips, hours from home and the city? When it should be an exhilarating experience to put together the details on the where, when, and durations of your adventures with your family, you may lose interest and become dispirited if you aren’t sure your vehicle will make it another season filled with adventure. If this sounds like you, it’s time to check out your local Certified Pre-Owned Nissan dealer.

Choosing the perfect vehicle for your family’s adventures, those that entail lengthy road trips, can be overwhelming if you aren’t sure where to start. Maybe you want to find a new vehicle altogether and branch away from the sedans because your growing family needs more storage space for their belongings. Or you need the rear cargo area of an SUV so Fido has a place of his own to enjoy being a dog during your family road trips without getting poked, grabbed, and screamed at by the kids in the back seat. You may even want to stick with a sedan. No matter where your vehicle preference leans towards, if you are looking for a dependable, affordable choice for your next vehicle, a certified used automobile dealer is a good place to start, and Nissan offers a variety of cars, trucks, and SUVs suitable for any family.

Why Choose Pre-Owned?

Used vehicles are not created equally. You will often find better quality used models at a dealership than those from private sales from an internet marketplace or from the side of the road. But today’s market offers an even better choice for people like you who want to find an affordable vehicle they can depend on to keep them and their family safe, moving towards adventure for many miles. Getting a manufacturer-backed Certified Pre-Owned (CPO) vehicle is the next best thing to buying brand-new, and you can find them from Nissan with more than just a warranty.

Nissan’s Certified Pre-Owned program includes a CARFAX Vehicle History Report and 3-Year Buyback Guarantee so you can be sure that you are getting a good quality vehicle right from the start. You will also get roadside assistance that lasts for the same 7-year/100,000-mile period as the limited powertrain warranty so that you and your family don’t end up stranded on the side of the road during one of your excursions. You may even be able to find some other special offers on the CPO stock, depending on when you buy. But what you can always expect with all Certified Pre-Owned vehicles is great quality.

Every Certified Pre-Owned model has to meet specific manufacturer criteria before it can be marketed and sold with the certified title. This includes being no more than six model years old and with less than 80,000 miles on the odometer. They even go through an extensive 167-point inspection with repairs and thorough detailings to ensure you are getting a quality, reliable vehicle that looks, feels, and drives as if there were no previous owners or driving history at all. When buying new is out of the question to replace your current vehicle that is unreliable for your family’s need for adventure on the road, Certified Pre-Owned is where you should look.

A blue 2018 Nissan Altima is shown from the side driving on an open road past a body of water.

Find the Right Size for Your Family

The next big task for you on your journey to finding your family’s next vehicle will be to decide on the size you need. Many automobile brands, like Ford and Buick, are eliminating most if not all sedans from their vehicle lineups. If your family benefits more from a spacious sedan, then your choices will be more limited than they were in the past. However, if your family is looking to upgrade to an SUV or spacious truck, then you will have an overwhelming amount of models to choose from on the market. If you are unsure of what you are looking for or if you feel a little intimidated by the many options available to you, as previously stated, Nissan is a brand that still offers a little bit of everything no matter what style or size you are looking for which will help narrow down your search.

Whether you are looking for a spacious car, truck, or SUV, Nissan offers them all. From the attractive fuel-friendly mid-size Nissan Altima sedan that can comfortably transport you and your family as far as your heart desires to the more elaborate full-size athletic Nissan Maxima, offering a spacious cabin for you, the little ones, and even Fido.

No matter how spacious, even these sedans may lack your much-needed cargo space. So if you need the extra space for camping gear, or your kids’ toys for the Airbnb, or to give Fido his own space for the long drive, an SUV may be more beneficial. With a wide range of Nissan SUVs to choose from, from the compact, stylish Nissan Rogue that offers an overwhelming amount of cargo space for its size even compared to its full-size sibling, the Nissan Murano, to Nissan’s largest SUV, the attractive, practical, and very capable Pathfinder, you are bound to find the ideal one for your family.

Pickup trucks today are designed more family-oriented than ever before with comfortable and spacious cabins, as well as hidden interior storage compartments for items that cannot be exposed to the outdoor elements in the cargo bed. Although Nissan only offers the Titan and its larger counterpart, the Titan XD, for truck options, these trucks still have the capability you may need to bring your camper or recreational equipment along for the ride.

Satisfy Your Road Trip Needs With Practical Features

What is worse than going on a road trip with a vehicle you can’t trust won’t break down on you halfway to your destination? Going on a family road trip with a cabin that doesn’t meet the comfort needs of adults, never mind that of a child’s. With bored, antsy children in the back seat and an audio system unworthy of your grandmother’s tunes nevermind yours; you might be hoping for the car to break down so you can have a reason to step out of the vehicle to be alone for a few minutes while getting some fresh air. But when you have kids, although full-glamor and luxury may sound delightful, they are not quite practical. Luckily, Nissan offers semi-luxury models or trim levels with premium features.

Most vehicles today offer a wide range of features to maximize comfort, from spacious cabins with ample legroom to comfortable seating and all of the amenities to keep you and your kids connected to your favorite people, music, and TV shows streaming right from your vehicle’s WiFi hotspot. Not to mention the features designed with parents in mind like tri-zone climate control to keep the back cabin space at whatever temperature the kids need it at since they always seem to run hotter or colder than you at all times. Another great feature that will help on your road trips is the foot-activated trunk or liftgate feature that allows you to open the trunk of your car or the liftgate of your SUV with a swing of your foot under the back bumper, which is genius, especially when your hands are full and no one is around to open or close the back for you when you are loading or unloading. You should look into those simple details for comfort and convenience that will make your journey that much more enjoyable when looking for your next vehicle.

A tan 2020 Nissan Titan is shown from the front parked in an alleyway.

Keeping Your Family Safe No Matter Where the Road Takes You

As a parent, your family’s safety is your number one priority, whether you are at home or on the road. So, of course, finding a vehicle that is going to assist you in keeping your family as safe as possible is a necessity. Nowadays, when you look into vehicles, you have to look deeper than just the number of airbags and crumple zones a vehicle has and how they fared during crash testing. Granted, if you are thinking of buying a Nissan, in 2021 alone, the Nissan Rogue, Maxima, and Altima were all awarded the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) Top Safety Pick for providing the highest level of safety for their occupants. But you also want to look into the advanced safety technologies like driver assistance features that are built-in vehicle copilots for the road, helping you prevent collisions by alerting you and even assisting you to steer and brake when the system detects a collision seems inevitable so that you can offer the best protection for your family, before and after a collision.

Ready to Get Back to Planning Your Family’s Next Road Trip?

Don’t let your old vehicle stand in the way of your excitement for planning your family’s next road trip getaway or vacation. You have options available to you that will fit your family’s needs and your budget. Even if you have no idea what type of vehicle you want to upgrade to, you should check out your local Certified Pre-Owned Nissan dealer because even in the unlikely circumstance that you cannot find a CPO Nissan perfect for your family, there will be plenty of other gently used models there for you to look at and test drive. There is no need to continue moping around about your current vehicle. Let yourself be excited again about making new memories on new adventures with your family.