This got me curious just as to how different the Altima and Maxima engines really are, so I did a quick search over at Altimas.net and Maxima.org to look for some dyno runs and what I found was pretty interesting to me so I figured I'd repost them here...

Stock '02 5-speed Altima SE dyno from here:



Stock '02 6-speed Maxima dyno from here:



I'm not sure where you saw an Altima SE putting out 192hp because most of the dynos I saw while over there were all in the 204hp range like the dyno above, maybe you saw the plot for an automatic 3.5SE? Anyway that's not really important, what I found interesting was that there seems to be really no difference between the motors at all. As far as I can tell from these dyno charts they're exatly the same, but since Nissan is claiming different power output for the two cars they're either underrating the 240hp Altima since 14% drivetrain loss is better then average, or they're overrating the 255hp Maxima since 20% drivetrain loss is worse then average. It's my guess that the motors in the Altima and the Maxima are acctualy producing a power rating somewhere inbetween Nissan's claim of 240hp and 255hp, like 245-250.

Or not, who knows.