While Nissan's public-relations department is on a tear with teaser photos -- before the Altima's New York debut, we received no fewer than four -- their dark, foreboding close-ups of the 2013 Sentra were fully unmasked in Beijing.

Time to flip the lights on and kill the mood:


What you see above is the new Nissan Sylphy, a name that conjures up a certain medical condition to English-speaking buyers like us. The car itself, however, is exactly how the new Sentra will look when it arrives on U.S. shores later this year.

LED running lights and taillights flesh out a sleeker, more Infiniti-like profile that is matched inside by a curvier, two-tone dashboard. The larger, windswept headlights and inverted trapezoid grille follow the cues on the new Altima, which originally was the size of the Sentra when it came out in the 1990s.

Chinese models will come equipped with the 1.8-liter 4-cylinder engine found in the Cube -- current U.S. Sentras have a 2.0-liter -- but it's possible that Nissan's punchy, turbocharged 1.6-liter, seen in the Juke, could make it into the next top-end SE-R.

[Source: Nissan]