https://soundcloud.com/db_drivenmedia/road-test-infiniti-q50-good-quality-and-space
Lexus has been a pretty good band for Toyota. It was their way of producing luxury cars and charging for them. If you put the Toyota name on the vehicle it would be hard to have a prestige image and people would expect a lower price no matter how many special features you would add to them.
Lexus has sold fairly well in Australia although Mercedes, BMW and Audi all outsell Lexus by a good margin.
In 1989, Nissan launched the first of its luxury vehicles under the brand name of Infiniti. It hasn’t been smooth sailing including a launch in Australia and then a withdrawal from the market. They are now back.
They now have a range of models in Australia including an SUV, a coupe, a convertible and a sedan.
Today we are looking at their Q50 diesel sedan. I found a few things took me a while to get use to but it still has a good car. To help us find out how good I have on the line motoring journalists Ian Crawford
- It’s called a 2.2 diesel but the engine is not quite that big. 2.1-litre diesel engine – not 2.2-litre as its name would have you believe – 2,143cc (2.2-litres) 4-cylinder direct-injection turbo-diesel DOHC 16-valve engine
- A seven-speed automatic transmission
- Infiniti Drive Mode selector (Standard, Snow, Sport, Eco or Personal mode) – on all models
- There is a 3.5 V6 with the Hybrid
- Fuel Economy is very good
- With minimal road-noise (Active Noise Control (ANC))
- Steering – Full drive by wire system. Steering controls are received by angle sensors near the steering-wheel and sent to the electric power steering rack electronically, and only under emergency fail-safe conditions do any mechanical links come in to play. Infiniti is the first to implement a steer-by-wire system in a production vehicle and generally speaking, the system is very impressive. We wanted more feedback.
- Takes a while to get use to
- Slow boot up of the electronics
- Stop/start only works for a short time
- Good size car – classified as a medium car – good space in the back
- Three models with the diesel engine (GT, s, S Premium)
- Lane departure monitoring and prevention, forward collision warning and braking, a speed limiter, blind-spot monitoring, active cruise control and parking sensors all-round, complemented by a 360-degree maneuvering camera.
- Infiniti InTouch™ dual touch-screen displays (LCD VGA 8″ and LCD VGA 7″)
- 14-speaker Bose sound-system – except for the GT
- digital radio with RDS
- Infiniti InTouch navigation
- Infiniti Voice Recognition for audio, phone and vehicle information systems
- Base model is called the GT. I always thought
- Heated front seats
- Front seat 8-wau electric adjustment on GT model and 10-way electric adjustability for all other models (8-way for the passenger),
- the steering column also gets two-way electric adjustment
