First Drive Review
Slipping the name of a Soviet dictator into a story on jumbo-size luxury SUVs is no walk in the woods, but here goes: Some of you may recall that when comrade Stalin tightened the planet's sphincter by announcing in 1949 that he, too, had one helluva nuclear surprise for everybody, he didn't add, "and mine's smaller than yours!"
It's that way, too, in this rich but narrow niche of the mammoth-SUV market. You gotta one-up the competition. (Any day, one expects to open the rear hatch and find a row of embossed clamshell beds inside one of these lollapaloozas.)
The latest, and perhaps last, entry is this Infiniti QX56, the luxury version of Nissan's grand-size Pathfinder Armada and close kin to the much-heralded (and C/D comparo winning) Titan V-8 full-size pickup truck. The QX56 is 17 feet 3 inches long and seats a driver and three comrades in two rows of commodious armchairs that are heated and powered in eight directions (10 for the driver), with room for three more on the elevated rear poop deck. It weighs 5650 pounds in all-wheel-drive dress, and the base rear-drive model should start at about 50 grand.
But in matters of big, it wins bragging rights only for its towing capacity (8900 pounds!), second-row legroom (42 inches), and standard power (315 hp, 390 pound-feet of torque), and only if you, as Infiniti does, view its competition as limited to the Lincoln Navigator, Cadillac Escalade (but not the foot-longer Suburban-size and more powerful ESV model), and Lexus GX470 (but not the $64,800 LX470 model). And don't count the very luxurious, more powerful, but smaller SUVs built by Porsche, VW, and BMW-they don't seat eight (the Infiniti qualifies by virtue of its optional second-row split bench that seats three). This Infiniti's second and third rows fold flat, like the Armada's, for 97 cubic feet of room (the Lincoln has 105 and the Cadillac 108).
Once past the wearisome issue of how much an inch of hip room or a cubic foot of air counts for at the checkout counter, Infiniti insists the real news is that this behemoth has been designed to overcome-irony incoming-a big fear many drivers admit to: reluctance to even get behind the wheel of something this big and unwieldy.
But Infiniti makes drivers' cars first, so SUV or not, this one has a significantly firm boxed ladder-frame chassis. The idea, an Infiniti official said, was to make the ride "more compliant, but not soft and cushy like the Escalade's-more dynamic." You won't porpoise wildly over railroad tracks, he promised, nor will it behave like a sow in turns. We drove the QX56 over 60 miles of often-perilous and narrow coastal roads on Maui and couldn't get up much speed (or the nerve to make it), but certainly, the QX's firm ride was apparent, as was its Titan power-we think it'll outrun the spirited Cadillac. A first drive calls up the words comfy, quiet, competent, and, like most sport-utes, not particularly memorable.
The full-time four-wheel-drive model has a low-range gear for heavy lifting, and it works in concert with a five-speed automatic with a gated shifter and an all-independent suspension with rear auto leveling. Brakes are vented discs with ABS that are linked with traction- and stability-control systems. From standstill, the vehicle starts off in four-wheel drive and, once under way, slips into rear-wheel drive, provided the weather is peachy.
The QX is ringed with two walls of side-impact and curtain airbags that deploy when the vehicle even gets near to rollover angles. We were a bit surprised that the seven-spoke chromed alloy wheels were 18-inchers (with P265/70 Continental ContiTracs) that don't fill the wheel wells, but Infiniti says keeping the cabin hushed was a goal and that bigger tires increase noise.
Nice touches and gizmos include a power-operated liftgate, a removable second-row center console, a roof rack that will accept 200 pounds, dual-zone climate controls, power-adjustable driver's pedals with memory, skid plates on the underbody for adventuresome runs in the woods (ground clearance is 10.0 inches for rear-drivers, 10.8 for four-wheel-drivers), and power-operated rear quarter-windows. Being a luxury vehicle, the QX56 has as standard a nav system and a Bose 10-speaker stereo with a six-CD changer. The running boards, which make the 21-plus-inch getting-in task a two-step operation, are also standard.
The options are few. There's a DVD entertainment system with wireless headphones and a video port at the back of the center console, a power sunroof, and a camera mounted near the license plate that functions as the driver's eyes in backups, an option that makes real sense.
What we couldn't get excited about was the QX56's approach to interior luxury. Infiniti sees its cabin as a stylish mix of aluminum, wood, and leather, but it struck us as uninspiring, vaguely upscale but short of the kind of luxurious look and feel that make you wonder if you're underdressed to drive. It needs some pizazz, some richness, and that great swath of hard, unappealing dashboard material doesn't help matters.
Prices hadn't been announced at press time. The QX56 goes on sale this month, and Infiniti would be very happy if it could sell 15,000 annually.
These are happy times at Infiniti. Sales in North America went over the 100,000 mark for the first time last year, and the QX56 is the first Infiniti that is fully produced at Nissan's new U.S. factory in Mississippi. (It's less jovial here in the office where it seemed impossible, until a second ago, to get Stalin's name into the last sentence of this story.)
