Gadgetory

this is the vehicle formerly known as the g37 that's right it's infinities new 2015 Q 50s sport sedan and as you can tell stylistically it's a much more handsome and muscular a more modern car than the g37 was but if you peek under the hood you'll find that the two cars quite literally share the same heart let's hop behind the wheel and I'll explain more under the hood we've got Infiniti D Q series 3.7 liter engine that's a specifically vq3 7vh R for the Nissan nerds keeping track that's actually a much older engine than much of the competition's using it's been in use in the g37 and the q50 dating back to 2008 and it's basic design is even older than that about two decades old for the VQ series output is about 328 horsepower and 269 pound-feet of torque but it does kind of feel like an older engine and it's a little bit less lively than for example the smaller displacement turbocharged engine that you're getting from BMW and Audi these days the Q 50s and rear-wheel drive trim is good for about 23 miles per gallon combined which isn't terrible but it's still about 4 to 5 miles per gallon off the pace from comparable BMW and Audi models now that v6 engine is going to be paired with a 7-speed automatic transmission which you've got here or a 6-speed manual gearbox 7-speed automatic does have paddle shifters that are interestingly attached to the shift column not the steering wheel so they don't turn with the wheel that's a very race car like design it's pretty cool but it does mean that you don't really have as good access to them when you're turning the wheel as I stated earlier rear wheel drive is standard but all wheel drive is available as an option on this vehicle now one area of the q50 that is not an old design is going to be the suspension platform you notice immediately there's not a big dead spot around the steering wheel and that any sort of small twitches in the steering position translate almost immediately into results from the chassis and you get a very good seat-of-the-pants feel and pretty good steering wheel feel which is something you don't really get a whole lot of in this class vehicle.now in the dashboard we've got infinity in touched dual screen infotainment system now basically the way this works if there are two screens stacked on top of each other in the dashboard both of them are touch sensitive but the top screen can also be controlled by a physical controller down here on the center console you can also control it with steering wheel controls over here on the far left now the top screen is resistive the bottom screen uses capacitive technology as you can tell by it it's basically taking me this long to even explain what the system is it's very complicated and it can be pretty difficult to use when you're on the road things are just kind of scattered all over you can change the audio source for example from the top screen or the bottom screen it would be better if these things are sort of located in one simple area where you can gain access to all of them in addition to a full gamut of digital media sources we've also got some really interesting things like very granular control over the driver assistant features which we'll come back to in a second and the various drive modes for example you can pop into a menu and independently select the responsiveness of the steering and the weight of the steering that's just extremely precise and something that I haven't seen in many vehicles usually they just give you a sport comfort setting the dashboard check isn't very good but one area that Infiniti has traditionally been a very strong competitor is with driver assistance technology and if q50 is no exception we've got a forward collision alert that basically works like a distance control unit and basically what that does is it uses a forward-facing radar system to measure the distance between you and the vehicle in front of you and if you get too close it will actually slow the vehicle down so that you're not tailgating them we've also got a lane departure prevention system that is going to use cameras to monitor the lines on the road and if you drift over the markers unintentionally that is without using your turn signal it'll actually use by braking to attempt to pull you back into your lane the system is interesting and uses brakes not the electronic power steering like a lot of newer models and what that means that you don't really get that sort of weird twitchiness out of the steer that you get with some lane departure prevention systems but it also means that the resolution is a little bit lower it's not as precise and pulling you back in the line and the intervention isn't as powerful which means that it's a little bit easier for this vehicle to just sort of drift over the line without you wanting it to and finally we had a blind spot monitoring system that will activate that Lane Departure system if you attempt to change lanes when someone is detected and your blind spot now what's really interesting about infinity's implementation is that it puts all of these features onto one button right here on the steering wheel it kind of looks like a force field around the car and that's why I like to call it the force field button it basically is an on/off toggle for all of those driver aid systems so if you're in situation where you don't really want any intervention and you want to be in control of the car you just tap one button and all of them turn off but then if you find yourself in traffic or in a situation where you're a little bit distracted for example you're trying to use this very terrible dashboard infotainment system you can just hit that button and know that the vehicle is going to be watching your back while you need it to the former g37 starts appropriately at around thirty seven thousand dollars for the base model however this fully loaded Q 50s with this tech package is too luxe touring it's wheel package and more gonna top out at around fifty four thousand dollars fully loaded for the money it's a much better car than the g37 was even though they share very similar bones and it's a worthy competitor to for example Lexus is350 but when you start to compare it to the German competition the vehicle seems to lag a little bit behind in terms of efficiency and technology to things that are very important for daily driving for today