Gadgetory

with this Infiniti goes after Lexus GS BMW v Mercedes E and a bunch of other tough competitors the look is absolutely cutting edge the cabin tech not quite so much so the driver assistance you decide let's drive the 2013 Infiniti M 56 and check the tech now the first thing I'll tell you about the m56 and its current generation about 2/3 model years now is that nothing else looks like this these shapes and curves are unique in its category no one's ever gonna say oh you got a new 5 Series now this thing looks totally apart inside though the cabin Tech is a little more long in the tooth let's take a look oK you've seen much of what's in this car before the familiar infinity controller you turn you push you jog eight inch color LCD that map style is evolved some but it's still basically what they've been doing for a handful of years one thing I forgot to be honest in this car that's a touchscreen I never think to touch it it's too far away so I use the controller a lot but remember this thing is a Touch and that's often the best way to get on these commands no matter which of these menu buttons I go to here one thing you're not going to see no apps this is one of the last cars in the premium sector that doesn't have true apps support the way so many others are doing these days it's a dated head unit for that reason alone by middle of this year by the time you see this video perhaps the new Infiniti Q will be out the q50 and that promises a completely new head unit you may need to think about buying one of these until second half of 2013 if you really value the best tech here I want to mention the voice command in this car not because it's all that advanced but it does work well here's what I mean navigation address california san francisco 1 now what i want you to notice there is how you have to parse it still which is kind of old-school in other words one button push for city another for street that's old but the speed of recognition here is very admirable now all these 56 cars the v8 cars come with a Bose audio system we've got an upgrade through the Sport Package for some reason that puts Bose 5.1 various types of processing for noise and soundstage and speakers on the shoulders of the seats 16 of them around the car as far as sources good USB plus iPod a2dp bluetooth streaming satellite radio optical disc you're good to go now let's look at some of the driver controls in here this is the only shifter you're ever gonna see in this car one choice only 7-speed automatic left side for a shifting gate with this or if you've got the Sport Package which we do you get a pair of very long magnesium column mounted paddles that's exactly where they should go and they should be nice and long like that so pretty much wherever you are there's a paddle under your fingers and they don't swing around and change their role in their position this button right here is what they call DC a distance control assist that's basically to keep you from running into someone ahead of you the car is always reading and applying the brakes and giving you a warning to keep you from bumping into someone especially in slower traffic here is your cruise control on/off and this button above it tells you it's adaptive cruise control I've also got blind spot detection as well as blind spot screw up intervention in other words the car will steer you away if you're about to drift into a car on the left or the right and do the same thing with Lane drift that has active lane departure technology okay end of the hood welcome to the halls of tradition this is a v8 and a big 15.6 litre hence the name of the car that's kind of antiquated these days I mean a big displacement v8 unless you're in a car well north the six figures is starting to feel kind of like old thinking no turbos no blower nothing just a dual overhead cam 5.6 v8 that gives you 420 horsepower here 417 foot-pounds of torque mucho on both counts this guy weighs nearly 4,000 40 pounds but still gets up to 60 in 4.8 seconds simply because of that big ol motor mpg is fine it's 1624 given the weight of the car and how fast it can move itself I'm ok with that oh by the way in Japan they don't even sell the v8 version of this car they offer the hybrid as the high performance version they're thinking a few years ahead of us now the first thing you notice driving this car is prodigious power but getting to it I think in a really responsive way requires you you shift it yourself I didn't get a lot of satisfaction out of even the sport mode on that mode control dial down here it still left the transmission to loopy and floaty and hunting I had to go to the manual gate and then get here on the paddles then I more or less got things the way I wanted but there's still some weird lag in there getting to the power it feels like turbo language of course it isn't so I got to believe it's processor lag the suspension in the car is not active it's you know Springs and rods and bars as a result it doesn't do enough to change personality between a comfortable mode and a sport mode regardless again of where that knob is one thing I take away from all these infinities especially the big dollar models is I feel like I'm driving a computer with wheels they have a very sterile high-tech feel I think that's part of what infinities going for they really want that high-tech message and there's an awful lot of processed feeling and feedback coming through this car's various interfaces but that may not be for everybody especially in this price class and with a major powertrain like this you may be looking for a more street fighting car okay let's price this guy a 2013 M 56 rear-wheel drive is about 62 grand admittedly well-equipped but not fully seen that style on top of that you've got to add about $3,000 for the tech package which is all that driver assistance stuff and adaptive cruise another 5,600 for the Sport package sport break sport suspension four-wheel steering and that's also how you get bose 5.1 and i hate when they link dissimilar stuff in a package like that this car is an easy 71 thousand dollar ticket to go seen that style you can push it to 75 and that's a little bit of a tough piece to buy it off for the Infiniti brand you