Gadgetory

the qx56 infinities luxury school bus is now the qx80 as they like many other car makers go through a name change to go from one confusing set of nomenclature to another anyway let's drive there big boy have a nice comfortable day on the road as we drive the qx80 and check the tap I recall they launched this model I think it was in New York Auto Show five years ago it continues on now is the qx80 with still this big bulbous nose and kind of sad saggy ass but I'll give it to them they have sharpened up the face with the Infinity grille and better-looking lights and such it's not to me an attractive vehicle but that's my opinion it is very luxurious and it definitely makes the statement inside infinity argues it's got seating for eight adults if you get the optional second-row bench we don't have that I'd say it's seating for five adults and three of their kids but I will give them credit it's one of the roomiest third rows out there 64,000 is base rear-wheel drive then add another 3,000 plus for all wheel drive 2400 for a rear seat theater system I would pass on all day long 2100 gets you one basket of adaptive driver assists and then another 5500 gets you this really big more deluxe package to get you the rest of driver assist kind of annoyed by how they tease those two apart even more annoying that that deluxe tech package requires a 25-hundred dollar tire and wheel package now all-in were at about 80 grand let's see what you get now inside this big luxurious school bus is actually not much in the way of tech headlines this is a lot of familiar Infiniti head unit tech we've seen for a couple of years now quick refresh you've got a hard drive based navigation system I find the display to be a little childish but it's functional to say the least you have voice command on this that is very quick but it does not take an entire address as a phrase and of course there's no connectivity to this navigation system so you have to already know the address there's no discovery here so it's starting to feel rather dated and as far as interface you've got this seven-inch screen touch of course on it or you've got the Infinity controller with roll kick and click camera button over here calls up the fact that we have surround view camera on here that's also standard and it'll trigger automatically if it detects for example a pedestrian walking across your car as you're at an intersection or just creeping at low speed for drive controls you have no paddles on this car tells you a little bit about its mission its luxurious here is your shifter for the one choice only 7-speed automatic very conventional stuff and here's the most amazing thing in the entire cabin you'll poke and stab at this Chrome button trying to figure out what it does until you realize it's a placeholder for the optional four-wheel drive control the instrument panel on this vehicle has yet to go with the new trend of a full LCD you still have there very nicely rendered but traditional analog gauges and a real crunchy monochrome LCD in the middle you're really not missing any of your modern mainstream digital media sources from broadcast radio to satellite you still have a disc player here audio and DVD we have a DVD rear seat system of course you've got iPod connectivity through a USB jack and bluetooth streaming all the major hits are there but you see what's missing there no streaming apps that are supported here natively in the head unit you can be streaming Pandora on your phone for example but that's just gonna be a Bluetooth or aux connection bose audio is standard bose audio with surround and more speakers is optional now up here in the engine room of the SS qx80 we've got a five point six liter v8 that's the only engine that comes in these made it up as I mentioned that's 7-speed automatic rear wheel drive is bass all-wheel drive obviously is available on these vehicles you're looking at 400 horsepower 413 pound-feet of torque for a vehicle that weighs nearly 6,000 pounds still gets up to 60 in the low seven so the mpg is where you pay the piper obviously 14 20s you're rating for something with this profile and weight that really means 14 is my hunch okay look I kid the qx80 a lot but I'll give it one thing it drives much lighter than it reads there's no 6,000 pound feeling on this vehicle I'm happy to say and of course everything is super smooth and rather heavily assisted the fact that you don't see any paddles up here on the wheel no sport mode over here it tells you this car is meant to be driven lower case D now we have this optional body control suspension which is basically an air suspension that tries to come back listing in a corner like I'm doing now seems to work pretty well I expected this thing to keel over a lot more than it does it stays pretty upright the rides very cush is you can imagine and everything's very quiet now in the infiniti way you've got just about every flavor of adaptive driver assist on this vehicle the only thing that's missing that they do make is they are steer-by-wire technology it's not here yet maybe in a future refresh and the lane departure by the way is active using your braking basically it'll break an opposite wheel to kind of drag you back into your lane big plush roomy and isolating it's Japan's Escalade