[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybzAix2ncp0&ab_channel=TheHooniverse[/youtube]
If you have a modern car company, you need to have a compact crossover in your lineup. Infiniti is ready to do battle with their own entry, which isn’t fully their own. It’s the 2017 Infiniti QX30 and it’s hiding Mercedes-Benz bits under its skin. It’s that very skin, however, that will help set it apart from the rest of the segment.
Can it stand on its own? Click play and find out.
[Disclaimer: Infiniti put me on a plane and flew me to Seattle where I stayed in a nice, new hotel. There was food and booze involved later in the evening.]
First Drive: 2017 Infiniti QX30
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Being based on a GLA doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement. I guess Nissan figured they needed something in this segment, didn’t want to sink too much of their own resources into it, looked around, went shopping and got in bed with M-B. Shame.
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For some reason, the Infiniti/Mercedes hookup seems like one of the more unlikely, peculiar — and yes, whorish — platform sharing arrangements I can imagine.
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The fact that they went to Mercedes also doesn’t say much about Nissan’s confidence in their own platform offerings to use them upmarket in an Infiniti.
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Mercedes suspensions and unibodies are dramatically nicer than those from Nissan, and Nissan’s body equipment is dramatically less failure-prone, to say nothing of the styling.
It’s a VQ35DE and a 5-speed away from perfection, really. -
Nissan platforms in this size are cheap, cheap, cheap. Think Versa or Almera
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The GLA ain’t all bad. Drove one on probably the most potholed autocross track in the history of the world last year, in Lithuania. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lta3o7ccIkE
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Rereading my original post I realize it looked like I was slamming the GLA when my intent was more disappointment at Infiniti for not being able to keep things in-house. I realize in this industry if you want to get to market quickly then your best bet is to seek out a partner who’s already done the work and perform quasi or full badge engineering.
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I’ve never got the “Infiniti” brand in the first place, it always sounded like the name of some cheap bad smelling cologne that only gets bought as unwanted presents. I mean Nissan bought Prince decades ago, which is what the Skyline started of as, not a Nissan. I mean wouldn’t you rather tell people you drive a Prince Skyline than an Infiniti ZX81 Spectrum or whatever?
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