I meant what I said about the new engine being enough to make me reconsider the QX4, but I have to admit I was also glad that they fixed up the exterior and interior styling at well. The power is sent through a re-engineered 4-speed automatic transmission and it goes to all four wheels, if the driver desires, as only the 4WD model is available in Canada. So getting up an onramp or getting around a transport truck on some two-lane shouldn't be a problem. It's okay over the first few metres of its launch, but when it hits the torque sweetspot just beyond 2000 rpm it really starts to hum. The QX4 will surely leave most SUVs in its dust and a considerable number of sedans and coupes and what have you as well. That would be the BMW 540 and the Mercedes-Benz E420. Set to debut in mid-April at the New York auto show, the 2001 Q45 will be a no excuses sports sedan capable of running with The Big Dogs (or rather Die Grossen Hund) when it returns. It's drifted considerably from there in recent years, but Infiniti insiders promise that the Q45 will return to that image with a vengeance when it gets done over later this year. When the brand first launched about a decade ago, the original Q45 sports sedan kind of had that reputation. This will be great news for people interested specifically in a QX4, but in a broader sense this model signals the start of a full-fledged effort to turn the Infiniti line into a full-fledged performance brand. This results in a 0 to 100 km/h time of just over 9 seconds, down a full two seconds from the previous model's leisurely mark. If enough torque weren't enough to talk about, the new engine actually reaches its peak number at lower revs. For those keeping exact score, the new numbers are 240 horsepower at 6000 rpm and 265 pound-feet of torque at 3200 rpm. Heck, if it was exactly the same old model with this new engine, I would still be excited about it.Īfter all, any time a vehicle stays at about the same curbweight and gets 70 more horsepower and 65 extra pound-feet of torque it is worth getting excited about. Mostly this is the result of the extremely more powerful engine, but there are also a whole bunch of things about the QX4 that are improved and welcome for that.īut that stuff's window-dressing, since nothing comes close to the change wrought by the bigger engine. Go figure.Īnyway, whatever you call this vehicle, it is considerably improved from the model it replaces. Apparently, lots of people think the latter pronunciation is correct. Well, now there's no need for the buyer to pretend he didn't care the other SUVs were faster, since the new engine puts the even pricier ($48,000) QX4 at the front of the SUV performance pack.īy the way, that's the letter "X" in the middle of QX4, not a "by" symbol. After all, paying north of $45,000 for a vehicle as underpowered as the previous QX4 was must have been hard for its buyer. When I first got behind the wheel of a Nissan SUV with the great new 3.5-litre V6 last fall in Japan, I knew the engine was going to do wonders for the models it would power in Canada.Ĭlearly it was going to transform both the Nissan Pathfinder and the Infiniti QX4, but it would have an especially salutatory effect on the pricier QX4.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |