Around The Block

may xay sinh to | medical school interview questions |

Infiniti's Cheetah: The Blue Period

Nissan North America

PAINT YOUR WAGON The FX35 Limited Edition comes in only one color, Iridium Blue. The wheels are exclusive, too.

By EZRA DYER

Published: April 6, 2012

• Sign In to E-Mail
• Print
• Reprints

TESTED: 2012 Infiniti FX35 Limited Edition

Related

• Behind the Wheel | 2012 Fiat 500 Abarth: A Lively Pet From Fiat's Adopt-a-Scorpion Program (April 8, 2012)

WHAT IS IT? A five-passenger all-wheel-drive relative of the Nissan 370Z sports car.

HOW MUCH? $52,950, which is $6,850 more than an FX35 AWD. But the Limited Edition includes the Premium Package ($4,150 on other versions), with an around-view monitor, navigation system and front seats that can be heated or cooled.

WHAT MAKES IT RUN? 3.5-liter V-6 (303 horsepower, 262 pound-feet of torque), 7-speed automatic.

IS IT THIRSTY? The FX prioritizes performance over fuel economy; the E.P.A. rating is only 16 m.p.g. in town and 21 m.p.g. on the highway.

I'M on the phone with a fellow automotive journalist when his end of the conversation is pre-empted by the raspy snarl of an engine straining toward its redline. I can't identify many engines just by their sounds — except for oddballs like a Bentley W-12 or Subaru flat 4 — but even over the phone, I recognize this sonic signature.

"Are you driving an Infiniti with a V-6?" I ask. He replies, "Yes, I'm driving an FX35." I feel as though I should win a prize — or maybe Infiniti's engineers should, for tuning a mainstream V-6 to produce a hard-edged burble that's recognizable even through a tiny iPhone speaker.

The FX is a fundamentally strange beast, a crossover that shares its rear-wheel-drive platform with Nissan and Infiniti sports cars. Those rear-drive bones help to distinguish the FX from the sea of quasi-S.U.V.'s that ride on stretched front-drive-sedan platforms, an ever-growing mob that includes Infiniti's new three-row JX (a branch of the Nissan Maxima family tree.)

After nine years, the styling is familiar, but let's not forget that Infiniti once described the FX as a "bionic cheetah." I think it looks like a jacked-up extraterrestrial insect, and I mean that as a compliment.

The FX's last redesign came in 2009, so Infiniti needed to create some midcycle interest. You know what that means: it's time for a special edition. The FX35 AWD Limited Edition is essentially a trim package with distinctive blue paint and exclusive graphite-finish 21-inch wheels. Only 550 Limited Editions will be built for the United States.

A special color scheme sounds like a weak excuse for a distinct model, but the Iridium Blue paint is so striking that passers-by stop for a second look. In shadow, the color mimics a sedate shade of navy blue, but in sunlight the hue changes into bright, bottomless metallic liquid. Unlike other distinctive paint jobs (like a matte finish or the unfortunate shade that Ford calls "cinnamon"), I suspect this one will age well.

However, Iridium Blue won't repair its own scratches. When the current FX was introduced, it included Scratch Shield, a novel coating that could "heal" scratches under exposure to sunlight. Infiniti quietly dropped Scratch Shield after a year, because customers suffered from overly high expectations of its rehabilitative capabilities. The technology was meant to handle a light scratch in the clear coat, but when a deep gouge didn't magically repair itself like the bad Terminator, the complaints rolled in. Now we're back where we started, with paint that can't fix itself at all. See, people, this is why we can't have nice things.

The deletion of Scratch Shield shows that Infiniti cares about its customer satisfaction ratings, as does a new perk called Infiniti Personal Assistant. For the first four years, FX owners have access to a personal concierge service. If you need a restaurant reservation, travel help or "assistance on a range of topics and tasks," there's a team of assistants operating a 24-hour hotline. Remember, it's their job to help, not to ask why you need a clown sent to Denny's at 4 a.m.

If you want to test the personal assistants further, you might call and ask them to help you distinguish the difference in front-end styling between the 2011 FX and the 2012 model. I'd say that the 2011 grille looked rapacious and the 2012 appears self-satisfied, but only FX owners are likely to notice the change.

Behind the grille, the engines are the same. Infiniti offers a 390-horsepower V-8 in the FX50, but the FX35's high-revving V-6 is enjoyable in its own right. Its 303 horses are put to good effect by the 7-speed gearbox; visits to the 7,500 r.p.m. redline are accompanied by that singular bark.

The FX is nominally rear-wheel drive, sending torque to the front as needed, so it drives like an overgrown sports car — agile, balanced and willing to frolic in a way that front-drive crossovers can't match. Somehow, the Limited Edition even has a decent ride despite its colossal wheels.

Before the FX, I might have wondered why anyone would want a high-riding, low-roof utility with sports-car pretentions. Nearly a decade later, the FX has spawned a genre populated by mutants like BMW's X6 and Acura's ZDX. While the release of a limited edition hints at a fear of showroom stasis, last year the FX maintained its steady clip of about 10,000 sales, more than the X6 and ZDX combined. It's hard to catch up to a bionic cheetah.

Theo www.nytimes.com