Infiniti just dropped some bombshell news at its annual dealer meeting in Las Vegas. Nissan’s luxury marque plans to resurrect the proper sports sedan with rear-wheel-drive and a manual transmission. Obviously this immediately conjures images of the beloved G35 sedan, except that this successor will reportedly have a twin-turbo V6.
According to the report from Automotive News, “Infiniti Americas Vice President Tiago Castro described the redesigned Q50 as ‘unapologetic and unexpected.'” It also quotes an individual familiar with the car as saying, “The new Q50 is a visceral car with a twin-turbo that screams… It’s not practical, but it is fun.”
If you’re acquainted with Nissan powertrains you’re probably already piecing the puzzle together. The twin-turbo V6 is almost certainly the VR30DDTT from the automatic-only Q50 Red Sport, which got paired to a stick shift when it was transplanted into the new Z. It’s just a matter of putting them in a four-door package.
The car will likely be a rebadge of the next Skyline, as past G, Q50 and Q60 models have been. Automotive News also writes, “Infiniti teased the low-slung model in a video that revealed a swoopy profile, slender headlights and Skyline-styled circular taillights.” The quad afterburners are a dead giveaway, but it’ also encouraging to know that execs who promised there will be a next Skyline in Japan were not pulling our leg, And, more importantly, that it’s not a crossover.
The report says the car will arrive in 2027. That means it will probably be an extensive tweaking of the existing FM platform that’s been in use since, well, the original G35 began production in 2002. By the time it debuts the chassis will be 25 years old. If it were a car, it’d be eligible for historic plates and import.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Newer cars tend to lack the dynamic feel of cars developed when Japan was still coming off the Bubble Era. The bones of the Q50 are good. What we don’t want is a simple transmission swap on a Q50 Red Sport. That car was widely panned for its cushy ride and drive-by-wire steering that sapped the fun out of what should have been a firecracker sports sedan. If Nissan can shoehorn a rack-and-pinion steering rack under the hood, like the Z does, and re-inject some sportiness into the suspension tuning, this new Q50 could be a winner.
But with the 400-horsepower VR30DDTT as the standard engine, the hi-po variant will have to go even harder. The article quotes sources that say, “A Red Sport performance trim is being considered.” and “the Q50’s engine could be tweaked to deliver more than 450 horsepower.”
This is a shrewd move by Infiniti, which has been struggling to remain relevant. But if you can’t keep up with rival companies, why not be different? And today, there depressingly few RWD manual luxury sedans, only the BMW M3 and the Cadillac CT4-V and CT5-V Blackwings. The Infiniti could probably undercut both of them, offering a new generation of buyers (or an old one longing for a driver’s car) a thrilling driving experience with high bang-buck ratio. The new Q50 may not just revive the classic sports sedan formula, but the Infiniti brand itself.
FANTASTIC news! Especially since I have a Q50 Red Sport and the major element missing is a manual transmission.
And since this again provides a platform for a Nissan Z.
That’s some super solid news from Infiniti, for once. I honestly don’t remember anything groundbreaking from them since the 2010s.
That Nissan FR platform was around when I was still in college, I don’t know if this platform or the Dodge Charger / MBZ E-class platform is older! Either way, I guess it’s just not cost-effective for Nissan to clean slate do a ground-up manual-equipped RWD sedan at this point, but hopefully they pull a few more tricks to update it some more.
I think the last Asian manual-equipped RWD sedan was the Genesis G50? Infiniti needs to pick this back up and gain some much-needed spotlght on stepping outside the box. I am not sure what a good model name for the car would be; I thoroughly dislike their current naming convention, as I still don’t know the difference between the Q30/40/50/60/70. They can’t call it “G30” because it’d be a “downgrade” from their “G37,” or “G35.” When the second-gen Q45 came out, the engine was 4.1liters, and so I emailed Infiniti. They told me they kept the “Q45” name to preserve the car’s name.
Whatever the case, if the car does make it to production and is a reasonable price, I might just be inclined to buy a truly modern car when the time comes. I never did get own my back-in-the-day dream car 2005 G35 Sedan 6MT.
NO – the FR platform has no relationship whatsoever to the very dated Charger/MB platform. It was solely a creation of Nissan for the first G and then-new Z. And that is a very good thing.
The FR platform that has been used in several models, right up to the latest Z. It has been updated all along. The suspension is state-of-the-art with great geometry – it’s very unusual to see a double wishbone-style coilover front suspension up front these days since most cars go for the cheap strut (with inherently poor geometry).
This is a big plus for the 2027 “Q”… and as we’ve seen in the Z Nismo where it has optimized bushings it works very very well.
Nissan/Infiniti will continue to use this again for the 2027 model – although certainly they’ll look at any optimizing and bushing rates as they did for it’s use in the Z.