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| 2005 Infiniti Q45 Review | |||
| Whether you're about to spend $40K on a brand new car, or half that on a used car, it is always important to learn as much as you can about the used car. Read these car reviews to learn about all aspects of the vehicle. Each of the usedcar reviews cover interior and exterior features, options, road tests, and more. | |||
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Introduction
| Road Test
| Inside & Out
| Other Thoughts
| Last Word
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| Inside & Out | |||
The easiest thing to notice about the 2005 redo is the view from behind. Family resemblances are all the rage these days, and the new, more attractive L-shaped taillights mimic Infiniti's golden-child G35. "The world's most powerful" HID headlights still decorate the Q45's face in Gatling-gun style.Did 2002 mark some kind of outbreak of ergonomitis in the world's interior styling departments? The Q45's dash isn't as maddening as iDrive, but it makes a lot less sense than it could, or once did. The radio, air conditioner, and navigation fight for attention within one screen and one set of buttons, so inputting any command entails first pressing the AUDIO, AUTO, or MAP buttons, which are scattered. There's the choice between having it stay in the most recently selected mode or always reverting back to the nav screen after X seconds, but the lack of flexibility is annoying either way. Lastly, the central all-purpose knob tilts around and presses down a little unsteadily. And of the four other knobs, three are in the wrong place. Aside from the driver's AC button, the others should be rotated clockwise: the hazard button should be way on the far side since no one needs it, the passenger's AC knob should be a right-side mirror image of the driver's, and the stereo control should be next to the driver. Common sense, folks. Something worth celebrating: the interior stylists have been rescued from their 1985 mental time warp so that the cassette deck, formerly enshrined as the dashboard's shameful centerpiece, has been banished to the glove compartment. In its place sits a proper 6-disc CD changer. And above that, of course, is Infiniti's timeless analog clock, no pun intended. You can operate most of this stuff with voice commands. So once you memorize a new language and unlearn the habit of speaking in complete sentences, you can do such things as: tell all passengers to shut up, press the VOICE button, shout "RADIO PRESET THREE!", wait for the computer to take a few seconds, repeat "RADIO SELECT PRESET THREE!" back to you, and change the station. I think I'd rather just press the button marked "3" directly, thanks. At least Infiniti didn't (yet) try to reinvent the key as it did on the new M. Here, the remote fob itself doubles as the key and a traditional ignition slot sits on the dash, just as God intended. If you're in the process of parking and there's a great song on the radio, you can still turn off the engine without killing it. No one-way push-button starter nonsense here. Most other driver's news is positive. The old-style steering wheel controls are just like the 2002 Nissan Altima's - intuitive, symmetrical, perfect - and beat Infiniti's newer designs any day. If you like to mix dead cows with dead trees on your steering wheel, know that Infiniti's wood is real, and the leather is soft and plush. The interior is airy and grand, and the seat coolers take the sweat out of summer. While the driving position is mostly comfortable, I couldn't get rid of the sharp protrusion stabbing me right in the spinal cord no matter how I set the lumbar support. This car lost a few points with me there. Whoever's in the center-rear faces a similar problem. Because the armrest that serves as his backrest also houses an auxiliary set of AC and climate controls (on Q45s with the Premium Package), he's basically resting on a hard block of electronics padded by a thin layer of leather. I imagine this would get old after about half an hour. So would straddling the center driveline hump. The Q45 makes a better four-passenger car, but still not ideal: outboard passengers must deal with power seats that clamp down on toes. The seats are comfortable otherwise, and they recline. They also have sunshades for their windows; the driver controls the power sunshade for the back window. The pretty good sound of the 300-watt, 8-speaker Bose has little chance of rivaling the Lexus Mark Levinson as the world's supposedly best stereo. And where's my MP3 playback, DVD playback, or digital 5.1 surround-sound processing? Speaking of which, where are my Bluetooth cell phone hookups? Swiveling headlights? The M35 can get all this stuff; why not the Q? |
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