While always making pretty good cars, Infiniti has always struggled to compete with the Germans in terms of performance. While the Infiniti Q60 is a fine car, its steering is sort of sloppy, its dynamics are a bit duller than its rivals and it just isn’t the cohesive sports car that the BMW 4 Series, Mercedes-Benz C-Class Coupe and Audi A5 are. So when the Japanese brand came out with the Q60 Redsport 400, we weren’t expecting it to properly take on the BMW M4 and Mercedes-AMG C63 S Coupe. We were right. However, now, Infiniti seems to be ready to take on zee Germans at their own game by coming out with a new, more hardcore variant of its Q60 and it could have 500 hp.
Australian publication, Drive, recently spoke with Bernard Michel, Infiniti Australia product planning manager, who claims that Infiniti is prepping such a car for market launch. It’s apparently based on the Infiniti Project Black S Concept shown at the 2017 Geneva Motor Show. It’s also supposedly the brainchild of Infiniti CEO Roland Krueger, who came from BMW and is bringing that motorsport mentality to the Japanese brand.
“Roland Krueger who is the Infiniti CEO, he comes from BMW, so performance-based cars, and he has an objective, he wants to see these sorts of projects come to life,” said Michel.
While Infiniti is usually known as the luxury sub-brand of Nissan and a brand that aims at making soft and supple cars, Krueger wants Infiniti to have a performance flagship to become the face of the brand. “He’s pushing this agenda and he wants to have a fast flagship for the company. His endeavor is to continue to build this brand. Things like the Project Black S … that builds another whole new element to the brand in terms of performance credentials.”
We’ll see what happens when such a car finally debuts but it seems like Infiniti is sort of in disarray, in terms of performance cars. The brand hasn’t produced a proper performance cars in ages, so we’re a bit skeptical about what it can do with this. Hopefully, Infiniti belts out a great car that can properly take on the Germans but we won’t hold our breath.
[Source: Carbuzz]