Ask The Best And Brightest: Infiniti AMG?
Infiniti recently got into the in-house tuning game, by rolling out the Infiniti Performance Line as an answer to Lexus’s F line, Audi’s S line, BMW’s M line and Mercedes’ AMG-tuned hot rods. Nissan’s luxury brand may have been a bit late to the profit-puffing game of performance sub-branding, but better late than never, right? Maybe not. Now that Renault/Nissan and Daimler have hooked up to share engines and architectures, it seems that the alliance is considering making AMG power available to Nissan’s luxury brand. Citing “sources in Japan,” Autocar reports that
Infiniti’s hot models could carry ‘Powered by AMG’ badges as part of Nissan’s recent tie-up with the Daimler group…
One powerplant on the shortlist is Mercedes’ forthcoming turbocharged 3.5-litre V6. It would replace Nissan’s venerable 3.7-litre unit in Infiniti’s G range and could be tweaked to produce up to 400bhp.
Sources say the IPL version of the M, Infiniti’s 5-series rival, could end up using AMG’s 6.2-litre V8 — and be priced north of £60,000. That would allow the M IPL to undercut the E63 AMG but rival Jaguar’s XFR on price.
But will the exclusivity of Affalterbach-tuned Mercedes models be hurt by sharing engines with Infinitis? Would the damage be the same if Infinitis got the engines but not the badges? After all, the VQ V6 is hardly exclusive to the G Series, and a switch to a Mercedes engine could impact on everything from the Nissan Z to the Infiniti FX35… unless the Infiniti is willing to alter the IPL-spec G37 to be the only Mercedes-powered G. In short, the challenges of what Infinitis to offer with AMG engines are nearly as great as the challenges Mercedes will have to face by losing the exclusivity of its AMG engines. After all, it’s one thing to sell AMG engines to a supercar firm like Pagani, but an upstart Japanese luxury brand doesn’t offer the same brand-halo benefits. Should Daimler let this happen, or should the AMG badge and engines stay exclusive to tuned Mercedes models?
More by Edward Niedermeyer
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Is a turbo V6 producing "up to" 400hp really an upgrade to a naturally aspirated V6 producing 330hp? I may be a bit of a turbo hater, but at that level of power, I'd take the NA.
As far as I can tell, the AMG formula mainly consists of sticking the largest S-Class engine one can find into a smaller bodied Benz (C, E, CLK, SLK) or just throwing forced induction onto a large existing Mercedes engine. Infiniti can most likely do this in-house without having to pay the licensing fees to Mercedes for the AMG name and engines. The 5.6 liter V8 under the hood of a G Coupe would be an interesting swap, especially if a manual gearbox was available. That having been said, Mercedes engines are pretty reliable units. It's the electronics in the Mercedes bodies that surround them that usually disappoint with horrible reliability (unlike VW, which has equal opportunity for having mechanical and electrical problems).