Infiniti Revives The "Q"
Infiniti has decided to abandon its current alphanumeric strategy for…an all-new alphanumeric strategy whereby passenger cars are given the “Q” designation, and crossovers and SUVs are dubbed the “QX”.
The G37, which has built up substantial equity over the last few years, will be renamed the “Q50” for the sedan and “Q60” for the coupe. The M will be re-named the “Q70”. On the light truck side, the EX will now be known as the “QX50” all the way up to the Nissan Patrol-based QX, which is now the “QX80”, with the current JX and FX filling out the remaining slots.
The ascending numeric designations do help with creating a hierarchy based on vehicle size, and also takes engine size out of the equation – important if Infiniti ends up downsizing to smaller engines, a la the German marques.
More by Derek Kreindler
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Maybe they wanted to re-assert to Audi that Q was theirs. Supposedly the agreement is that Audi can only release a Q5 and a Q7, so I'm not sure what they'll do with the Q3, and the planned Q even-numbers.
Infiniti sent me a questionnaire about a year ago asking things like: - Do you associate vehicle worth/price with the model number? - Do you associate engine size with the model number? - Would you buy a car if the number was lower than a competitor's? - What do you think about the following prefixes for a car model - SV, Q, P, R, etc. I put in some snarky and colorful responses to some of these. I knew the results of this questionnaire would have ended up in the wrong hands.
"Would you buy a car if the number was lower than a competitor’s?" -- as I pointed out above, they clearly decided in favor of inflation. Didn't they consider R as a prefix for the GT-R originally, when they were thinking of bringing it here as an Infiniti instead of a Nissan? I know that the platform is called R, but I thought the model name that was conjectured was too. "Do you associate engine size with the model number?" -- not any more, thanks to BMW and Mercedes who feel the need to lie about these things.
"The Q Continuum" - by Infiniti