I thought this was the Third Gen? I guess the last change was just a face lift.

My big question is: Does the 3.5L in this have the same shitlisted problems noted by Sajeev Mehta in this Piston Slap?

Oh and thanks for taking your own photos, I like that better than the regurgitated supplied photos.

Nice write up Frank – I’m surprised Infiniti are not already using the corporate 3.7 VQ in the FX.

They do, in Europe. I think you’ll see it here before too long.

paris-dakar :
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:22 am

First Gen FX was the high point for the concept (especially styling-wise), every iteration since then has been inferior.

What the hell are you talking about. “every iteration”? This is the second.

jmo :
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:13 am

I know the S-Class can come to a complete stop and inch

The FX will do that as well.

carlisimo :
June 22nd, 2009 at 2:14 pm

Art on wheels.

Indeed.

People complain about the generic look of most of the cars on the road today, yet when a car maker builds something like the FX, you’ll still bitch and complain. Most of said bitching and complaining coming from people who have never set foot inside an Infiniti dealership, much less driven one.

Want an SUV that truly feels like a car? That would be the smaller EX.

See, now that’s what I expected from the EX. The styling really did make me believe that maybe it was just a sporty wagon that was marketed as an SUV/CUV because that’s what people respond to.

But driving it did not impress me. It still felt big and heavy. Step on the brakes hard, and the nose would dive way down, leaving the back end feeling downright squirrelly to me. Maybe I just had the wrong expectations, or wasn’t driving it the way I should have been, but I was disappointed.

I think I also scared the poor salesman who came along for the ride :-)

There is no such thing as “progress.” Man creates the wheel and loses the use of his legs.

My company has an employee purchasing program with Nissan/Infiniti and I was able to procure a Sport model for $36k before TTL. It’s too bad that the base price is now $43k; the old base price for an FX35 was $35k.

Infiniti please listen — less chrome, more quality thanks

They’ll buy an RX350 if they know what’s good for ‘em.

Great review Frank. Infiniti really went to town on that front end (the last gen models were gorgeous and sporty looking compared to this latest edition) but at least they didn’t mess with the driving experience (until of course you factor in all that electronic gee-wizardy).

the technical fripperies in our cars are going to produce a generation of drivers who can’t drive

Too late. A generation of non-drivers was created when automatic transmissions became the norm.

I didn’t know if I was looking at a picture of a Nissan, or at one of my son’s Pokemon cards…..

Hid.
Eeee.
Us.

I base my ratings on my driving impressions not on reports of maintenance problems.

What kind of system do you have?

I’ve only used it on an FX and you can set the distance you want to follow the car in front of you. I know the S-Class can come to a complete stop and inch it’s way forward automatically in traffic and you can set the distance you want as well.

What systems are you most familar with?

The vents aren’t fake. Per an Infiniti press release:

“Like everything else on the FX, the new side air vents are about function, not mere ornamentation. They allow air to flow through the engine compartment and out the side of the vehicle, reducing front end lift by a full five percent, improving high speed stability.”

Want an SUV that truly feels like a car? That would be the smaller EX.

The new seven-speed automatic greatly aids low-speed acceleration–the lower gears are spaced quite closely.

TrueDelta has no reliability info on these yet–need more participants. Details here:

http://www.truedelta.com/reliability.php

Dynamic cruise control deserves hate. It may work fine in sparsely populated states, or in places where you have disciplined, polite drivers, but it’s worthless in New York or New Jersey.

Hate’s a bit strong for something that’s just useless in certain conditions and can be turned off. I never use regular cruise control, but I could imagine situations on the interstates where I’d use dynamic cruise control. A waste of money, sure, but hate? You might as well hate a car for having an excellent engine and handling that’s useless in your everyday congested commute.