Rare Rides: The Very Exclusive 2018 Infiniti Q60 Red Sport 400 AWD Neiman Marcus Limited Edition

Corey Lewis
by Corey Lewis

Today’s excessively titled Rare Ride is one of a select few Infiniti Q60s blessed with a unique set of colors and options, and sold via luxury department store Neiman Marcus.

Hope you like Metallic Mustard.

Those of you who have good memories will know today’s car is not the first Neiman Marcus special edition presented in this series. No, our first was a Lincoln Blackwood edited by the department store and sold to customers for the 2001 holidays as a 2002 model. The store has a long history of special edition cars including a very expensive Cadillac ELR, a subject which I’ve yet to find for sale somewhere.

From what I can tell, TTAC never reported on today’s Rare Ride. Introduced in the fall of 2016, the Neiman Marcus Q60 was limited to just 50 examples and presented in that year’s holiday catalog. Continuing the company’s pricy and exclusive holiday offering tradition first established in 1939, the Q60’s main selling point was its color scheme.

Exclusive Solar Metallic paint was paired with a Gallery White leather interior, for a sort of Seventies New Yorker St. Regis vibe (minus the vinyl). Ideally, the interior matched with one’s velvet jacket and white pant ensemble. Other visuals included standard luggage: an Officine Autodromo (normally they make watches) weekend bag in white leather, and an indoor car cover made of satin and cashmere branded by Neiman Marcus. All the additions were backed by a letter of authenticity which was almost assuredly lost immediately.

All examples were transformations of the top trim Q60, the Red Sport 400 AWD. Powered by the 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6 shared with the Q50, Red Sport trims upped the power from the standard 300 horses to 400. I’ve driven a Q60 Red Sport (and the Q50 version was my first-ever review) and I can tell you they’re quite potent. Unfortunately, the electric drive-by-wire Direct Adaptive Steering was standard on that trim, and sort of ruined enthusiast driving.

The base price of a Red Sport 400 Q60 that year was $52,205, but customers paid $63,000 for the Neiman Marcus Limited Edition. While that sounds like a rip-off, the fully-optioned nature of the Neiman Marcus meant it was cheaper than if a customer had bought a fully-decked standard version from their local Infiniti dealer. As a feel-good bonus, Neiman Marcus donated $1,000 to their own Heart of Neiman Marcus arts foundation for every Q60 sold.

Today’s exclusive Q60 is for sale right now at Infiniti of Cincinnati. With 40,000 miles it’s priced at $39,900, and there’s no mention of its special edition nature in the listing. Its price does not seem inflated at all when compared to other same trim Q60s for sale.

[Images: Infiniti]

Corey Lewis
Corey Lewis

Interested in lots of cars and their various historical contexts. Started writing articles for TTAC in late 2016, when my first posts were QOTDs. From there I started a few new series like Rare Rides, Buy/Drive/Burn, Abandoned History, and most recently Rare Rides Icons. Operating from a home base in Cincinnati, Ohio, a relative auto journalist dead zone. Many of my articles are prompted by something I'll see on social media that sparks my interest and causes me to research. Finding articles and information from the early days of the internet and beyond that covers the little details lost to time: trim packages, color and wheel choices, interior fabrics. Beyond those, I'm fascinated by automotive industry experiments, both failures and successes. Lately I've taken an interest in AI, and generating "what if" type images for car models long dead. Reincarnating a modern Toyota Paseo, Lincoln Mark IX, or Isuzu Trooper through a text prompt is fun. Fun to post them on Twitter too, and watch people overreact. To that end, the social media I use most is Twitter, @CoreyLewis86. I also contribute pieces for Forbes Wheels and Forbes Home.

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  • Redapple2 Love the wheels
  • Redapple2 Good luck to them. They used to make great cars. 510. 240Z, Sentra SE-R. Maxima. Frontier.
  • Joe65688619 Under Ghosn they went through the same short-term bottom-line thinking that GM did in the 80s/90s, and they have not recovered say, to their heyday in the 50s and 60s in terms of market share and innovation. Poor design decisions (a CVT in their front-wheel drive "4-Door Sports Car", model overlap in a poorly performing segment (they never needed the Altima AND the Maxima...what they needed was one vehicle with different drivetrain, including hybrid, to compete with the Accord/Camry, and decontenting their vehicles: My 2012 QX56 (I know, not a Nissan, but the same holds for the Armada) had power rear windows in the cargo area that could vent, a glass hatch on the back door that could be opened separate from the whole liftgate (in such a tall vehicle, kinda essential if you have it in a garage and want to load the trunk without having to open the garage door to make room for the lift gate), a nice driver's side folding armrest, and a few other quality-of-life details absent from my 2018 QX80. In a competitive market this attention to detai is can be the differentiator that sell cars. Now they are caught in the middle of the market, competing more with Hyundai and Kia and selling discounted vehicles near the same price points, but losing money on them. They invested also invested a lot in niche platforms. The Leaf was one of the first full EVs, but never really evolved. They misjudged the market - luxury EVs are selling, small budget models not so much. Variable compression engines offering little in terms of real-world power or tech, let a lot of complexity that is leading to higher failure rates. Aside from the Z and GT-R (low volume models), not much forced induction (whether your a fan or not, look at what Honda did with the CR-V and Acura RDX - same chassis, slap a turbo on it, make it nicer inside, and now you can sell it as a semi-premium brand with higher markup). That said, I do believe they retain the technical and engineering capability to do far better. About time management realized they need to make smarter investments and understand their markets better.
  • Kwik_Shift_Pro4X Off-road fluff on vehicles that should not be off road needs to die.
  • Kwik_Shift_Pro4X Saw this posted on social media; “Just bought a 2023 Tundra with the 14" screen. Let my son borrow it for the afternoon, he connected his phone to listen to his iTunes.The next day my insurance company raised my rates and added my son to my policy. The email said that a private company showed that my son drove the vehicle. He already had his own vehicle that he was insuring.My insurance company demanded he give all his insurance info and some private info for proof. He declined for privacy reasons and my insurance cancelled my policy.These new vehicles with their tech are on condition that we give up our privacy to enter their world. It's not worth it people.”
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