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2019 Infiniti QX60 Drivers' Notes Review | Past its prime

The 2019 Infiniti QX60 is a three-row crossover from Nissan's luxury brand. It's based on the Nissan Pathfinder, sharing the same basic platform and powertrain. It sits near the top of Infiniti's lineup, above the new QX50 and just below the body-on-frame QX80. That said, the car-based platform underneath the QX60 means its actually more spacious than its truck-based sibling. Power comes solely from a 3.5-liter V6 making 295 horsepower and 270 pound-feet of torque. All-wheel drive is available, though our tester was a front-wheel drive model. The 2019 QX60 starts $46,795, but our tester has nearly $20,000 worth of options. The $5,000 limited package adds upgraded leather on the seats and steering wheel, dark wood trim, 20-inch wheels and chrome trim on the exterior. The $3,400 proactive package adds safety features like lane-departure warnings, blind-spot monitoring, backup collision intervention and adaptive cruise control. Other options include back-seat entertainment ($2,150), a wifi hotspot ($495) and the $3,500 sensory package (a Bose audio system, ventilated front seats, heated second-row seats, a motion-activated liftgate and a moonroof for the second and third rows). Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore: I'm immediately struck by the interior. It's quiet and comfortable. The quilted leather on the door panels is almost decadent. Infiniti is really going for it with this kind of interior styling. Some might say it's a little bit much, but generally, I think the company gets it right. Same with the outside. Infiniti tries to make a statement, and this swoopy, creased design is reason enough to buy the QX60. Our tester has the 295-hp V6, which is plenty capable. There's a lot of torque steer with the front-wheel-drive setup. It's kind of fun, but not really the dynamic most buyers are going for it. Overall, I like the QX60. It's big, comfortable, luxurious and powerful. Get AWD, though, as FWD in the snow is a little squirrely in something this large. Road Test Editor Reese Counts: Unlike Greg and Joel, I wasn't bowled over by the interior. I couldn't find a comfortable seating position for the life of me. The bottom cushion wasn't deep enough and the back seemed to protrude out at odd points into my spine. The leather looks and feels OK, but that was my only highlight. The overall interior design looks fat and boring, especially compared to models from Mercedes-Benz and Lexus. Just look at some of the details like the vents and steering wheel.

Infiniti parts ways with Red Bull Racing

The partnership between Infiniti and Red Bull Racing is done. The team announced that it will no longer run under branding from the luxury automaker and will drop the Infiniti name from its own. The shift is effective at the end of this year. Infiniti signed on as a sponsor of the Formula One team back in 2011 when Red Bull was at the height of its dominance and on the path to the second of four consecutive world championships. Two seasons later it stepped up to naming rights, with the team officially rebranded as Infiniti Red Bull Racing. But while the cars ran under motivation from the automaker's ally Renault, they stopped short of rebranding the engines as Infiniti's, leaving it in the unusual situation of being a title sponsor of (but not directly involved in) an F1 racing team. For next season, Red Bull will continue running the Renault power unit, albeit rebranded under the TAG Heuer name. In the process, the team will no longer have any branding from the French automaker or any of its associated brands. Meanwhile sister-team Toro Rosso is switching from Renault to Ferrari power for next season, while Lotus is prone to switch back to Renault engines and ownership. The French automaker also recently canceled its support of the feeder series known until now as Formula Renault 3.5. Infiniti has carried out only limited racing programs in its quarter-century history. Aside from the Red Bull partnership, it directly sponsored Sebastian Vettel up until his departure for Ferrari. The company also supplied IndyCar engines in the late 1990s, then sponsored the Indy Lights series for a few years. It recently helped a privateer team prepare a Q50 for the British Touring Car Championship, but otherwise hasn't had any top-tier factory racing programs to speak of. That makes it one of the few Renault Nissan Alliance brands (and Japanese automakers) not to actively participate in motorsports. Related Video:

Infiniti Q50 steer-by-wire system took 10 years to develop [w/video]

Infiniti's Direct Adaptive Steering (DAS) is quite a novelty - the system employs no physical connection between the steering wheel and the front wheels under normal circumstances and instead relies on a computer, clutch and steering-angle actuator to guide vehicles down the road with input from the driver.
In our First Drive review of a 2014 Infiniti Q50 equipped with the system, we weren't overly impressed by the artificial feedback. But we can't help but be impressed with how long Infiniti spent on its development: a full 10 years, according to Autoline Daily in the video report below. A staggering 70 percent of the research and development time spent on DAS was devoted to getting the steering feel right, and unfortunately, our first impression suggests their results still leave something to be desired, as we found it lacked the sporty feeling a sport sedan should have.
The weight of DAS is comparable to that of a conventional steering system due to its complexity. For example, three ECUs are used in the first-generation DAS system to ensure there's never a loss of steering, but Infiniti is refining the technology and is working to simplify it to reduce weight. One day Infiniti hopes that only one ECU will be needed to control DAS. We just hope it doesn't take the Japanese automaker another ten years to get the steering feel right.