Infiniti Q70L 3.7 AWD
The an all-wheel-drive sedan weighing well over two tons, the Q70 and Q70L’s standard power source—a naturally aspirated 3.7-liter V-6—isn’t exactly breathtaking, but 330 horsepower isn’t milquetoast, either. The oversquare six likes to rev, and 5.6 seconds to 60 mph and a quarter-mile in 14.2 seconds at 100 mph is far from sluggish. Or you could upgrade to the 5.6-liter V-8 version of the Q70L and lop off nearly a second in both measures. Up to you.
The debuted back in 2011 as the M37/M56—came tweaks to content and trim, including some very tasty white ash accents in our test car, relaxed-fit seats well suited to a dash from Atlanta to Abilene, and plenty of tech features. Our test car also packed $8350 in options, most devoted to making long treks more pleasant as well as more connected.
But in a car pitted against some pretty fancy dancers from Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Jaguar, Mercedes, etc., the Q70’s dynamic scorecard only has a so-so total at the bottom. Formal test results are about what you’d expect of a mid-size family ride, rather than a flagship sedan. The Q70 logged 0.83 g on the skidpad, with a good amount of understeer. Stopping from 70 mph consumed 172 feet, and our test driver noted “moderate” fade.
On public roads, the Q70 gives a decent account of itself until you start to near its limits—say, at eight-tenths. At that point, there’s a little more up and down motion than we like to see in a fast sedan, there are occasional tiny tremors in the chassis, and we wish the car were equipped with shift paddles—waggling the gear lever fore and aft just isn’t satisfying.
Q70 has much to recommend it, but its shortcomings and annoyances are just too much to overcome for a car that not only trails the current crop of large luxury sedans but soon will have to battle new versions of many of them: a new Mercedes-Benz E-class, a new BMW 5-series, a new Jaguar XF, and a refreshed Audi A6 are on the way. We look forward to seeing where the Q70 goes in its next iteration, but this one stays in the also-ran column.
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