Tag Archives: Infiniti

2025 INFINITI QX80 Autograph

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This is what “flagship” means. . .


By Gary S. Vasilash


Craig Keeys, group vice president, INFINITI Americas, was recently a guest on “Autoline After Hours.”


One of the topics discussed is the 2025 INFINITI QX80, which really gives meaning to the term “flagship.”


That is, the three-row SUV is 211.2 inches long and has a 121-inch wheelbase. It is 83.3 inches wide and depending on the suspension setup (there is an independent, double wishbone fore and aft, but there is an available as high as 77.9 inches. In three (Luxe, Sensory, Autograph) of the four (Pure is the other) trims it rides on 22s. (Pure gets 20s.) The ground clearance is (again, suspension-dependent) from 9.6 to 10 inches, which means that the standard body-colored running board is not something that’s merely “nice” to have. The cargo capacities are 22 cubic feet with the third row upright; 59 cubic feet with the third row folded; and 101 cubic feet with the second and third rows folded: with the leather seating throughout and the 14.3-inch infotainment and 9-inch screen below that one for control of HVAC and seating, this capacious vehicle provides a sense that you are in something like a well-appointed cruise ship cabin, not something that is going to take you on your next trip, be it to work or to the lake (there is 8,500-pound—said to be best-in-class—towing capacity, facilitated by the 450-hp twin-turbo V6 that produces 516 lb-ft of torque).


When introducing the vehicle, Alfonso Albaisa, senior vice president for Global Design for Nissan Motor Co., said the new QX80 is “Powerful, practical and provocative.”


While the boxes for the powerful and practical have been checked in that lengthy paragraph above, the provocative nature of the QX80 is evident here:


Which brings me back to Craig Keeys.


He said that he’d been talking to one of his acquaintances who was looking for a full-size SUV. Not surprisingly, Keeys recommended that the QX80 get a look. No surprise.


And also no surprise (after all, Keeys told the story), the QX80 was purchased.


And here’s the thing: People who are in the market for a large, lux SUV would probably opt more frequently for the INFINITI if they were aware of it.


Through the third quarter of 2024 INFINITI sold 7,410 QX80s, or 67% of the number of Lincoln Navigators delivered during the same period.


Over at Cadillac, things were far more robust than was the case for either of those vehicles: 27,992 Escalades.


The QX80 certainly deserves more than it is getting.

2025 Infiniti QX60 Luxe AWD

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Perhaps the Majestic White would be a better look. . .


By Gary S. Vasilash


When you have a vehicle that has “Luxe” in its name you figure that it must be, well, luxurious. But one thing about the QX60 Luxe as driven here is that it has the “Black Edition Package,” a $1,900 option that provides gloss-black 20-inch wheels, gloss black roof rails, black grille, and black headliner on the inside. And the Black Edition Package makes it possible to select from three premium paints: Mineral Black, Majestic White, or a newly developed color, Harbor Gray.


The first two rows of the three-row SUV have leather, which also happened to be black. (The front seats are the comfortable “Zero Gravity” style that Nissan had initially launched in the 2013 Altima and which have been improved since; the second-row seats (and know that the outboard seating positions back there are heated, while the front seats are heated and ventilated).)


But the thing is, the whole execution seemed less luxe to me and more like I was living in Wednesday Addams’ world.


The QX60 is powered by a turbocharged 2.0-liter I4 that produces 268 hp @ 5,600 rpm and 286 lb-ft of torque at 4,400 rpm. It is mated to a nine-speed automatic.


The vehicle weighs 4,696 pounds.

2025 Infiniti QX60 Luxe Black Edition. (Image: Infiniti)


And it really seemed that in some cases when I planted the accelerator (e.g., coming off a freeway ramp into the speeding traffic) I would have been happy with, say, a couple more cylinders. (To be fair, however, it should be noted that a competitive vehicle, like the Lincoln Nautilus (though it has two rows, not three), also has a turbocharged I4. While it has 250 hp, the vehicle is lighter, so it turns out that a power-to-weight ratio is essentially a wash. The point being that this is something that is characteristic of the vehicle type, it seems.)
It should be noted that the fuel economy numbers are 22 mpg city, 27 highway, and 24 combined, so there is something to be said for not having two extra cylinders.


It checks the boxes with a sizeable touch screen (12.3 inch) and an array of standard safety tech (forward emergency braking with pedestrian detection, predictive forward collision warning, rear cross-traffic alert, rear automatic braking, blind spot warning, lane departure warning11 and high beam assist). There are also things like traffic sign recognition, intelligent cruise control with stop-and-go, and other features and functions.


New to the 2025 QX60 is a key fob that is recognized by the vehicle such that when you approach the vehicle with said fob there is a beep from the SUV announcing that the door is unlocked. When you turn off the SUV and exit, once you’re a few feet away the vehicle beeps and the doors lock. Clever, but I was a bit concerned when I happened to be repeatedly walking by the SUV with the fob in my pocket. I was afraid that the repeated beeps and locking-unlocking would cause the processor to throw an electronic gasket.


That didn’t happen.


Convenience really matters when you actually need a three-row vehicle (i.e., you have your hands full—figuratively and often literally). Which is probably why there is that fob arrangement.


Credit to the Infiniti folks to be thinking of things like that.