I never noticed until now, but the front facia on the first generation Infiniti Q45's have some sort of raised rose-vine design incorporated into it. It looks very intriguing to me. I fond the first 2-3 years of lexus and infiniti to be by far the most interesting, because both companies made alot of moves, Lexus good ones, and Infiniti not so good ones (strange ad campaign for example.) Im gonna check for a book on infiniti's story thats similar to brian long's book on lexus.

 

That is unusual!!

 

my mom had one of the EARLY Q45's and it was easily the best car she ever owned. Those cars were QUICK! she had two more Q's afterwards then got a Jaguar XJ8 in 2000... that first Q was a beast, my dad was driving a twin turbo 300ZX at the time, and almost enjoyed driving the Q more... and btw- I do remember that vine in the background

 

I remember this as well, though never saw anything written on it. And you may find the Infinti book say they started in 2002 to forget all those bad years.

 

sick...you never could refrain from ever saying anything negative about the brand in a single post.

bad years in sales in different than bad years in crappy cars. The starting years were just not sales successes.

 

Yeah, the G20 and M35 were automotive works of art...

 

That badge looks funny especially with the grille that came alone with the first gen Q

 

The first Qs didnt even have grilles, it looked very strange... oddly attractive somehow. If any of you have read brian longs book, it comes with loads of concept sketches of the LS400 that date back to like 1984... some of the earlier concepts had no grille, just a very smooth but thin front end, like an intrepid... they decided an upright grill was nessesary to give the car an identity that was readily recognized, which is one reason why people see LS's and know it on the spot while a Q gets the "wha?" looks.

One things for sure... the 1st Qs are fast.. 0-60 in 6.7 seconds according to nissan. They actually got 6.9 according to road and track. The new Q with 340 hp claims 5.9 but not a single magazine can achieve less than 6.5. Theres not much improvement in the 03 Q vs. the 90 Q in acceleration, the LS has come leaps and bounds, like two whole seconds faster than the original version.

 

love the q45 it was and still is awesome car. so many gadgets to play with =x