The keyless-entry fob is in my pocket so I step on the brake and hit the button marked START. The engine sounds like that of a V8 sports car. I put the seven-speed transmission into SPORT mode and the gear selector shows I am in first. I leave the parking lot – and feed it some throttle… I flick the right paddle, marked with a + sign, and the transmission responds quickly, like a sports car. The suspension is firm, like a sports car and keeps the FX50 flat as I take my first corner. The seat does a good job as it is heavily bolstered but still quite comfortable, like a good sports car. I have to stop the Infiniti so I pull over and step out – and that is the only time I realize I am not driving a sports car.
This paddle makes good things happen – quickly.
The interior is very comfortable with powered-bolsters and manual thigh support. The FX50 is also loaded down with plenty of tech goodies, some great - some I found intrusive. The 11 speaker + 2 sub-woofer Bose sound system sounds crisp at both the high and low ends. The adaptive front lighting system provides a great view at night, and the headlights are auto-leveling so they are always pointing where you want them to. On the flip side of things, the Lane Departure Prevention system (LDP) is a bit odd for my liking. It senses when you are crossing over a lane that you shouldn’t be and applies slight brake pressure to the wheels on the correct side of the vehicle to gently move you back into your lane. The system sounds great in theory but just felt odd in the real-world application. The nice part however, was that the LDP defaults to off when you start the FX50. Another odd feature is the pre-crash seat belts which squeeze you into place when your first start up the FX. I am glad I didn’t fully test this system but I could do without the reminder that it is there.
Even if I wanted to crash, the rest of the advanced safety features would make it hard to do so. This Infiniti is fitted with a system that warns me about a pending front-end collision, it has another system that warns me if I am heading out of my lane when I shouldn’t be, and it has an intelligent cruise control system which monitors vehicles ahead of me to adjust my speed. All of these are welcome systems but if I wanted to turn them off, Infiniti gives me that option.
