2003 Infiniti G35 Sedan

Judging from its burgeoning new-product portfolio, Nissan Motor Company has come back from its much-publicized near-death experience with a vengeance. The good news extends well into the firm's upline Infiniti channel as well. With the arrival of the G35, the I-Team begins an earnest assault on a new market segment: the midsize performance sedan.

The G35's bold styling borders on being over the top, and the optional Aero Package (spoiler, rocker fairings) makes it even sportier.

About the only common elements this full-on sporting machine shares with the now-departed G20 that it nominally replaces are four doors, a tire at each corner and its initial designator letter. Bigger, bolder, faster, and orders of magnitude more intense, the G35 swaps rear for front drive, six for four cylinders—and gains attitude and dynamic abilities that are destined to ensure it instant credibility as it takes on the likes of the Acura TL Type-S, Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, Lexus IS 300, and Mercedes-Benz C320. While sharing scale with the I35, Infiniti claims the G35 is more blatantly skewed toward the "sport-luxury" side of the equation while the I35 retains its original "luxury-sport" bias.


Even at a glance, the G35's boldly styled sheetmetal and front/rear lamp treatments give it plenty of visual impact. While some may find a few of the detail elements a tad overdone, the crisply rendered contours yield an exceptionally roomy passenger compartment and a stellar 0.27 drag coefficient that can be trimmed to a mere 0.26 when the G35 is fitted with the optional Aero Package, a tasteful rear spoiler and rocker fairings. Part of that slickness comes from effective underbody shaping tweaks, an effort that also ensures a zero-lift condition on the nose of the car, even at super-legal cruising speeds.


The heart of the G35 is its FM—for Front Mid-ship—platform. Developed using concepts track-tested in various Nissan motorsport programs, this state-of-the-art rear-drive chassis places the bulk of the engine's mass aft of the centerline of the front axle. Also used in the new 350Z car, it's destined to become a mainstay of the Infiniti lineup.


While the G35's 112.2-inch wheelbase is nearly eight inches longer than the Z-car's, the rest of the design basics are shared. Key elements include an aluminum-intensive execution of most major components, multilink front and rear architecture, anti-roll bars at either end, and unique "ripple control" shocks that are specifically designed to eliminate the effects of high-frequency impacts, thereby producing a smoother, more relaxing ride. Directional control comes via a well-weighted rack-and-pinion power steering setup and huge 4-wheel power disc brakes with standard ABS, which haul the G35 down from any speed with unswerving strength and precision. Serious attention to anti-dive/anti-squat suspension geometry keeps everything on an even keel in both accel and decel modes while its taut yet supple underpinnings curtail unwanted body roll.