Top marks to those of you who remember the last front-wheel-drive Infiniti. If you don’t, you’re not going senile: it was the 2000 I35, the Infiniti version of the Nissan Maxima sedan that lasted until 2004.
Now, the luxury division of Nissan is bringing back FWD, starting with the all-new JX crossover that will be available in front- and four-wheel-drive configurations from April 2012.
The second model that will feature a front-wheel-drive layout is the production version of the Etherea concept unveiled in Geneva that will rival BMW’s 1-Series, the next generation of which will also be FWD. Next up will be a pure electric FWD model based on the Nissan Leaf platform architecture.
“Customers don’t really care that much about the platform beneath the car,” claims Nissan North America vice president of product planning Larry Dominique. “They care about the car.”
That’s coming from a brand that, in the US at least, has built its reputation mainly thanks to the sporty character of its RWD models. But Dominique insists that rear-wheel-drive is not perfect: “There are limitations that we’d like to work around, like packaging. We can create more interior space if we don’t have the big rear axle and the big transmission.”
Nissan and Infiniti global design chief Shiro Nakamura adds a different point of view: “If you look at where we were several years ago, Infiniti’s design language was too similar to Nissan. That was bad for a luxury brand and we needed rear-wheel-drive to differentiate between the brands.”
Now, Nakamura says, Infiniti has established itself and can’t be confused with Nissan. He also adds that this will be true of the new Infiniti EV, which will be “completely different” from the Leaf: “We don’t really to worry so much about rear- or front-wheel-drive now. We can focus on styling and performance.”
Story source: Autoweek
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