Relatively new to Britain (though almost a quarter of a century old in other parts of the world), Infiniti is the boutique department of Nissan, the Japanese car giant. It’s where you go to shop for a Nissan with added prestige, presence and price, and with, perhaps, a slightly stronger flavour of Japan about it rather than a flavour of Sunderland, which is where many of our Nissans are built.
Certainly, in the past, Infiniti has claimed to have modelled the shape of some seats on the neckline of a kimono, and to have fashioned some interior wooden panels after the back of a musical instrument. The headlamps on the M35h, a hybrid version of the company’s extra-large saloon car, we now read, were inspired by the eyeholes in a traditional kabuki mask.
It’s hard not to be impressed by the cultured breadth of this stuff, although, frankly, they could be making it all up in the hope that journalists will nod dumbly and reproduce it in car columns. Fat chance.
Still, reading further in the company’s highly polished literature, it seems that, to properly understand the brand and its intended niche in a busy marketplace, we need to be able to draw a critical distinction between Japanese ideas about luxury and European ones.
In Europe, it is suggested, we tend to equate luxury with over-provision, needless indulgence and perhaps (though Infiniti doesn’t say this) eye-watering vulgarity. (It also don’t say it is talking specifically about BMW, but I’m going to take a punt and read between the lines.) Japanese luxury, on the other hand, is to be understood as discrete, modest, dedicated to craftsmanship and founded on a fastidious and ceremonial attention to service. Which is all well and good, although you have to wonder how that approach results in a car like the Infiniti M35, which is about as understated as Lady Gaga clad in meat. I would maintain that there is barely anything as self-announcing as the M35 in BMW’s entire range, and certainly nothing in Audi’s.
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Still, ostentation, too, has its fans, and few of them are likely to be disappointed by the M35h, which is expensively upholstered, witheringly well-equipped and minutely attentive to your needs in a way that is likely to satisfy businessmen with even the most raging entitlement issues. And while one can argue about whether hybrids are sensible and practicable even as an interim solution to problems with consumption and emissions, the system is undeniably suited to the pursuit of stillness, which is the chief project of the Japanese luxury car.
The silent pull-away, the calm swish of the engine under acceleration, the surging and yet unforced and nearly frictionless power, pampers the driver in a floaty, spa-like way that no petrol or diesel engine on its own ever could.
That’s before you factor in the equally self-centring effects of the astonishingly clean stereo, the heated steering wheel and any number of electronic driver warnings wired into the M35 as standard and designed to deter you from crashing it.
Plus, of course, you are getting a piece of holistic philosophy here for your £46,000. Infiniti insists: “The M is formed to express the excellence of nature: everything moving in the here and now, in a dance of intertwining opposites.” Well, the “dance of intertwining opposites”, I’m struggling to understand. Strictly speaking, that would be doughnutting, wouldn’t it? Which is frowned on, especially on public roads.
However, if we’re talking about strategic approaches to automobile design, I’m solidly in favour of “everything moving in the here and now”. Let’s face it, if parts of your car are moving in the here and now, while other parts are moving in the there and then, it’s probably time to pull over and call the AA.
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Infiniti M35h GT
Price: £46,840
Top speed: 155mph
Acceleration: 0-62 in 5.5 seconds
Average consumption: 40.4mpg
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CO2 emissions: 162g/km
3/5