I got to spend some time in an Infiniti Q60 rental for a few days. It was a 3.0t rwd non-sport model. It was no Sport / Red Sport, but very enjoyable on those amazing roads.
Some pictures from my trip to the Tail of the Dragon.
The roads and scenery was amaxzing.
Foothills Parkway, North of 129.
Fontana Dam Area, 28 East off 129.
The car preformed well and was surprisingly fast, it feels under rated at 300hp. I'd say it would give an E46 m3 a run for it's money and felt faster than an N54/N55 engined 3series. The weak points were the stock brakes and auto transmission which could have been quicker shifting to enjoy the roads, it also lacked paddle shifters and down / up shifting was backwards. It was no ZF, but a decent trans, not terribly bad. I'm sure the upgraded brakes on the Sport or Red Sport would have been a great help. My biggest surprise was how well it handled, it was equipped with stock 255/40/18 run flat tires on all four corners. The squared setup provided a lot of front end grip and that resulted in less under-steer than most modern cars, the car felt very neural which was a pleasant surprise.
The lack of locking differential was apparent powering out of tight turns. After about midway thru the 318 turns in 11 miles, the brakes started to over heat and shutter, not wanting to risk failure or excessive fading and going off a cliff, I backed off and tried to use the brakes less giving time to cool.
All in all, I was impressed with the Q60 3.0t, how it handled a hard beating and it made my first TOTD experience an enjoyable one.
Sadly the first one I got had around 33k and probably had a hard life, it broke down about 1.5 hours from ATL. It ate it's belt, causing the water pump, alternator and AC to stop working. It then overheated and died on the highway, I was able to pull into a gas station and call for help. Thank god, I still had cell coverage at this point. About 6 hours wasted getting towed to get another car, happens to be I got pretty much the same car the second time around.
Passed by this house, obviously a group of car guys
