Sunderland! It’s in northeastern England, and if you’re a Yank of one persuasion, you might recognize it as the namesake city of a Second World War–era flying boat. If you’re of another bent, you might recall it as the home of the criminally underrated band Leatherface. Europeans undoubtedly know that Nissan has had a three-decade manufacturing presence in the area, and now the company’s first Sunderland-built product is coming to the States in the form of Infiniti’s new QX30small ute.
Infiniti refers to the new machine—a sibling of the slightly lower, hatchbacky Q30—as a “premium active crossover,” marking it as a vehicle that’s undoubtedly superior to your garden-variety, slothful crossover. Set to compete with the Lexus NX, Audi Q3, Buick Encore, and Mercedes-Benz GLA, the littlest QX makes use of that last vehicle’s A-/CLA-/GLA-class–derived platform, seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission, and 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine. Don’t, however, expect it to be boosted to ridiculous GLA45 AMG levels.
Infiniti touts the safety and convenience systems baked into the QX30, noting that it’s equipped with Around View parking cameras as well as Intelligent Parking Assist. The company is also quite pleased with the grille, which features an emblem plated with a material that allows the adaptive-cruise-control radar to pass through, eliminating the appearance of an “unseemly” radar-unit blackout panel.
Infiniti is transparent and realistic about the QX30’s mission, claiming that the new machine “has been engineered to bridge the gap between compacts and crossovers.” That, evidently, is what buyers in this segment claim to want. It’s also slicing things a bit thin, given how the supposedly not-crossover Q30 on which the QX30 is based marries a tall ride height with a tallish hatchback body. What we’re getting at here is that if the Q30 isn’t exactly a car, the more overtly butch QX30 is almost definitely on the crossover side of Infiniti’s metaphorical bridge.
To that end, all-wheel drive remains a selling point in the U.S. market, whether or not buyers actually require it, and Infiniti has fitted its cute-ute with an AWD system capable of a 50/50 torque split. (The Q30 will be front-drive-only when it reaches the U.S. early next year.) And certainly, nobody has gone broke in the last 20 years overestimating Americans’ love of a higher H-point. The QX30 goes on sale in the second quarter of next year, and if we’re not anxiously awaiting the chance to put it through its paces, we’re at least pretty curious to see how it performs alongside others in its competitive set.
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