Personality is always best found in the details. With a trained eye, everything you need to know about a person is in the little things—the way they carry themselves, the way they act under pressure, the shoes on their feet, the glint in their eye—even in the car that they drive.
For Infiniti, the personality of each car should match that of its potential driver, and to achieve that best, each model is conceived with a very specific person in mind. For the QX60, which will hit showrooms soon, that person was a classy working mother, exemplified by its brand ambassador Kate Hudson—stylish enough for daily urban jaunts but practical enough for suburban life. The QX55, on the other hand, was crafted for someone who may be a bit more familiar to you—you, the dear reader of Esquire Middle East.
Yep, the QX55 was built for us—debonair, refined, successful and substantial young men with a keen eye on creative pursuits, imbued with a love of life and all that it brings. In the minds of the car’s designers, our car should reflect that, too, equally suited for a Friday jaunt between meetings at Dubai Design District, dinner at a top-ranked spot in DIFC, a weekend hike through to the Wadis of Fujairah the next morning, and an opulent night retreat in the far deserts of Abu Dhabi on Saturday night.
If the model feels familiar in spirit, there’s a good reason for that. Back in the early 2000s, Infiniti practically invented the crossover SUV-coupe chimera—though BMW might get the credit—with its beloved FX series. The QX55 is closely inspired by the FX35, last seen almost 10 years ago—with updates firmly rooted in the renaissance of Infiniti’s latest fleet.
Let’s halt the suspense, shall we? The QX55 not only aims high, but succeeds. It’s particularly suited to the modern cities of the Gulf, each with a forward-thinking architectural sensibility that takes inspiration from both the flows of cultural history and of the natural surroundings that birthed them—just as the car does.
It’s fitting, then, that we first got into the vehicle as it was parked outside of a Zaha Hadid-designed hotel of complementary spirit. Its bold shape is punctuated by its embellishments—striking roofline, origami-inspired mesh pattern on its grille, semi-aniline leather on its interior and piano-key LED lighting on the exterior—that are each immediate yet restrained, signature of a car that embraces Japanese philosophies, both artistic and philosophical.
Infiniti QX55: Under the hood
It’s also got some oomph to it to match the coupe spirit of its design, with a variable compression turbo four-cylinder engine that gets 268 horsepower, manual-shift mode and intelligent all-wheel-drive, with settings—standard, eco, sport and personal—that make sure the car is ready for the drive it is intended for, all with a spacious interior and flexible cargo capacity that makes it just as versatile in terms of who and what you’ll bring with you.
We in the Esquire set also have to face the fact that we’re not kids anymore, and just as socks have become a thrilling birthday gift, the intelligent safety tech that the car is equipped with is nearly just as exciting as its daring design, as it reduces many of the stresses of driving, especially in dense urban areas.
Driving it through both rush hour traffic and late at night after a deliberately long day, features such as a predictive forward collision warning, lane departure warning with a built-in prevention system, pedestrian detection, blind spot warning and intervention and backup collision intervention make this a car that you can actually trust—and save you from an expensive headache at the very least.
Trust us, once you experience these features in action—one of the key innovations that separates the best cars of today with those of the last decade with which this tech was only nascent—It will be nearly impossible to go back to the old way, at least in your day to day.
In the accessible lifestyle luxury space, this is a car you’ll have a hard time forgetting—just as unforgettable as the FX line that inspired it.
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