Infiniti is actively considering building a flagship sports car based on the running gear of the Nissan GT-R. ‘It’s too good a platform to use only on one model,’ said Francois Bancon, head of advanced planning for Infiniti in Tokyo.
He told CAR that Infiniti was looking at ‘three or four’ proposals for what could top the range, including a GT-R based sports car.
What would an Infiniti GT-R be like?
The Nissan GT-R has achieved that rare thing – it’s an iconic Japanese sports car. Its clever four-wheel drive system and 542bhp twin-turbo 3.8-litre V6 engine give it mind-boggling performance that’s well into supercar territory.
But an Infiniti variant would have to be more sophisticated, Bancon told CAR. ‘It would have to be softer than the GT-R,’ he said. ‘And that’s extremely difficult to do. You can’t easily tweak the GT-R to deliver the sophisticated, more refined performance we would need on an Infiniti.’
How likely is the Infiniti GT-R?
‘We have three or four proposals we are looking at right now. Once we have launched the new smaller Infiniti (coming in 2015), the time would be right to have a flagship.’
Bancon told CAR a decision will be made in the next two to three years. That means any production Infiniti GT-R – or other halo model – will still be five years away from production.
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