SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8
This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. I drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under real-world South African conditions. Most, but not all, the vehicles driven are world cars as well, so what you read here possibly applies to the models you get where you live.
My most recent drive is on the home page. Archived reviews and opinion pieces are in the active menu down the left side. Hover your cursor over a heading or manufacturer's name and follow the drop-down.
Posted: 6 June 2015
Interior pic by author
The cheat sheet
Base price: R480 700
Engine: 1991 cc, chain driven DOHC, 16-valve, four-cylinder turbopetrol
Power: 155 kW at 5500 rpm
Torque: 350 Nm between 1250 and 3500 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 7.2 seconds
Maximum speed: 245 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: About 9.4 l/100 km
Tank: 74 litres
Boot: 500 litres
Dedicated SA dealers: 4
Warranty: 3 years/100 000 km; with roadside assistance
Maintenance: 5 years/100 000 km
October 2014 saw a new and smaller petrol engine joining the Infiniti Q50 lineup in South Africa. Rather than being sourced internally, it is bought in from outside. Specifically it’s Mercedes-Benz’s 1991 cc M274 motor in C250 tune and is mated with the same company’s 7G-Tronic Plus gearbox. Both are fine pieces of machinery and any doubts you may have had about Infiniti’s ability to deliver safety-conscious luxury transport, at reasonable prices, should be dumped right now.
The Q50 range boasts a proud trophy record: Car of the Year and Best Design awards in Korea (January 2015), selected as an Edmunds.com top rated vehicle in 2014, highest safety ratings from both the IIHS and NHTSA, and a finalist for World Car of the Year in 2014.
Two trim levels, Premium and Sport, are available and while both are well equipped, five option packs render them capable of extreme personalisation. Our test unit was the Sport model that automatically includes the R21 800 Welcome Pack as part of what differentiates it from the Premium version.
The pack includes: Tyre pressure monitoring with individual display; powered, folding and heated door mirrors with reversing synchronisation; intelligent key with smart access and enhanced memory; welcome lighting; powered steering column rake and reach adjustment; powered front seat adjustment with two memory settings, height and tilt, and powered lumbar support for the driver.
Other upgrade kit comprises 18” alloy wheels rather than the entry model’s 17-inchers, all with runflat tyres; Sport front bumper; automatically levelling LED headlamps; LED running lights; additional aluminium trim including pedals and magnesium shift paddles.
The test car was fitted with the optional R27 000 Safety Shield Pack that features intelligent cruise control, lane departure warning and lane departure prevention, blind spot warning and blind spot intervention, forward emergency braking, predictive forward collision warning, distance control assist and back up collision intervention. The package we really missed was the R30 800 Multimedia Pack with navigation and advanced Bose audio with 14 speakers.
Really old folks may remember when cars came essentially complete and your only choices were whether to add a radio, air conditioning or both. Sigh.
Moving on, standard kit on both versions includes cruise control with speed limiter, multifunction steering wheel, parking sensors and rear view camera, Infiniti InTouch audio and connectivity, keyless entry with pushbutton starting, leather upholstery with heated front seats, automatically dipping interior mirror, Bluetooth, a four-mode drive response selector, LED fog lamps front and rear, dual zone air conditioning, automatic stop-start and rain-sensing wipers.
Standard safety equipment features six airbags, ABS brakes with EBD, EBA, active trace control that gets you around corners (more) safely, vehicle dynamic control, hill start assist, automatic headlights, immobilisation and intruder detection, and ISOFix anchorage points.
Technical details include independent suspension all around - double wishbones with coil springs over shock absorbers and stabiliser bar in front, and multilink with dual flowpath shocks and stabiliser bar at the blunt end. Brakes are ventilated discs (320 / 308 mm) front and rear, while steering is assisted by means of an electrically boosted hydraulic system.
Is it good to drive? Definitely. One-hundred-and fifty five kilowatts of power, matched with 350 Newton-metres of torque spread over an almost infinite-feeling range from 1250 to 3500 rpm, and harnessed by the sportier version of M-B’s seven speed wonder box, means the energy just keeps on flowing. We have driven that transmission many times before; it’s among the best you can get. Unlike with its usual host cars you get both stick and paddle override - without the frustratingly-quick default back to “Drive” - so that’s a bonus.
Then if you had any doubts regarding the car’s handling capabilities versus other luxury cars, forget them now. This thing works. It steers, brakes and handles well without ever feeling heavy and it hangs on under extreme provocation.
All is not perfect, however. We don’t like being spareless in a country with potholed roads and long, lonely distances between tyre shops; the boot is rather oddly shaped with a hump at the front and big wheelarch intrusions; the seatbacks fold (40:60), but the aperture doesn’t go all the way across or up and down – it’s a sort of three-quarter sized oval keyhole; and as mentioned in our report on the hybrid, rear seat accommodations are cramped. Finally, the graphics for music centre and clock are disturbingly basic. At this price level we expect much better.
Misgivings aside though, this Infiniti marries first class Japanese engineering with an excellent German powertrain to create a really fine motor car that’s worth a second look. And you can turn the graphics off.
Test unit from Infiniti SA press fleet.
This is a one-man show, which means that every car reviewed is given my personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every test car goes through real world driving; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.
I do my best to include relevant information like real life fuel economy or a close mathematical calculation, boot size or luggage space, whether the space is both usable and accessible, whether life-sized people can use the back seat (where that applies), basic specs of the vehicle and performance figures if they are published. In the case of clearly identified launch reports, fuel figures are of necessity the laboratory numbers provided with the release material. If I ever place an article that doesn't cover most things, it's probably because I have dealt with that vehicle at least once already, so you will be able to find what you want in another report under the same manufacturer's heading in the menu on the left.
Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so they can see I do actually exist.
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SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8