Yahoo Autos Never Let Infiniti Tease You Again
The path is well-tread. Infiniti teases a cool high-performance product, one that could change the company's whole image. Something to bring back some of the magic the company wielded in the early Aughts, a breath of excitement into a brand now primarily known for crossovers. Without exception, these plans always end up scrapped. So we can't even feign surprise that the Formula 1-inspired Q60 Project Black S performance hybrid, shown above, has been killed.
It was never explicitly announced as a production car. Infiniti called it an "evolving project" between Infiniti and Renault F1, a benefit of the Nissan-Mitsubishi-Renault alliance. But for years, the company dodged direct questions about its fate while leaving the door open for future decisions. We had details that made the project feel production-ready, like a 563-hp powertrain featuring a turbocharged V-6 and hybrid assistance. It would use brake-by-wire with massive carbon-ceramic discs for regenerative braking inspired by F1's Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS).
It will never be built.
"2020 was a dramatic year," Wendy Orthman, Infiniti global communications manager, told Road & Track via email. She explained that, in addition to "the visible and remarkable changes to our business and customer demands in the marketplace," Infiniti relocated its global headquarters back to Japan and installed a new chairman, Peyman Kargar.
"The confluence of all this change internally and externally has prompted us to reset and reevaluate our business," Orthman wrote. "We have spent the past year reconnecting with our Japanese roots, exploring the strengths in our heritage and charting a new path forward reinforcing and reexamining the product pipeline. That path will be rooted in our rich history of daring designs, performance, technology and a renewed focus on the customer-centric approach to luxury that has always been a hallmark of Infiniti."
This storyline feels familiar. Infiniti pulled this trick before, teasing an exciting car, then never building it. Specifically, the company did it with a hot-rodded Q50, the four-door version of the model that would have spawned the Project Black S.
The Q50 Eau Rouge was announced in 2014. Like Project Black S, it looked tantalizingly production-ready. It wasn't some far-out concept, it was a Q50 with Nissan GT-R drivetrain components. Specs were announced. Infiniti's then-president Johan de Nysschen implied production was imminent and teased a $100,000 price tag. Journalists even drove the damn thing.
