2009 Infiniti G37 Coupe AWD Review

2009 Infiniti G37 Coupe AWD Review Infiniti’s G has been a monster car for them. Now it’s called the G37. Let’s see how this all wheel drive version works out and check the tech. Now a base G37 is going to come with a fairly base audio rig but it would still have a color LCD and what they call the Infiniti controllers so that’s a kind of nice thing but we’ve been bumped up to the Infiniti studio, Bose powered, more speakers, more power, 24 bit digital to analog conversion. That matters when it comes to playing CD’s and getting them to sound really natural. Speaking a CD’s I’ve got one in now and you can see we have a hard drive in this car because we are ripping it right now to that drive, 9.3 gigabyte of user available space so that’s enough to recreate a pretty good size iPod, right? The other thing about the hard drive is it powers the navigation systems and that’s a real delight. Look how fast things happen as I bounce around to enter an address and by the way this is while I’m ripping the disk in the background so we’re multitasking here. And now notice once I’ve got destination under way I’m in my bird’s eye view and when you’re in cities and larger areas you’ll actually get a look at buildings. This is an Infiniti thing that’s not exclusive to them but it’s one of their favorite tricks. And of course with XM, we have XM Nav traffic. You see the indicator is there on road how the flow is going. So this is a well rounded system. The only knock I would give it is it still has a somewhat crude map database in terms of the resolution and the rendering of the map. iPod adapter also included through iPod it which is just going to be working with an iPod and you get to that also under your auxiliary button here which has your hard drive, your Aux input jacks and also live in here. As part of the Nav package you also get the rearview camera that’s not in there with the standard LCD display so you got to go package on that. Bluetooth is in our car but we had to go for a chunky package to get it the premium packages of how you get Bluetooth hands free not ala carte. Now Infiniti and Nissan are known for their 3-1/2 liter V6 but this is one growing up a little as you can tell by the model number on this car. It’s a 3.7 liter V6 which bought them some more horsepower, 330 horse. The torque barely moved 270 foot pounds kind of a little more delta between those and I’m comfortable with but of course it’s a Revver and that’s works. Oh By the way a G37 has what Nissan calls scratch shield paint so I’m going to do it but a tiny scratch in this paint in the clear coat should actually knit and heal they say. It may take a few days as I understand it but it will gradually do it and it’s only for really tiny scratches so don’t go around keying your car to impress your friends how well it works. On the back side of the engine is a 7-speed sport automatic. I beg to differ. Yeah, it’s sporty if you shift it manually and it does give satisfying throttle blitz to match the RPM on downshift but unless you want to sit there and baby sit the gear box you’re stuck with drive. In general it seems that the car is often caught flat footed when you need some oomph which doesn’t make sense given the engine. That motor is a smooth revving jewel and ready to romp but this gearbox just numbs it all up unless you tend the gears one by one. Nissan Atessa all-wheel drive system work out better for us. Basically this car tries to be rear wheel drive all the time but when slip is detected up to 50% of the power can be sent to the front wheels to help out. We are out romping on one of those slick days when it hasn’t rained for a while and the system seemed quite transparent and kept things in place without that remedial intrusion of stability control. An all-wheel drive G37 Coupe starts at almost 40 grand but swallow hard because you still have to get your arms around three rather chunky packages if you want to get all the tech. For studio audio, iPod, Bluetooth hands free, Moonroof and fancy seats, that’s the premium packages of $3000.00. Navigation, live traffic, voice recognition, hard drive media, back up camera, that’s the Nav packages $2200.00 and the tech packages brings you adaptive cruise steerable front headlights, preview breaking and pre-crash seatbelt technology for $1150.00. Now you’re driving a $46,000.00 car.