Meaty, mighty, money-saving M.(Infiniti M45 automobile)(Evaluation)

On paper it looks like a great deal. You get a powerful Q45 for about 10 grand less. At the sticker price that most other schlubs would fork over for a V6-powered competitor, you, Mr. Dealfinder, can be tooling around town in a 340-horsepower Infiniti M45 with a big, honkin' V8. You'll be out-draggin' 'em all at the stoplights-and with a sticker price in the low-$40,000 range, you have $10,000 in gas money to spend.

``Okay, wise guy,'' you say, ``I didn't get to be Mr. (or Ms.) Big by believing everything I read in the papers. What's the catch?''

The catch is you have to take it in this car body, a semi-slab-sided, Japan-market Cedric/Gloria with design charm reminiscent of a late '70s Ford LTD, just how they like 'em in the Japanese domestic market. But that's the only catch. And you might even like that exterior, since design is pretty subjective and since you won't exactly see M45s coming and going all day.

The rest of the deal is straight. The engine and transmission, chassis, suspension, platform and a whole bunch of other stuff is part-for-part from the flagship Q45. So, on balance, it is a great deal.

Why is Infiniti doing it? The official word is the M45 fills the $20,000 gaping hole in the Infiniti lineup between the G35/I35 and the Q45. The G35 starts at $27,100 and the I35 at $28,750. The base Q is $50,500 and most Q45 transaction prices are a couple thou above that. It was indeed a big hole and the Cedric/Gloria was just sitting over there in the home market waiting to fill it. The M45 made perfect sense.

There was also the fact that customers weren't exactly duking it out in dealer showrooms to get at Q45s. By the end of calendar year 2001, Infiniti had sold less than 6000 Q45s. After six months in 2002, Q sales are down from even that-30 percent fewer than 2001. The competition, meanwhile, was going strong. Lexus was selling almost six times as many LS 430s in '01 and twice as many GS 300s as Infiniti was selling Qs; Audi almost five times as many A6s; BMW almost three times as many 7 Series. Even Acura moved twice as many RLs out the door as Infiniti moved Qs. So the Q lacked sales momentum. Why not repackage it and sell it for less?

As the Japanese don't say, ``Voila, M45.''