Slick GT-R Lite

Infiniti’s twin-turbo 400bhp 3-litre V6 coupe looks great and goes like a gentler Godzilla wearing a comfortable business suit.

- David Ting

NISSAN’S GT-R is a performance monster that’s overly powerful, blazingly fast and resolutely sporty. It has a two-door body with a highly tuned twin-turbo V6 engine. And the car is made carefully in the company’s Tochigi factory.

Like the GT-R, the new Infiniti Q60 is also a coupe carefully made in Tochigi and has a souped-up V6 engine with a pair of turbos.

But unlike the GT-R, the Q60 isn’t overly powerful, faster than a speeding bullet train and single-mindedly sporty.

Instead, the two-door Infiniti offers invigorating and yet not intimidating performance, gift wrapped in a stylish package.

The exterior looks really good – arguably better than the Lexus RC (the Q60’s closest competitor) and definitely neater, with fewer fussy design details. It’s also aerodynamically cleaner, with a drag coefficient of 0.28 versus the RC’s 0.30.

The Q60’s most flattering paint job is Dynamic Sunstone Red, with the top-of-the-line Red Sport variant (tested here) adding red-coloured brake callipers. Even with less racy paint work, the styling retains its attractive balance of elegance and aggression.

The Q60’s dashboard, displays and switches are identical to the Q50 saloon’s, and so are the front seats, which provide superb suppleness for my posterior but average sideways support for my thighs and torso.

Only some of the cockpit details are specific to the Q60, such as the stitching on the instrument panel and the genuine carbon fibre trim around the satellite navigation panel.

The interior materials and how they’re assembled are generally of a high standard, but the Infiniti’s Nissan bits, such as the key and ignition push-button, are more noticeable than, say, the Toyota items in a Lexus.