2014 INFINITI Q50 consumer reviews

My wife and I were in the market for a new car. She has had a Toyata Avalon since 2000 and has been very happy with the car. We were looking for something comparable (including the 2013 Avalon). I have a friend that I hiked through the mountains of Alaska with (on a Boy Scout trip) that happens to work for Nissan. I asked him if he would recommend anything that Nissan sold as comparable to the Avalon. He came back with the Altima and Infiniti. Fired up the search engine and went to Infiniti's site and saw this new model they were calling a Q50. It was love at first sight. Showed it to my wife, and she agreed that it was a terrific looking car. Decided to go out on a Thursday night for dinner at a BBQ place, and remembered there was an Infiniti dealer 5 minutes away. Stopped by and asked if we could do a test drive. They had just unloaded a Q50 Sports Hybrid that we took for a drive. On the way over my wife kept commenting that maybe it was time for her to buy her little red sports car (kids are out of the house, and we don't necessarily need a 4-door sedan). She drove the Q50, and as we were driving home, she stated that it had everything she was looking for when she thought of driving a sports car. We went home and started looking at everything comparable, and realized that the Q50 was the most affordable car in the Hybrid Sports sedan category that we were looking at. Everything else we looked at, we kept coming back to the Q50. Looked at all of the options and colors, and we kept coming back to the car she test drove. Called the dealer back and put a down payment on the car over the phone so they pulled it off the market (they literally kicked a couple out of it that wanted to take it for a test drive). As we were pulling into the dealer's lot, they had her car parked in front off the door (front and center). The salesman had the car turned on, so the running lights were on and my wife literally gasped. I told her, "I think that's your car" and she was thrilled when the salesman got out and said that "This is your car". Had a quick and painless experience doing the paperwork (thanks to a pre-approved loan from our credit union), spent an hour going through options on the car with our salesman and drove it home. Went home to drop off my car and made reservations at a wine bar an hour away (reachable by winding country roads). Had an hour drive where she got to use the paddle shifting on the sports model, and she was in love. I'm 6'2" and I was very comfortable in both the drivers and passenger seat. Not as comfortable in the back seat, but that's not why we bought it. We found the right to be what we were seeking in a sports car. Acceleration was amazing, cruising was comfortable, cornering was terrific (it has a neat meter that shows the G's your pulling around corners). Stereo sounds great (even listening to MP3s). Still learning all of the configurations and options, but what we have found so far, we like. Navigation uses NAVTEQ, but Infiniti has put a nice interface on it that makes it very usable. The put some neat screens (3 different places to view information) that show you if the car is electric, gas or a combination of the two. Both my wife and I found that we adjusted our driving habits to optimize the time the car was spent using the batteries, not gas. I've seen several complaints on forums, etc. complaining about the use of run flat tires, but we didn't think the ride was as bad as the opponents of the run flats want you to believe. I thought the ride was comparable to my 2010 Chevrolet Equinox (which also has 19 inch wheels - although not run flats). Did I mention that acceleration was incredible? We also both enjoyed the steering. I have also seen complaints about the steering (they have electronic steering that de-couples the steering wheel from the wheels. Perhaps it is because we are not sports car enthusiasts, put we didn't have an issue with the steering, and found the ability to pick the type of steering we wanted to be a bonus. Bottom line, we both feel it was a good deal for the level of performance. Highly recommended for a Hybrid, High Performance, Sports Sedan.