The Detroit News's view

When Dr. Raymond Bauer was ready to buy his first luxury sedan a few years ago, he bypassed Mercedes-Benz and BMW in favor of a used 1994 Infiniti Q45.

“I wanted something more understated,” said the 34-year-old Grosse Pointe Woods physician and father of four. “I don’t want people gawking at me. I want luxury, but I don’t want to stand out too much in the hospital parking lot.”

We wondered how he would react to the vast changes in Infiniti’s all-new, third-generation 2002 flagship. Call it our version of an automotive second opinion. After we went over the Q, we recruited Bauer, the director of physical medicine and rehabilitation at St. John North Shores Hospital in Harrison Township, for a three-day test drive. He used the same Q45 test car, which had a sticker price of $59,345, for both business and personal errands. It appears to us, from speaking to physicians like Bauer, that Infiniti may have overtaken Buick as the preferred “doctor’s car.”

Bauer shuttled between the Harrison Township hospital and his home base at St. John Hospital and Medical Center on Detroit’s east side. He also used the sedan in his after-hours job as a coach on his daughter’s softball team.

Our test car had three options: an $8,000 premium package that included a DVD-based navigation system, an active damping suspension with selectable sport mode, heated front and rear seats and rear sunshades; $180 full-size spare tire and wheel, and $120 splash guards.

The high-performance Q45 features such advances as a 340-horsepower 4.5-liter V-8 engine and such high-tech touches as a voice-recognition system and a rear-view camera that projects what’s behind the car onto a color monitor on the dashboard.

The 2002 Infiniti Q45 is on sale now at a base price of $50,500.

There was plenty of agreement and some disagreement among the three of us about the banes and blessings of the new Q. We all thought the new styling was sharp and subtle; Bauer said it still met his personal hospital parking-lot test. Even so, it managed to generate envy among his peers.

“They were salivating over the car,” he said.

The new Infiniti has an understated, yet appealing exterior, dominated by seven-lens xenon headlights that look like the business end of a Gatling gun. The unique headlights can be adjusted for height with a control on the dashboard. Because of their wide beam area, fog lights are unnecessary, Infiniti says.

The roofline is sportier than on the old Q45 and the rear almost looks like it was crafted by the Germans, not the Japanese. Despite a longer wheelbase, we all agreed the new version was less roomy and more cockpit-like than the old. The overall length of the Q45 remains the same at 199.6 inches. We were all impressed by unusual features such as power-adjustable rear seats and super safety items, including side air bags and inflatable air curtains. But Dr. Bauer said he wished there was an ai r-bag cutoff switch in the front, a feature you almost never see in a sedan. That feature would have allowed all four of his children, who range in age from one to seven, to ride in the five-passenger sedan at one time.

The bigger engine, which provides 74 more horsepower and 55 more pounds-feet of torque than the previous model, is breathtaking. It’s mated to a five-speed automatic transmission with a manual-shift mode enthusiasts will love. The new powerplant in the Infiniti flagship handily out-muscles such V-8 competitors as the Lexus LS 430, the Mercedes-Benz E430 and the BMW 540i sedans.

But all that performance comes at a price at the gas pump: The new Q45 gets only average gas mileage at 17 in the city and 25 on the highway – better than the BMW, but a shade behind the Lexus and Mercedes.

By the way, that new, beefed-up engine should come with a warning sticker, Bauer said.

“You’d better watch the needle (on the speedometer) because with a r this smooth and fast, you’re in three digits before you know it,” he said. “You don’t realize you’re going 100 miles an hour.”

The Lienerts found the Q45 to be the embodiment of technology overkill. In fact, we were glad somebody with an advanced degree was looking over our shoulders on this one. To us, the optional DVD-based navigation system was confusing, complex and intimidating. Part of the problem was that we couldn’t read the screen in bright sunlight, even after we made adjustments for contrast and brightness.

The standard voice-recognition system, which controls such things as the audio and climate-control system, had trouble understanding even simple commands. Instead of hitting the voice-recognition button on the steering wheel and repeating ourselves incessantly, it would have been much less frustrating to punch a button or swivel a dial the old-fashioned way. Unlike us, Bauer was not intimidated by the high-tech gadgets and didn’t seem to have as many complaints. But he objected to the fact that the 6-disc CD player is mounted in the glove compartment and was disappointed the voice-recognition system wouldn’t allow him to choose a disc or track by number with voice commands.

And while he was thrilled with the idea of the optional RearView Monitor (he ran over his daughter’s bicycle in his driveway last summer), he complained the Q45’s system didn’t work well in the rain.

“All you see are raindrops,” he said. “Your vision is obscured.”

To us, the Q45’s disappointing navigation and climate-control system knocks this otherwise fine offering down to three out of a possible four stars. The doctor was more forgiving. His prognosis: “The new Q45 is going to do well. I think it’s the best value in its class. In fact, I would expect to pay at least $65,000 for this car.”