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Nissan Motor Corp. needs a home run. But the company keeps bunting with no one on base.

The latest evidence of that too-little, too-late strategy is the 1999 Infiniti G20t sedan. Nissan calls it “the fun-to-drive luxury sedan for the up-and-coming.” By that, I assume the company thinks its G20t is especially attractive to the young and affluent — those Generation Xers who put aside punk-rock hairdos and raves in favor of pin-striped suits and business meetings.

Nissan had better think again.

The new G20t is a solidly decent car. But it attracts little attention. It is simply another car, to use Nissan’s words, that “hints at a European design” at a time when well-off Generation Xers are buying genuine European cars such as the BMW 3-Series, Audi’s A4 and A6, the Mercedes-Benz C-Class, and almost everything that Volkswagen is rolling out, including the new Beetle, the Jetta and the hot-selling Passat sedan.

The Infiniti G20t, though well executed, isn’t good enough to make Nissan a winner in that league. I come to this conclusion sadly, reluctantly. I like Nissan. No other Japanese car company has done as much as Nissan to help black kids in America’s inner cities. No other Japanese car company has been as aggressive as Nissan in pursuing and promoting minority employees. That kind of record speaks to my black American soul. I want Nissan to win.

But the bottom line is that Nissan is a car company, not a social service agency. And if it wants to survive, it has to compete as a car company in an industry crowded with aggressive, competent, imaginative rivals. That means Nissan has to come out with cars that are more than just good. It has to field some in-your-face, out-of-the-park big hitters. It has to come up with cars so bold and exciting — both to look at and to drive — that no one in the marketplace would dare ignore them.

Nissan can’t achieve that lofty goal by being content to produce a car that “hints at a European design.” That approach indicates that Nissan is missing the point. For example, Peugeot is European. But Peugeot could never sell squat in the United States. The same goes for Fiat and Sterling and a host of other European car companies that tried and failed to make a run of it in this country.

On the other hand, the Volkswagen Passat and Beetle aren’t successful because they’re European. They’re strong sellers because they are superior cars offered at what the marketplace deems reasonable prices. They have punch. They get the heart pumping. People look at the Beetle and go “Wow!” They smile and brag about the performance of their Passats.

By comparison, the 1999 G20t didn’t make me go “Wow!” once. The car is so pedestrian in exterior design that I lost it in shopping-center parking lots several times. My wife sat in it and said absolutely nothing. On a third trip, I begged her for a comment. “It’s nothing special. It’s just a car,” she said.

I took the G20t to some young folks with we ll-paying professional jobs. They looked at it, sat in it, rode in it — and unanimously declared it boring, just four wheels and a motor with leather seats.

The 1999 Infiniti G20 is the second generation of a car introduced in North America in 1991. The G20t, the so-called touring model, is the top of the G20 line.

The problem is this: Like its predecessor, the new G20 is a front-wheel-drive, four-cylinder affair that feels and looks more like a well-done economy car than it does a luxury ride.

The G20’s 2-liter, 16-valve aluminum-block engine is designed to pump out 140 horsepower at 6,400 rpm and produce 132 pound-feet of torque at 4,800 rpm — again, a good but not terribly daunting performance. The engine is mated to a standard five-speed manual transmission. An electronically controlled four-speed automatic is optional.

The G20 is a tightly and rightly built car. But it comes with a pathetically lackluster interior that seems borrowed from a Toyota Cor olla. The i nsertion of optional leather seats only highlights the economy-car feel. It’s sort of like putting gold trim on a Hyundai.

1999 Infiniti G20t

Complaints: Enough said.

Praise: Well built, well executed. Durable. Easy to drive.

Head-turning quotient: Turned absolutely nothing. Zilch. Not a single hit in a week’s worth of exposure.

Ride, acceleration and handling: A triumvirate of decency. Nothing bad. Nothing exceptional. Standard brakes are power four-wheel discs with antilock backup. Excellent braking.

Safety: Dual front air bags and front side-impact bags; side-impact barrier reinforcements; child-safety rear-door locks and anchors for child-safety seats (three in rear seat); automatic-tensioning seat belts; 5-mph bumpers front and rear; front and rear crumple zones.

Capacities: Seats five and carries 14.2 cubic feet of cargo.

Mileage: About 27 miles per gallon, mostly highway. Tank holds 15.9 gallons of recommended regular unleaded gasoline. Estimated range is 416 miles.

Sound system: Six-speaker AM-FM stereo radio and cassette with CD player. Bose 100-watt system. Excellent.

Price: Infiniti has not announced the price for the G20t. It is expected to be in the mid- to upper-20s.

Purse-strings note: The G20t is surrounded by worthy competitors. Shop around to get the best deal.