The Vehicles Earth

Our new Infiniti long-term test car has been around for a few weeks now - you might have seen it set a Guinness World Record in its first week with us.

We won't regale you with stories of our new hybrid car land speed record here (click here for our blog at the time), but you can watch the video from Santa Pod in our video player below for those who missed out.

So why did we choose to run an M35h on our long-term test fleet? Simple. Infiniti is still a tadpole in Europe's executive ocean - a tiddler which sold just 232 cars to Brits in 2010. But the marque is hellbent on expanding over here and across the EU, to make it a credible premium player like it is in the US.

The chief executive officer of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, told me the plan for his upmarket wing was to quadruple sales to 700,000 a year, taking 10% of global luxury sales. Tellingly, there was no deadline put on this ambition - he's too canny for that - but make no mistake. With the muscle of Renault-Nissan behind this plan, it's not one we'll take lightly.

And that's where CAR's long-term test comes in. We know that plenty of you will scoff at Infiniti as a credible rival to Audi, BMW, Merc or Jag. And so do some at CAR. But remember 1989? When Toyota launched Lexus? Although still selling a tenth the cars Merc does in the UK, Lexus has now become a real player in the executive sector. And that's exactly what Ghosn wants to achieve in Europe with Infiniti, albeit with a more sporting, BMW bent.

So the M's joining us for a longer test to see how it fares. Can it win us over with its style, its luxury, its plain technological cleverness? We're about to find out. I have run BMW 5-series and Jag XFs in my time at CAR, so was deemed the appropriate tester for the job. I'm open minded enough to consider Infiniti a rival, yet know how high standards have to be in this sector.



Ours is Infiniti's first hybrid, a clever system mating the older 302bhp 3.5-litre V6 with a 67bhp electric motor in something they rather grandly call the Infiniti Direct Response Hybrid system. One of the key points of differentiation in Infiniti's hybrid set-up is the use of two clutches to juggle power supply.

It works like this. The first (dry) clutch sits between the V6 and e-motor, allowing the car to V6 to decouple when in EV or regenerative braking mode.  The second (wet) clutch sits in the automatic transmission, sandwiched between the electric motor and the cogset. It essentially replaces a torque converter, making the seven-speeder act a bit like an autoated manual. Infiniti claims it's 10% more efficient as a result.

Speccing our Infiniti M35h was simple. It only comes in one spec - top-dog Premium Luxury - and has absolutely everything. Leather, heated and ventilated seats, electric blinds, the mother of all sat-navs, heated steering wheels... all are standard. As they should be for £46,840. Stay tuned over the next few months for regular updates on our Infiniti hybrid.

By Tim Pollard