Infiniti Europe product planning and product marketing manager Nicolas Tschann estimates that there have been more than 2,000 unofficial ‘grey’ imports of the current FX from the US since 2003 – equalled only by the Ford Mustang.
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The brand will continue to chase the “quiet rebels”, the sort of people who have already sought out those unofficial models, because they are looking for something different.
Like the other cars in the range, the next-generation FX has been fine tuned to suit the higher-speed driving conditions found in Europe. This has involved hundreds of changes across the line-up.
Visually the cars are identical to those sold in the USA. “But we’re averaging 400-500 part changes per car – out of an average of 3,500 parts – for Europe,” said Tschann.
Most of the changes involve tuning the suspension and handling. Higher speed of driving has also meant making improvements to the levels of noise, vibration, harshness (NVH) to the extent of using different seals on the doors, for example, to improve high speed wind noise insulation.
Dynamic changes include fitting different shock absorbers, different springs and dynamic dampers to stop vibration coming into the car.
Tschann added: “We have different brakes and brakes pads – we even had to redesign the wheels for Europe just to fit the brakes into them.
“We also focused on perceived quality – we have different carpets which are twice as thick as those for the US cars. We even tuned the colour of the leather to make it look less glossy.”
Early results are promising, he said. “Our first product tests in Europe have been very encouraging. We were driving EX37 in Germany and I am extremely confident that we have a very competent and competitive product.”
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