While Nissan's luxury sister brand Infiniti hasn't been a thing in New Zealand for a couple of years now, the marque continues to sell a range of crossovers around the globe.
It doesn't come as much of a surprise, but a recent report confirmed that the Q60 Project Black S is no more, which was set to be a joint venture between Infiniti, and the Renault Formula 1 team.
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The tech-heavy coupe was set to make use of a twin e-tubo V6, that worked alongside a dual-hybrid power train. The total power figure was set to sit somewhere in the region of 400kW.
Just like modern F1 cars, it was set to make use of a KERS system that would harvest braking energy, and then use it to boost power and torque. In theory, this would leave the Q60 with EV-like acceleration with zero lag.
As you'd expect from a car with this sort of tech, performance was impressive at four seconds to 100km/h, and a top speed of 245km/h.
But since Infiniti released the first prototype back in 2017, not only has the brand dropped all association with Formula 1, but the Renault team has also been changed to Alpine.
Unsurprisingly, Infiniti isn't overly upset about the Black S' demise, with executives expressing interest in building more crossovers rather than performance cars.
“We’re not really in the racing business,” Ed Lennon, the Infiniti National Dealer Advisory Board chairman, told Automotive News. “I would much rather see something like the QX60 [crossover]. That’s a volume vehicle, that’s where this company needs to go.”
With attitudes like this from the brand's big wigs, we doubt that we'll ever see another race-inspired model come from Infiniti, but with Lexus still building V8s, it's not too much of a loss.