Tested: The 2024 Infiniti Q50 Red Sport AWD Is Frozen in Time

Infiniti’s Q50 sedan has all the hallmarks of a car about to be canceled. Infiniti introduced the Q50 a little more than a decade ago, and in recent years the company stripped away several features, including the hybrid and four-cylinder powertrains and the controversial steer-by-wire system. Such paring down is usually a sign that extinction is not far off, yet the Q50 perseveres as the last non-SUV in Infiniti’s lineup, presumably killing time until the new electric sedan shows up sooner than later. Is the Q50 still relevant? We decided to set up our timing gear and see how this performance sedan dances.

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Modern Looks Outside, Not In

We’ll say this for the 2024 Infiniti Q50: A decade after its introduction, it still looks good, at least on the outside. Its curvy sheetmetal is muscular and attractive, telegraphing both sport and luxury. While many vehicles only offer color palettes of safe grays, Infiniti offers a narrow but vibrant selection of paint colors, including blue and red, and the Q50 looks good in all of them.

Inside, though, the Infiniti Q50 is a time capsule. There’s nothing wrong with the materials or styling, but the two small, vertically stacked screens look awkward and dated (and they weren’t exactly cutting edge when the Q50 first appeared), even more so when running Apple Car Play or Android Auto on the top screen and Infiniti’s old-school display on the bottom screen. The only thing that could make the infotainment system look more dated would be a CD player. ... Oh, wait, the Q50 does have a CD player.

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Performance of a Certain Age

Motivation comes from a 3.0-liter twin-turbo V-6 introduced to the Q50 in 2016 and now starring in the Nissan Z sports car. Base-model Q50s are rated for 300 hp and 295 lb-ft of torque, while the 2024 Infiniti Q50 Red Sport version we tested delivers 400 hp and 350 lb-ft of torque, same as it did seven years ago. A seven-speed automatic is standard, and buyers can choose from rear- or all-wheel drive; our test car had the latter.

In our instrumented testing, the Q50 scampered to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds, a decent enough number in 2016, perhaps, and good enough to win a few modern-day traffic-light rallies. Be ready on the accelerator, though; we noticed a slight hesitation—turbo lag, perhaps?—before the Q50 really started to boogie. Still, among performance sedans, that number makes the Q50 a fading star: In our testing, the BMW M340i with 382 hp and all-wheel drive got to 60 in 3.8 seconds, while the 503-hp BMW M3 did it in three seconds flat. Same story for the quarter mile: The Q50’s 13.4-second time (with a 105-mph trap speed) will shut down all but the most potent of fire-breathing 1960s muscle cars, but the M340i gets there 1.1 seconds quicker, and by the time the Q50 arrives the M3 has had 2.3 seconds to cool down.

Our braking test told a similar story. The 2024 Infiniti Q50 Red Sport stopped from 60 mph in 123 feet, and it was remarkably consistent; three of our four test stops were precisely the same distance (one stop was 3 feet longer). That’s a good figure among average cars, but the aforementioned BMWs—oh, those pesky, pesky BMWs!—stopped about 20 feet shorter.

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Struggles With our Handling Tests

Getting the Q50 around our figure-eight handling course was frustrating. The engine was eager, but the transmission was temperamental. Sometimes it would downshift as we slowed to turn. Sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes it would kick down as we powered onto the straights. Sometimes it wouldn’t. The brake pedal was difficult to modulate, almost digital in its feel, and it was hard to find the threshold where ABS kicked in. Worse yet, when we did trigger the antilock system, it didn’t stop chattering even after we released the pedal.

The steering committed the sin of substituting heft for feel, with too much of the former and too little of the latter. Turn-in felt strangely sticky, too. At least the all-wheel drive did its job, letting us mat the throttle well before the exit cone. No power-sliding here; leave that to the rear-drive Q50.

Our results: 25.5 seconds around the figure-eight course at an average of 0.73 g, while lateral grip on the circular skidpad averaged 0.86 g. Those aren’t spectacular numbers, but they’re about what you’d expect given the “ultra-high performance” all-season run-flats the car is saddled with … er, sorry, equipped with. Still, guess which pesky 382-hp German sport sedan circled the figure eight in 25.0 seconds and pulled 0.92 g on the skidpad? We won’t say the name, but its initials are “B” and “MW.”

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Is There a Good Reason to Consider the Infiniti Q50?

All in all, it wasn’t a very good day at the track for the 2024 Infiniti Q50 Red Sport. Blame the car’s age; what was considered decent performance in the mid-teens simply isn’t very good by the standards of the mid-2020s. Worse yet, the Q50’s $60,000-or-so base price is about the same as the 2024 BMW M340i. (That said, our Q50 AWD’s as-tested price of $63,553 is a bargain compared to the $70,020 M340i we had on the track.) 

Still, it’s not all bad; the Infiniti Q50 was a decent car in 2014, and it remains a good car today. Performance may no longer be its strong suit judged by modern standards, but it’s still attractive, built well, nicely appointed, and comfortable to drive. It’s just a little behind the times … well, OK, it’s a lot behind the times. If nothing else, though, the Q50 will give you a good excuse to dust off your CD of the Frozen soundtrack. Let it go!