Infiniti Might Stop Being Cowards And Build The Fun Cars

Am I going to write about Infiniti two days in a row on The Morning Dump? To me, that’s preposterous. IPL, GT-R, Nismos… things of that nature. This is good news, however. Maybe great news.

The guy in charge of making us care about Infiniti again is out here talking about seriously upping horsepower, and I am 900% here for it, especially after bagging hard on the brand yesterday. You know who else is overdelivering? Xiaomi. Apple said it was too hard to build a car, and Xiaomi was like: Hold my Snow Beer.

Volkswagen needs money, so it might sell its turbine and engine business to the Porsche family. Wait, you mean the Porsche family that owns a large chunk of Volkswagen? That’s convenient! Less convenient is Akio Toyoda, who did a thing that would have him launched into the grays here. Lemme see if I can do this without setting off my own storm.

‘How Do You Deliver 50% More Horsepower With Reliability?’

It was literally yesterday when I was saying that Infiniti is so boring and bland that I already thought it had a Nissan Rogue derivative. You know what? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Infiniti is going to do the damn thing.

I am nervous, however. I have been down this road before. Back in 2014, while I was at Jalopnik, the Infiniti brand reached out to see if we wanted to race Sebastian Vettel at Spa in a hopped-up Q50 called the “Eau Rouge,” which featured a GT-R powertrain. None of us were that fast, so we sent contributor and NASCAR driver Parker Kligerman with Mike Spinelli in tow. Please enjoy this official Infiniti photo of Parker doing an excellent white guy overbite:

Also, there’s a Chinese snooker player there as the third racer for some reason.

Technically, Parker was faster around the track than Vettel. Some of this has to do with timing (it started to rain), but they ended up handing Vettel the win because of some silly social media “boost” that he got. You read all about it here, but the bottom line is that Infiniti never built the car, which sucks!

So I am skeptical whenever I hear Infiniti promise performance, even if that used to be one of the brand’s major differentiators. There was that crazy 1,000-horsepower QX80 for SEMA, but I sort of overlooked it given my history.

Maybe that’s my problem. There’s an interview with Nissan Americas product planning chief Ponz Pandikuthira and Americas VP Tiago Castro in Automotive News, and he’s saying all the right things:

The mandate is to deliver “true performance,” not incremental under-the-hood upgrades, Infiniti Americas Vice President Tiago Castro said.

“It’s easy just to do another 20 hp, but how do you deliver 50 percent more horsepower with reliability?” Castro said.

Less about reliability, and more about power, please:

Infiniti has flirted with this idea before. The short-lived Infiniti Performance Line debuted nearly 15 years ago with a 348-hp G coupe that featured a rear spoiler, chrome exhaust tips and red-stitched leather seats.

“IPL launched with the same vision, but then the car had only 18 hp more,” Castro said. “What I don’t want to do is exactly that.”

Don’t get too wild, here, as Castro says later in the article that a GT-R-powered QX80 probably isn’t in the cards (although they did it with the Juke!). It’ll be more like the Track Spec concept, which is somewhat similar to the Armada NISMO. While a 1,000-horsepower QX80 would be fun, I’m not averse to a 600-horsepower version.

Do weird things, build powerful things, make me care again!

Xiaomi Thinks It’ll Deliver 400,000 Vehicles, Which Is A Lot

Doing some quick math here, the Volvo/Geely-backed electric automaker Polestar hasn’t delivered 400,000 EVs in its entire existence. Electronics company/carmaker Xiaomi is going to do 400,000 this year.

Per Bloomberg:

Beijing-based Xiaomi has consistently outperformed expectations with its foray into carmaking, going from its first sale early last year to drawing a profit from the venture in the most recent quarter. The EV and artificial intelligence division posted 700 million yuan ($98 million) in profit, breaking even roughly 19 months after the launch of its debut SU7 electric sedan last year.

Helping sales is the company’s new YU7 SUV, which is a super-fast, slinky crossover. While the company has had safety issues, this is the same automaker that made the car Ford CEO Jim Farley didn’t want to give up.

Porsche Might Buy Volkswagen Subsidiary

Volkswagen is running out of easy cash, so the company is looking to sell some subsidiaries. A big one is a company called Everllence, formerly MAN Energy Solutions, but known to all decent people as MAN Diesel & Turbo. Everllence is a strange, meaningless name, and the change is a pretty obvious sign that the company is thinking of spinning it off.

What kind of buyer is there for a company that makes big diesel engines for marine and industrial applications? Manager Magazin has a good guess who might be buying it: The Porsche family. Yes, the same Porsche family that historically owns a big chunk of VW, and it’s all very weird:

The situation is unique: Porsche SE, led by family heads Wolfgang Porsche (82) and Hans Michel Piëch (83), is the dominant shareholder of the Volkswagen Group, holding 53.3 percent of the ordinary shares. The families would thus secure a lucrative stake in their own empire. Furthermore, there are personnel overlaps: As CEO of Porsche SE, Hans Dieter Pötsch (74) represents the bidder in this case – but he also chairs the Volkswagen supervisory board. To avoid violating compliance regulations, the transaction would have to be structured very carefully.

The board of directors of Porsche SE isn’t even in agreement. Lutz Meschke (59) is responsible for the smaller holdings and is considered a staunch advocate of new investments. Johannes Lattwein (52) is responsible for finances . He wants to keep the money together and secure the holding company in case the financial problems at Volkswagen and Porsche AG worsen. The differences and mistrust between the two are becoming increasingly apparent; this is heading for a major clash, according to sources close to the company. Meschke was CFO of Porsche AG until the spring, but lost the position after disputes with CEO Oliver Blume (57). His family allowed him to retain his position as board member responsible for investments at their holding company, Porsche SE.

This is getting exciting!

Akio Toyoda, C’mon

Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda was spotted in full MAGA gear at a NASCAR event in Japan
byu/Prestigious_Net_8356 injapannews

I’ve been specifically not writing about this because I don’t want to set off a whole thing. People have strong feelings about politics, myself included, but our whole thing is that we want to be a place where people with different views can come together and celebrate cars. There’s just not enough common spaces left on the Internet.

We’ve gone so far as to automoderate a bunch of words so we can at least review comments to make sure no one is just here to cause trouble. Are we doing a good job? I don’t know. It’s hard.

What doesn’t help is the Chairman of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, running around a NASCAR event in Japan last weekend (the event seems like it was awesome, btw) wearing Trump/Vance/MAGA gear. As with Elon Musk, he’s totally allowed to do whatever he wants, but it’s not necessarily a great look when a large percentage of your customers and probably many of your employees may have contrary feelings. Just ask Elon Musk.

I also want to warn against entirely projecting your political constructs onto leaders from other countries. It always makes me laugh when people define certain Eastern European politicians as “conservative” and then are shocked to find out that those same politicians are also pro-choice, pro-environment, and pro-labor. This is to say that Toyoda is an extraordinarily wealthy businessperson who seems to have been cozy with late Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, so he’s probably conservative, but I don’t think he has an opinion on, like, Texas redistricting.

There’s not a lot of great reporting on how this happened, but my guess is that the U.S. Ambassador, who was there, gave him the shirt and hat, and he put it on as a gesture of friendship, or sucking up, or whatever. Maybe he special-ordered it himself, I really don’t know.

Either way, I went looking around a bunch of Toyota press accounts that would usually include pictures of the event and found nothing. Clearly, someone at Toyota also realizes this was a questionable decision. I think Automotive News had a good op-ed that sums up my feelings:

Celebrating any active political U.S. leader is not the same as celebrating America — it never has been.

It’s a distinction Toyoda and his advisers would be well served to learn moving forward.

Looking forward to Akio visiting Vermont and wearing a Bernie Bro hat just to throw us all off.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

I need to save the vibes, and there’s one surefire arrow in my quiver I’ve been saving, and it’s “Chattahoochee” by the great Alan Jackson. If this doesn’t improve your mood, then you are broken.

The Big Question

What’s the coolest car that never got built?

Top photo: Infiniti