We appreciate Infiniti’s forthrightness in announcing a sixth model for the American market. The company is using the occasion of the New York auto show to tease us with a sketch of the seven-passenger JX crossover, while a concept will appear at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in August and the production version will bow at the L.A. auto show this November. Glad that’s out of the way. The rest of the details, however, are still murky.
To wit, the watercolors-meet-blur-tool rendering shows a metal-trimmed sidelight opening that sweeps back into a kinked D-pillar, a treatment very similar to the one on Infiniti’s recent Etherea concept. (That same kinky look was also used on Infiniti’s too-hot-for-production Essence concept.) Muscular fenders and flowing body lines match the rest of Infiniti’s current lineup, save for the more blocky QX56. Fortunately for the JX, by way of its two-box shape, it doesn’t appear to suffer from the which-way-is-it-heading problem the Etherea did.
There’s no official word on what will motivate the JX, but trademark filings we uncovered last summer provide some hints. Infiniti has secured the rights to the JX20, JX25, JX25h, and JX30 badges, suggesting a lineup that could include four-cylinders, V-6s, and a hybrid. It’s doubtful that all four would be offered, with the more likely explanation being Infiniti’s desire to safeguard the alphanumerics for possible future use. The hybrid, however, is almost a guarantee, if not from the start.
An all-wheel-drive option also is a given, although the JX may be the first Infiniti in a long while to be based on a front-drive architecture instead of a rear-drive platform. If that is in fact the case, we won’t be surprised if Nissan gets its own version of the large crossover.
We also won’t be surprised when the expected concept looks nearly production-ready. If we don’t know much about the JX, at least we know exactly when we’ll know more. Look for more details at Pebble this summer. View Photo Gallery:
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