The Ludicrous Infiniti QX80 Track Spec Is Actually Going Into Production

Back in the summertime, at the annual celebration of automotive excess that is Monterey Car Week, Nissan’s oft-forgettable luxury spinoff Infiniti showed off a couple of concepts based on the QX80, an enormous, posh-ified version of the Nissan Patrol aimed squarely at the US market. One was the overland-ready Terrain Spec, and the other the 650bhp performance-oriented Track Spec.

Now, Infiniti’s confirmed it’s actually going to build one of them, and not necessarily the one you think. Speaking to Road & Track, Infiniti’s chief product and planning officer Ponz Pandikuthira confirmed that the brand intends to put something resembling the Track Spec into production.

Infiniti doesn’t exactly have much of a performance heritage, although it did come tantalisingly close to producing the Q50 Eau Rouge, a BMW M5 rival with a Nissan GT-R drivetrain. Clearly, it wants to change that, although using the gargantuan QX80 as a starting point seems at first like an odd choice.

There is a jumping off point, though. The QX80 is essentially a luxury version of the Nissan Patrol (known in the US as the Armada), which received a hot Nismo version earlier this year. Using a 3.5-litre twin-turbo V6, it makes 495bhp in Patrol form in the Middle East and a slightly detuned 460bhp as the North American-market Armada.

A version of that engine already powers the standard QX80, and the Track Spec concept featured it too, albeit boosted to an altogether loftier 650bhp. Whether we’ll see a production version hit quite those heights remains to be seen, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see it eclipse the Patrol/Armada Nismo’s figures.

It’s not the only enthusiast-geared car Infiniti apparently has in the works. Rumour has it that a next-generation version of the Q50 saloon – itself a rebadging of the latest Nissan Skyline – is in the works, which, against all odds, is set to go back to basics with the option of a manual gearbox. It's all part of a potential launch of an M/AMG/RS-rivalling performance brand, per Automotive News.

Of course, neither of these cars are likely to come to Europe in any form, Infiniti’s brief dalliance with this market having ended some years ago. But if it’s a sign of more performance cars coming from the Nissan company as a whole, then it can only be positive. Now, if Infiniti can just work out a way of building that 1000bhp GT-R-powered QX80 from SEMA, too…