Infiniti Q50 Returns With 420-HP Manual Skyline
Infiniti sold 153,415 vehicles in the United States in 2017 and just 52,846 in 2025, a drop of nearly two-thirds in eight years. The brand’s answer to that collapse is not another crossover. It is a rear-wheel-drive sports sedan with a twin-turbo V6 and an optional manual gearbox, aimed squarely at people who stopped paying attention a decade ago.
Now, Infiniti expects roughly one in ten buyers to choose the stick, and it is building the car anyway. Whether a niche performance sedan can pull a luxury brand back from the edge is the real question here.
Infiniti Has Lost Two-Thirds Of Its American Buyers Since 2017
Infiniti’s best year in the United States came in 2017, when the brand delivered 153,415 vehicles. Sales have slid almost every year since, landing at 52,846 in 2025 after a 9% decline that year alone. That leaves the brand down 65.6% from its peak.
Two SUVs now carry almost everything. The QX60 delivered 30,538 units for the calendar year, up 9.8%, and contributed 58% of total sales. Add the QX80 and the pair represented 84% of calendar-year volume.
Lexus grew 7.1% over the same period, so the problem is not the luxury market itself. Infiniti had already announced it would stop producing the entry-level QX50 and QX55 without obvious replacements. That left the showroom with crossovers and little else.
The brand’s last sedan disappeared from North America when Infiniti committed to an all-SUV lineup. Buyers who wanted a rear-wheel-drive Infiniti with a trunk had nowhere to go.
Infiniti’s stated recovery target is 100,000 units by 2029, supported by launching one new product every year. Hitting that number means nearly doubling 2025 volume in four years, with a lineup that currently leans on two nameplates.
Nissan’s Next Skyline Will Land In America Wearing An Infiniti Badge
Christian Meunier, chairman of Nissan Americas, confirmed in Yokohama that the next Nissan Skyline will be called the Infiniti Q50 in the U.S. market when it arrives in 2027. The Skyline name stays in Japan. America gets the same car wearing an Infiniti badge.
Nissan began exporting the Skyline to the United States in 2002, where it sold as the Infiniti G35. That car became the G37, and the G37 eventually became the Q50. Each one was a Skyline underneath, with different badges and a different name on the window sticker.
The current V37 generation rides on Nissan’s FM platform, first introduced with the V35-series Skyline and the G35 line. FM stands for front-midship, meaning the car’s center of mass does not hang over the front axle centerline. That layout is a big part of why the G35 earned its reputation with enthusiasts.
The V37 is still on sale in Japan as the Nissan Skyline, where a 400R Limited special edition marks the culmination of the generation. Nissan capped it at 400 units and fitted slightly wider 19-inch wheels.
CEO Ivan Espinosa told Nikkei Asia the wraps come off sometime this winter. The American version is reported for the second half of 2027, though some reports place the Japanese launch in 2028 with a simultaneous U.S. release under the Infiniti brand. The timing lines up with the model’s 70th anniversary, since the first Skyline entered production in 1957 under Japan’s Prince Motor Company.
Nissan positions the car between the Z and the GT-R in its performance lineup. That is a narrow gap to fill, and it explains why the Skyline keeps getting described as a driver’s sedan rather than a luxury cruiser.
Nissan Has Already Built The 420-HP Manual This Sedan Needs
The Q50 takes its platform from the Skyline sedan sold in Japan and its engine from the Z sports car — the VR30DDTT, a 3.0-liter twin-turbo V6.
The Z NISMO makes 420 hp and 384 lb-ft from that V6, and it is now available with a six-speed manual or the automatic. Nissan engineered the transmission specifically for the NISMO grade, with an upgraded clutch compared to Z Sport and Performance, and a new shift lever ratio that shortens the throw. Throttle and ignition timing were retuned for the manual as well.
Nissan built that gearbox to handle roughly 20 hp and 34 lb-ft more than the standard Z manual was designed for, and did it in response to demand. The pairing in the headline is not hypothetical hardware.
Infiniti has not published outputs or confirmed a transmission for the new Q50, so the figures here come from reporting rather than a spec sheet.
Automotive News reports the engine could be tuned to produce more than 450 hp, against the 400 hp peak of the outgoing car. Dealers were shown the sedan badged Q50S, with rear-wheel drive.
Infiniti estimates the take rate for the manual will likely be only 10% or so, but that offering it helps restore the brand’s reputation as a bold luxury choice.
Tiago Castro, vice president of Infiniti Americas, does not expect big numbers either. He has called it a niche vehicle and an opportunity vehicle, arguing the brand needs that connection with its customer base.
Manual sedans are close to extinct and what remains includes the Acura Integra, BMW M3, both Cadillac Blackwings, Honda Civic Type R, Hyundai Elantra N, and Volkswagen Jetta GLI. The Kia Stinger and Acura TLX are already gone.
A Z NISMO starts at $67,260, with no price difference between the manual and the automatic. The Q50 is expected to land between $55,000 and $60,000, roughly where the old 400-hp Q50 Red Sport finished.
Nissan Built This Car In 26 Months Instead Of The Usual Five Years
Nissan’s teasers show round taillights that appear to protrude from the rear fascia, Skyline script on the rear fender, the S badge, and vertical daytime running lights. Design chief Alfonso Albaisa says the car draws on the past without being a retro styling exercise, describing the goal as an aggressive, modern design that evokes the proportions of the original. At the Japan Mobility Show he asked for something big, wide and blocky.
Espinosa said the next-generation Skyline is the first model built under Nissan’s new approach, with a development period of 26 months, down from 55 months for the outgoing version. He credits AI and digital tools across the design, testing and manufacturing phases, and Nissan intends to apply the process to 90% of its vehicle programs by fiscal 2026. That also means the car was conceived, engineered and signed off in roughly the time most brands spend on a facelift.
Reports point to an updated version of the existing rear-wheel-drive architecture rather than a clean sheet, which would trace the bones back through the V37 to the V35 of 2001. Nissan has confirmed nothing. Given the company’s finances and the sedan’s limited global reach, carryover underpinnings would surprise nobody, and a layout that old is not automatically a bad one.
A hybrid or e-Power variant has been speculated for the Japanese market, largely on emissions grounds. No electrified version has been confirmed for the United States, and no outputs exist for one. Tightening rules in Japan make some form of electrification likely there, which is a separate question from what Infiniti sells here.
Infiniti Needs 100,000 Buyers, Not 5,000 Enthusiasts
Infiniti is asking a niche transmission in a niche body style to help lift the brand from 52,846 units to 100,000 by 2029, in a lineup where two SUVs already account for 84% of volume.
Nissan classes the Skyline internally as a “Heartbeat” model, meaning a car that matters to how people feel about the brand rather than one expected to sell in big numbers. This is the only sedan resurfacing in Infiniti showrooms while the brand adds four SUVs over five years, two of them body-on-frame. Nissan has also already spent engineering money putting a manual behind the 420 hp tune once, because customers asked for it.
The target buyer is wealthy, over 50 and mostly male, someone who came of age when Infiniti was selling the popular G35 coupe. That is a memory play as much as a product play, and memory is one of the few assets the brand still has.
A 10% take rate can buy Infiniti credibility it has not had in a decade, but it will not fill the showrooms. The Q50 fixes what people think of Infiniti, not what they buy from it.
Sources: Nikkei Asia, Automotive News
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