Infiniti QX65 Revives the FX Name as a Performance Crossover
The Infiniti FX never played it safe. Low-slung, aggressively styled, and tuned to actually reward a driver, it carved out a cult following by refusing to look or feel like every other SUV on the road. Now Infiniti is reaching back to that legacy with the QX65—a new nameplate that draws direct visual and philosophical inspiration from the FX fastback, and the first real signal that the brand remembers what made it interesting.
The QX65 went on sale in May, priced from $53,990 and scaling to roughly $70,000 in fully loaded Autograph trim. According to Infiniti, early customer deliveries are already outpacing internal sales targets. More importantly for the enthusiast crowd, this isn’t a one-off nostalgia badge. The QX65 is the opening move in a five-year plan to launch five new vehicles—a deliberate attempt to rebuild the brand’s identity from the ground up.
The FX Connection Is More Than Skin Deep
Infiniti’s product marketing team is being unusually direct about where the QX65’s design DNA comes from. “If you are an enthusiast of Infiniti [from] way back, you remember the FX,” said Kim Coure, Infiniti’s product specialist for product marketing, speaking at the reveal. “The FX is kind of what started this crossover segment, and Infiniti was the first player in that segment. So the designers used the inspiration of the FX and that fastback design to create the look of this car.”
That fastback silhouette is the most visible callback—the raked roofline and low, wide stance that made the original FX look more like a sport Sedan that had been stretched upward than a traditional utility vehicle. The QX65 carries that proportion forward into a contemporary package. The front fascia takes the design language further with a dramatic grille styled after a bamboo forest in a storm, framed by piano-key daytime running lamps. An exclusive three-layer paint finish embedded with gold-coated glass flakes adds a shimmering depth that shifts under natural light—the kind of detail that signals Infiniti is treating this as a flagship statement, not a volume-play crossover.
What the Interior and Tech Package Tell You About Intent
Inside, the QX65 runs dual 12-inch screens, 64-color ambient lighting, and red leather trim with gold accents on upper trims. Proximity-sensing smart entry automatically unlocks the doors and activates a welcome lighting path as the driver approaches—a small touch, but one that reinforces the premium-experiential pitch.
On the technology side, ProPILOT 2.0 brings hands-free highway driving with automated lane changes and driver monitoring, paired with remote climate control through the MyINFINITI app. These are table-stakes features in the premium midsize crossover segment now, and the QX65 checks them. The more interesting question—one the available sources don’t fully answer yet—is how the suspension tuning and powertrain stack up against the sport-tuned character that defined the original FX. Automotive News reported on the QX65 alongside the Q50S and a 600-hp QX80 Red Sport as part of Infiniti’s performance product push, which suggests the engineering brief isn’t purely comfort-focused. Full powertrain and chassis specs from that report weren’t available at time of publication, and that detail will matter to anyone evaluating whether the QX65 earns the FX comparison on a road course, not just in a design studio.
A Five-Year Strategy, Not a One-Time Nostalgia Play
The broader context here is what separates the QX65 from a simple nameplate revival. Infiniti is framing this as the first vehicle in a five-product, five-year offensive designed to fundamentally reposition the brand in the premium segment. “We are launching five new products over the next five years to really change the brand and really invigorate where we are as a brand for Infiniti,” Coure told Black Enterprise.
For FX loyalists, that’s either reassuring or cautionary, depending on your read. Reassuring because it means the QX65 isn’t an isolated nostalgia experiment—it’s supposed to be the foundation of a renewed Infiniti identity. Cautionary because five-year product plans have a way of shifting before they complete, and the brand has been inconsistent in its enthusiast commitments over the past decade. What’s clear is that Infiniti is betting the QX65 can anchor a comeback in a segment that has only gotten more crowded since the original FX debuted. The early sales numbers suggest there’s an audience ready to believe it. Whether the driving experience justifies the faith is the question that first drives will answer.
For the gearheads who bought an FX because nothing else on the road looked or drove like it, the QX65 is at least asking the right questions. The design philosophy is there. The brand ambition is stated clearly. Now Infiniti has to deliver the part that actually matters—the feel behind the wheel.
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