Infiniti Drops Final Sedan in Lineup

Infiniti announced a series of changes to its 2025 lineup this week, including confirmation that the Q50 sedan would be discontinued this year. While we already basically knew this would be the case, the 2024 Infiniti Q50 will be the final model year — making the brand yet another company selling nothing but crossovers and SUVs.

Sales of the Infiniti Q50 had also been on the decline for years. The model saw 44,007 U.S. deliveries in 2016. But that number declined to a paltry 6,201 by 2023.

Part of that is due to the vehicle’s age. Production of the Q50 commenced in 2013, with deliveries commencing the following years. Despite seeing some performance updates between then and now, it lacks a lot of the modern technologies that automakers are obsessed with these days.

Your author would suggest that this should make the vehicle even more desirable considering how consumer surveys routinely show how fed up people are with touchscreens and modern UX. Truth be told, the base Q50 was already more engaging to drive with the 300-horsepower V6 than most SUVs. The Red Sport 400 raised that number to 400 horsepower, though retained the very smooth and enjoyable 7-speed automatic. There was, quite frankly, a lot for enthusiasts to like about the vehicle.

But it was an old model and automakers rarely keep anything in production for more than a few years. Take the Dodge Charger, as an example. It was enjoying sales figures the Q50 could have only dreamed of right up until it’s final year. But Stellantis still deemed it insufficiently modern and is now launching a revamped version that utilizes a smaller, more complicated engine or entirely electric powertrain.

The only real difference is that Dodge was very clearly trying to sell as many Chargers as possible until the assembly line shut down, whereas I’ve heard rumors that getting Nissan to allocate Q50 sedans was sometimes made intentionally tricky. We’ll likely never know for certain if that was the case, but Infiniti clearly wasn’t going out of its way to advertise the model in its later years.

Automakers have been trying to exploit U.S. regulatory loopholes, as emission requirements have become increasingly strict. In 2011, the U.S. government revised corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards to incorporate a vehicle’s size based on its wheelbase and track width. Vehicles considered SUVs and pickups were also given additional leeway, effectively encouraging every manufacturer vying to sell products inside America to prioritize those vehicle types over sedans.

Ironically, it was the United States’ own regulatory standards that resulted in automakers pivoting toward increasingly large and inefficient models. Sedans may traditionally be lighter and more fuel efficient than other vehicle types. But sporting variants equipped with larger engines can create additional compliance issues for automakers, who have already realized that SUVs tend to yield higher profit margins anyway.

This also makes any future Infiniti sedans easier to anticipate. The brand’s most recent prototype to feature four doors, that wasn’t an SUV, was the Vision Qe concept. Handsome, the vehicle was said to “represent a vision of Infiniti’s electrified future.” It seems likely that any hypothetical successor to the Q50 would follow a similar trajectory to Dodge’s Charger. It will be promoted as an all-electric product, with there being a chance that there might be a combustion variant utilizing a smaller powertrain than its predecessor.

That said, considering the brand’s declining market share over the last two decades, there’s also a chance that we might never see another sedan wearing the Infiniti badge. This isn’t even a condemnation of the company. North America simply has seen the financial demographic prone toward buying entry level luxury vehicles evaporate these last few decades. When the average allegedly cannot afford to purchase even the most budget oriented automobiles, they’re certainly not going to start shopping upmarket at Infiniti.

[Images: Infiniti]

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