<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" &amp;quot;We want to know what you think,&amp;quot; said the polite fellows in custody of Infiniti&amp;#039;s recently completed, and still only, Q50 Eau Rouge prototype. This is very flattering to a writer, this implication that my opinion might be relevant to some important decisions in, say, the final suspension tune\u2014or even whether or not to build the car in the first place. I told them I&amp;#039;m the wrong guy to ask about that, since I&amp;#039;m firmly in favor of sticking GT-R engines in everything that Nissan makes, including its forklifts. So, a four-door GT-R? Yes, please. Build that. Infusing a Q50 with GT-R guts isn&amp;#039;t quite as easy as fabbing up some new motor mounts, as I discovered at the Milbrook Proving Grounds in England. The 3.8-liter V-6 itself fits quite nicely, but everything else is sort of an engineering nightmare. The GT-R, it seems, has a much longer nose than the Q50, so the Eau Rouge needed all new front bodywork to accommodate the cooling apparatus for the 560-hp furnace tucked back by the firewall. When I first saw the car, I thought it had some sort of police-style strobe lights behind the grille. It turned out I was looking at the intercoolers, which are tucked in right up front. The drivetrain presents more challenges. In its current setup, the Eau Rouge is running the seven-speed torque-converter automatic from the V-8 Q70, along with the Q70&amp;#039;s all-wheel-drive system. Infiniti asked that we use the paddle shifters to manually change gears, in the interest of transmission preservation. And gear changes were set to take a while\u2014again, with the hopes that this transmission would last long enough to survive the attentions of a few writers turned loose on Millbrook&amp;#039;s Alpine loops.  Until recently, the prototype was running Infiniti&amp;#039;s steer-by-wire system, which was swapped for a conventional electric-assist helm to see how that would work. Hence the steering-system warning light on the dash. It wouldn&amp;#039;t be a prototype without a few constantly illuminated warning lights. The car was also supposed to have a new Quaife limited-slip rear differential, since Infiniti quickly concluded that open diffs weren&amp;#039;t going to cut it with 560 horsepower, all-wheel-drive or not. I say &amp;quot;supposed to&amp;quot; because I don&amp;#039;t think the Quaife was on board. I draw this conclusion based on the fact that I kept lighting up the inside rear tire coming out of one particular corner. And, to paraphrase Mona Lisa Vito from My Cousin Vinny, you can&amp;#039;t make those marks with positraction. But you can&amp;#039;t judge a car like this the way you would a production car, or even a development mule. This is not intended to be the last word on Eau Rouge setup, although they&amp;#039;d do well to keep the suspension\u2014with new adjustable coil-overs up front\u2014right where it is. It strikes a great balance between compliance and poise, which is appropriate to the four-door audience. No matter how unholy fast this thing is in a straight line, sedan buyers probably don&amp;#039;t want their innards vibrated on the GT-R frequency.      So, the track: The loop is about 3 miles and it&amp;#039;s designed not for enjoyment but to torment cars into revealing their weaknesses. There are a few sections where a brake-tap is mandatory to prevent serious air, as on the Jaguar Corner, so named because it sent a Jaguar airborne into some trees. And the section named Ski Jump is self-explanatory. As for runoff, there are a generous few inches of it here and there, right before the guardrail. Now let&amp;#039;s go drive that priceless prototype! Looking out over the hood, with its GT-R-style vents, you can fool yourself into thinking you&amp;#039;re in Nissan&amp;#039;s supercar rather than Infiniti&amp;#039;s possible flagship sedan. Ditto when you roll on the throttle and get a real taste of the 3.8&amp;#039;s talents\u2014that signature intake whoosh paired with brutal acceleration tells your brain this is a GT-R. It didn&amp;#039;t always seem to release full power\u2014either due to traction control or maybe torque modulation in the name of transmission survival\u2014but when it did it scrolled the scenery as hard as you&amp;#039;d expect. So, the power was there. Putting it down is still a work in progress, I think. The Q70&amp;#039;s all-wheel-drive system isn&amp;#039;t exactly performance oriented, so the Eau Rouge sends about 50 percent of its power to the front end. A rear torque bias seems like a must for a car like this.   The tires are another area that might require some tinkering. They&amp;#039;re 255s all the way around. A square setup is great for snubbing understeer\u2014see, &amp;quot;Z28, Camaro&amp;quot;\u2014but a 4,000-pound car with 560 hp probably needs wider rubber than that, at least at the back. The Eau Rouge had wonderful agility, with instant turn-in, but I think that might be an artifact of the probably open diff along with the relative lack of grip at the rear end. But that&amp;#039;s the kind of thing they&amp;#039;d sort out over the next 18 months or so, should this car go to production. My takeaway: please retain that agility, but add some ultimate grip. Plus, big, wide tires look cool.  I imagine that in its production from, the Eau Rouge will have a more sophisticated AWD system, a limited-slip rear end, wider tires and possibly some sort of brake-based torque vectoring, which is easy enough to add and can work wonders on all-wheel-drive cars. They should keep the great Recaros, keep the GT-R brakes, keep the suspension tune and definitely keep the GT-R V-6 (both the Q70 V-8 and a supercharged 3.7 V-6 were considered).  And that, Infiniti, is my valuable, valuable input. Here&amp;#039;s to hoping that, come the 2016 model year, Infiniti&amp;#039;s first real superstar is more than just a prototype. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a10961/what-happens-when-you-drop-godzillas-guts-into-an-infiniti-17019670/>