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New car reviews » 2010 Infiniti G37 Convertible

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Better than: Nissan 370Z Convertible
But not as good as: Nismo Z
GRM Bang For The Buck Index: 66.48  

Sure, we all love sports cars, but that doesn’t mean our garages should only contain machines with stiff suspensions and radical alignments. Sometimes there’s room for a sporty cruiser—ample power teamed with a willing yet somewhat comfortable chassis. In other words, if the Nissan Z is a bit too much, there’s always the Infiniti G37 Convertible.

The G37 Convertible may seem soft at first blush, but our test car was nicely equipped: six-speed manual box and, for $370 more, R-Spec high-friction brake pads. Power, of course, comes from Nissan’s VQ engine family. Hey, why mess with success?

Other staff views:

JG Pasterjak Production/Art Director:

The G37 is one of my favorite cars. I dare say I like it more than the Z Car with which it shares so much hardware. It’s a proper GT in the mold of the BMW 6 Series, Porsche 928, or Jag XJS.

But chop the roof off, and you kind of lose me.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I usually prefer hard tops to convertibles, but I have nothing against throwing open the top on a nice day to let some nature get in. With the G37, though, the transformation from coupe to roadster is transformative, and not in a good way. The chassis is notably less rigid, pounding and rattling over bumps, and the sight lines suffer from the oddly shaped retractable hardtop. There’s also a lot of driveline lash.

Speaking of which, we almost had a legitimate incident with said top. While demonstrating its origami-like actuation for my dad, the top simply froze half closed, with the roof sticking straight up in the air like a giant sail. Wouldn’t budge either way, and no buttons did anything. We finally freed it by jiggling many of the moving panels, which must have reset a safety switch and allowed the top to close once again. Of course, once we got it closed, we realized the problem in the first place. It had begun to close out of sequence, and was attempting to destroy itself, possibly because it had become ashamed of its inferiority to the coupe. It ended up with two deep nicks on the top that had folded before it was supposed to, a permanent reminder that dad likes its brother best.

If this sounds overly negative, well, maybe it is. The G37 roadster isn’t so much bad as it is disappointing. The coupe is so smooth, fun to drive, handsome and competent, that to hamper so many of those characteristics with one alternate model is rather shocking.

As we would to a 60-year-old stripper, we say to the G37: “Keep your top on. We’ll like you better that way.”

Reader comments:

1. doc_speeder: — Nov 29, 2010 1:28 p.m.
   

   Hmmm, looks nice, hmmm—325hp should be good, hmmm—manual trans is nice. HOLY CRAP 4,100 LBS????

2. 4cylndrfury: — Nov 29, 2010 5:08 p.m.
   

   the convertible is kinda frumpy for a G coupe. I prefer the G35s to be honest. But, considering I DD a G20, Im glad the product line still exists (:))

3. Shaun: — Dec 4, 2010 10:56 p.m.
   

   Nice Pictures.

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