Infiniti’s 1930s-Inspired Prototype nine Concept Is Superb, News, Car and Driver, Car and Driver Blog
The Assets Electrified: Infiniti’s 1930s-Inspired Prototype nine Concept Is Good
Earlier in the week, Infiniti taunted its Prototype nine retro racer that is set to bow at Pebble Beach. Nissan’s luxury unit has now released more pics and details, and the more colloquially inclined among us breathed quiet exclamations to the effect of: “Dag, bro. That’s a mo’ flippin’ machine.”
Underneath its front-engined Grand Prix racer skin, the nine carries what Infiniti terms a “prototype electrified motor and battery from Nissan Corporation’s Advanced Powertrain Department,” evidently based on the next-generation Leaf powertrain. The motor makes one hundred forty eight horsepower and two hundred thirty six lb-ft of torque, permitting the low-slung silver machine to hit sixty in Five.Five seconds and top out at almost one hundred six mph. And while the powertrain may make it the most relevant aspect of the car to modern buyers, it’s hardly the point of the thing. Experiencing it is the point. It’s a distillation of late 1930s cues and configurations, most of which lasted into the late 1950s, until Cooper’s lightweight, mid-engined machines switched the way European racing machines in the top rank were constructed.
While some of the Axis powers dove straightaway back into motorsport once the post-conflict chaos of World War II began to clear, with Enzo Ferrari’s very first cars appearing in one thousand nine hundred forty seven and Mercedes reentering the fray in the early 1950s, it wasn’t until the 1960s that Japan began to challenge in global motorsport, Honda’s exploratory foray at the one thousand nine hundred fifty nine Isle of Man TT notwithstanding. Thus, the Prototype nine indeed is a “what if” machine. What if Japan had leapt back onto its feet with the same speed as the industrialized West? What if Infiniti had existed forty years before Nissan ginned it up to contest with Honda’s Acura and Toyota’s Lexus in the race to take on the established European luxury marques? What if history wasn’t history?
The result is a blazing success. The Prototype nine expertly covers the spread inbetween classic and modern, its figure creases the result of modern machine technology and old-fashioned panel striking.
The nine was originally an after-hours project, a dalliance based on a brief transferred to Nissan senior vice president of global design Alfonso Albaisa. As more divisions of Nissan eyed what was taking form, the labor of love snowballed into an actual concept-car program. Sometimes hype and belly button gawping can overwhelm a concept machine, and more and more often, what’s hailed as a concept is merely a thinly disguised preview of an upcoming vehicle. In the Prototype 9, Infiniti has taken on a captivating flight of fancy, the sort of thing that was de rigueur during the eras celebrated on the Monterey Peninsula every August. It’s a shot across the bow of complacency as well as a fine, fine lump of eye candy. We can’t wait to bask in its presence.