Car Sight

We're following this seldom-traveled trace as it wraps, wiggles and drops into the valley of Boulder Creek while pushing the pace and running revs up to the redline in Infiniti’s spirited G37 premium sports sedan.

Badged as the G37 Sport M6 Sedan, our tester on the California curve course rides on a stiff rear-wheel-drive platform rigged with a sport-tuned suspension and awesome torque developed through a big six-cylinder engine borrowed from Nissan's swift 370Z sports car.

STYLED FOR THE CHANGING TIMES

Sensuous new sheetmetal on the body and a revamped cockpit with more technology features mark the 2011 G37, which trims out in four versions laced with the seemingly incongruent combination of elegant cabin appointments and sport-tuned mechanical hardware.

But that's the way Infiniti works the G-car, planting an aggressive personality in the practical format of a four-door and five-seat sedan.

The original G35 sedan rolled out in 2002 as a 2003 model cast strictly in RWD format, quickly spawning a racy two-door model. By 2004, Infiniti borrowed a smart electronic all-wheel-drive (AWD) device from the FX crossover utility vehicle and adapted it to work on the RWD platform of the G35 sedan for snow-country markets. That mechanism carried an obtuse moniker of "advanced total traction engineering system for all electronic torque split." It sounded better when crimped to the long acronym of ATTESA E-TS, and the G-car packing this equipment was dubbed G35x with that letter 'x' denoting the AWD traction.

In 2007 the G35 emerged in a second-generation treatment with options for RWD or AWD traction. And in 2009 the nameplate changed to G37 to reflect increased engine displacement from a new dual-cam 3.7-liter V6.