FX Reliability Inquiry

Good Monrning Cartech,

I have a 2012 FX35, just hitting 55k miles. Car has been completly reliable, absolutly no issues since new. Other than replaceing tires once and wiper blades several times, all I've done is routine maintenance. We happen to live over 100 miles from the nearest Infiniti dealer, so all my service work has been done at our local Nissan dealer.
Last year did a road trip over 3,300 miles. We managed to put our FX through the gambit of wind, rain, altitude, temperatures, and speeds. We traveled from the extreme northwestern corner of WA down through OR, ID, to Salt Lake City UT, and then on to St. George UT. Leaving St. George, we headed South to Gold Canyon, AZ, via Valley of Fire in NV, and then headed home back up through AZ, NV, ID, OR, and finally WA. We experienced travel from sea level to over 8k. There were a lot of our travels at elevations exceeding 5k feet. We went from 0 MPH in a couple of construction zones to some (short) cruising at 100 MPH in the Nevada desert on the long straight stretches of Hwy 93 (FX really sucks gas at that speed!). Most of the time we ran at about 80/85, and we were loaded down with luggage and on the return, adult beverages (much cheaper in NV/AZ than in WA, about half price!). Many of the highways (ID, NV, UT) are posted at 75 and 80 (Utah), and you can pretty safely run at 5 to 10 over. We hit severe headwinds for a stretch in NV that absolutely killed our fuel mileage (dropped to 18) but overall average for the entire trip was 21.3 MPG. The FX performed flawlessly, was a real joy to drive, and quite comfortable, although at about 6k feet in elevation, it was noticeably working harder. Hope this helps. Would I buy another FX, without hesitation!
Cheers,
Orzel

Hello Cartech,

Like Orzel above I have a 2012 Infiniti FX35 AWD, just under 50K miles, and also in Washington (what are the chances of that!?). I absolutely love this car - would buy another in a heartbeat. I've taken to calling mine All Seasons Sportscar (wonder why Infiniti doesn't use that...), reasons below.

I haven't tracked any cost per mile, but everything up to today has been regular maintenance. The only issue I've had with it was the fuel gage reading zero when there's clearly gas in the tank. Turned out to be an issue with the fuel sender units that were easily replaced. On a side note here - I normally don't like trips to the dealership, but the Infiniti one was pretty great.

Real world gas mileage is on par with what Orzel mentioned. I have a 27 mile round trip daily commute, 70% highway 30% local strees, and I average about 20 mpg. I've done several road trips (500+ miles), and on those trips I average about 21-22 mpg.

The interior of the FX is a great place to be on longer trips. The seats are really comfortable and I have yet to fall out of it with a sore butt (and I did plenty on my old car). Every control is laid out ergonomically, the Bose sound system is crisp, and the interior design is gorgeous. If you get one with the maple trim, the ambient lighting at night really turns it up a notch.

I've also had the pleasure of taking mine to a high performance driving course - and man did the car shatter everyone's expectations! If you're interested in the FX you probably already know it shares the FM platform with the G and the Z, and it really shows through during HDPE. There was a maneuver we did that stuck with me (don't ever do this outside an uncontrolled environment by the way), it was braking into a sharp J turn at 40 mph and try to stop in the middle of the turn. When I hit the brake marker I was thinking "Oh sh**, I'm going too fast, I'm going to roll over". A second later the car was just sitting in the middle of the turn, all cones intact (next try I got overconfident and took out all the cones on the outside). While 99% of the time on the road you won't need to do any emergency manuevers, it's great knowing the car complies (exceptionally at that) when you need it to.

Going more into performance, the DS mode transforms the car into a beast. I definitely felt the difference in throttle response and shift locations (you always have power coming out of turns). Braking is great too - after a whole day at HDPE the brakes were solid. Minimal body roll throughout the turns too. The only downside to that day? I used up over 12 gallons of fuel. Now excuse me while I go club a baby seal.

I've also taken the car up through the passes onto forest service roads in the winter. With a decent set of winter tires, the FX is one heck of a boring car to drive there. There was a U-turn location where I saw car after car getting stuck (folks in a BMW 3 series had to bail out and push it along), but the FX made the turn easily. Parking? Crawl right onto a 2' high snowbank and crawled right back out without any drama when I was done there.

In short, I would sum up the car with the following pros and cons:
Pros:

• Beautifully designed, inside and out
• Solid reliability
• Blast to drive, solid performance
• Great tech. May be a little long in the tooth with Android Auto/Apple Carplay flooding the market, but for its year range it stands out

• Demands tribute in gas
• Rear cargo volume not as high as competitors'. It's got a high floor too which can be a double edged sword.