Infiniti spruces up the FX

Before the end of the year, Infiniti’s swoopy FX SUV will be turning eight years old, believe it or not. By this time manufacturers usually roll out second and third iterations of a second generation model, but Infiniti left the FX pretty much well alone on the original platform with original VQ engines. Nothing wrong with that in fact, since the powerplants are superb, the interiors spectacularly high-tech and the design as fresh as it was yesterday, if quite subjective. To make it stand out even more, however, Infiniti is rolling out a facelifted FX in the States come October. The 2012 model gets a new front fascia heavily influenced by the firm’s new design language first seen in Geneva on the 2009 Infiniti Essence concept. Designers also decided to touch-up the dashboard and refresh the wheels, this time a new 20in design. Infiniti also added some exclusive colours to the 2012 palette, but made no changes to the FX underneath. So the SUV still kicks off its line-up with a 3.5-litre 307bhp V6 (the FX still doesn’t have the newer 3.7-litre engine)and hikes that up to 390bhp if you go for the 5.0-litre V8. You get a seven-speed automatic whichever motor you choose, but US pricing gets a slight increase, which we can expect to reflect our GCC-spec pricing as well when the facelifted models arrive next year.