Infiniti Q50 finally gets the death it has craved, won't make it to 2025

When Infinity released the list of updates coming to its 2025MY lineup, we counted just four: QX80, QX60, QX55, and QX50. Gone from the roll call, the Q50 sedan. The automaker confirmed this was no accident, telling Motor1, “Acting on our commitment to transform our vehicle line with four new products beginning with the all-new 2025 QX80, the Infiniti Q50 sedan will not be available in the United States and Canada after the 2024 model year.” Eleven years and one generation (!) after going on the market as a replacement for the G37, the Q50 is nearly so anonymous that it doesn’t even get credit for its two firsts: Introducing Infiniti’s Q naming scheme, and introducing a steer-by-wire system that found no fans. We say “nearly so anonymous” because the Q50, as with the G35 and G37 coupes and sedans before it, supports a lively tuner community all about the car. Searching “Q50 tuning” at one Q50 forum returns the maximum 500 results, that number being more than the average number of Q50s that U.S. Infiniti dealers sell in a month.

This is the least surprising development one might expect from the automaker; we’ve questioned how long the Q50 had to live since at least 2022, when Infiniti killed the Q60 coupe. We wrote then that the Q50 seems like it’s doing circles in a product cul-de-sac, Infiniti knowing there’s no point in revamping the current generation or developing a new one. But keeping the sedan on sale without changes depressed values. In those Covid days, unlike much of the rest of the used car market, there was real money to be saved on a one- or two-year-old Q50. Those buyers can now be found stuffing the Q50 tuning forums.

From 2024, Infiniti becomes an SUV-only brand, a fate confronted earlier by fellow premium brands Buick and Lincoln. We don’t have pricing for the 2025 QX50 yet, the current model starts at $42,350 after destination — about $2,000 less than a Q50 sedan, meaning the sedan’s biggest threat was coming from inside the house.

A sedan follow-up is in the works, Infiniti saying, “The Q50’s spirit will certainly live on in our first EV, a sports sedan previewed by the Vision Qe concept which made its debut last October.” As a potential Q70, it’s rumored to share its platform with an electric rebirth of the Nissan Maxima and hit the market around 2026.