Hello everyone. I am from Toronto, Canada and have owned a 1994 BMW 540i since the day I bought it brand new in 1993. I have loved that car and babied it, with only 63,000km to date on the beast. It snows a lot here in Canada as expected and I never drove the 540 in it due to its rear wheel drive and lack of traction control. Unfortunately, for emergency circumstances, I had to take out the car last week in 10+ cm of snow. Long story short, my beloved car is totaled, I am ok though thankfully due to the immense rigidity of the car. I am now looking into purchasing a new car, an awd one. I would buy the 330xi, however it does not seem like im getting a lot for 50g's. I have heard many MANY good things about the g35 and when I heard it had an all wheel drive version I became very happy. However my question is whether the g35x comes in a manual transmission. I know the regular rear wheel g35 does but I am not certain about the x. Im sorry if this is a repeat topic.

Happy holidays,

-Paolo

 

Wish it were to happen (along with limited slip front and rear), but a number of things conspire to prevent it from every happening. I do not believe that a MT exist's for the current AWD system in any form in Japan. Not to mention that 6MT RWD sedan volume is extreamly low, Infiniti would view a MT X as having much lower sales volume, one that would prevent certification or R&D costs from being recouped. Also it would not be able to claim "halo" status either, that's the coupes roll and the upcomming GTR's roll.

 

Thanks for the response. Can someone tell me how the auto is in terms of power etc and if the tiptronic is useful?

Much appreciated

 

There are NO plans now or in the future to come out with a 6spd.AWD. It's the no demand thing. JBX

 

I only drive in the manual mode. I had a 3-series before my G35x that was a steptronic (their version of manual mode). It was a good transmission, but I was disappointed in the way it worked:

1. When in manual mode it would only go to 2nd gear when you came to a stop - it would not go all the way to first. You had to manually put it there. The G35 will go all the way down to first automatically - this is very nice.

2. It wouldn't hold the gear you were in if you were near redline. In my opinion, a manual mode should work exactly like a manual transmission - i.e. never shift unless you want it to. The G35's works this way (it will bounce off the rev limiter all day versus actually shifting).

3. Along the same lines, when you floor it in the G35, it will not downshift. Whereas, in the BMW if you floored it, it would downshift to the next available gear without you doing anything - this was annoying. Often times I would just want to accelerate in the gear I'm in, versus downshifting (just like you can do in a true manual).

4. The G35 will give you a VERY aggressive downshift. In the BMW, it would rarely downshift to a gear that would give you more than 3k on the tach. The G35 consistantly gives me 5k RPM downshifts, and on the highway the other day, I went to pass another car, downshifted, and it actually gave me 6K in 3rd - I was very impressed.

5. The shifts (especially under power) are much quicker than the BMW's.

Overall, I've been very impressed with the G35's auto transmission. The only thing I miss from the BMW was it's "sport" mode automatic. I wish the G35 had a similar feature.

If you are a die hard manual driver, you won't like anything that doesn't have a clutch (even BMW's SMGII or Ferrari's F1 transmission isn't close, so I hear), but overall I've been very happy with it. It provides 90% of the fun, with all of the utility of a normal auto.

-Rich

 

I understand that there is little demand for a 6 spd AWD G35, but for the life of me I can't understand why. Why not enjoy a 6 spd with AWD for crummy weather. The 200 extra lbs should not make a difference as the extra tenth or so of a second is meaningless. We ain't talking about state of the art race cars here. I'll take 6.3 0-60 with AWD anyday over 6.1 without and I will take a small compromise in handling to get the security of AWD. Again these cars, while great value for the price, are just entry level luxury cars and not Porsches.

 

I think you are overlooking the value of dedicated snow tires (and wheels)! I am surprised you did not try using snow tires on your 540. I have personally had excellent results with snow tires on all my higher performance MT cars over the past 10 years or so ( 1993 Camry SE v6, 1998 Maxima SE, 2003.5 G35). They have been as good in the winter as my wife's Subarus with AWD. BTW, even for higher performance AWD sedans or wagons (Audi, BMW, etc.) dedicated snow tires are recommended if you want to avoid the white-knuckle experience! Just my 2c!

 

Ya the bmw was never intended to be driven in the winter, however for this scenerio it had to be. I usually drive my jetta for wintery days but my wife had it. The 540 is covered and driven maybe twice or three times after first snowfall, so thus i figured there was no use getting snow tires if I never drove the thing.

I am very disappointed with the quality of build from my VW ever since they moved their assembly plant to mexico. I am afraid that the audis are just the same. Anyways I will find out soon enough. Thanks again

 

I am a bit confused. So does the g35x shift automatically when you redline it in manual mode? Or it does not? I am one of those people who drives most of the time in manual mode also because I am just too used to driving manual transmission.

 

The G35x will hold the gear you are in. For example, when you are in 2nd and hit redline, it will just bounce off the rev limiter - it won't automatically shift to 3rd (like my old BMW would).

-Rich

 

That's cool. Hey, have you notice lets say you are on 4th gear and a red light's in front of you. You would cruise to the light and it shifts down from 4 to 3 and then it always bypasses 2nd gear. Is that the case for you?

 

Yep, same case for me. I think this is due to a couple reasons - one being the fact that 2nd gear is short enough that it would probably be somewhat jerky shifting into that gear while still coasting (the exact same reason it doesn't go into 1st until you come to a complete stop).

I think it is also due to the fact that we drive very torquey cars. Infiniti gets around this issue because our cars can easily drive in 3rd gear from basically a standstill due to all the torque.

-Rich

 

Coming from driving a manual 92 accord with 140 horses, I had to constantly rev it to 4,000 rpm to get any power and have to maintain in higher rpm's so the car doesn't bog down and vibrate. Yes, I noticed the G is pretty torquey. Alot of times I put it in higher gears and even at 1500 rpm, etc it still goes when I step on the gas.