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Photos: 2008 Infiniti G35

The 2008 Infiniti G35 is comfortable in a commute and fun for sport driving, while its cabin tech options are on the leading edge, offering rich navigation, good music options, and Bluetooth cell phone integration.

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Infiniti's G35 sedan has a base price in the low 30s but offers great performance and many tech options.
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We like the bold front fender design of the G35, but overall, the car looks sedate, masking its performance character.
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This 3.5-liter V-6 engine sees use in a wide variety of Nissan and Infiniti models. It has been named in the 10 best engines of the year. It produces 306 horsepower at 6,800rpm.
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The unassuming design of the G35 makes it fit well in the morning commute, but it is more fun to drive in the mountains.
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This car has the Sport package, giving it a red S next to the G35 badge on the trunk lid. This package adds a limited slip differential to the car along with paddle shifters.
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We like the interior look and feel, as Infiniti uses fine materials with good fit.
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Our G35 handled exceptionally well, taking tight corners with very little slip, partly due to the help of the limited slip differential and the traction control.
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Infiniti made the smart move of mounting the paddle shifters on the steering column, keeping them stationary when the wheel is cranked around.
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We would prefer a six-speed, but the five-speed automatic in the G35 performed well, downshifting aggressively as we approached turns.
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The new G35 uses a hard-drive-based navigation system, with plenty of room for rich maps. In this split view, you can see the plan and 3D maps.
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The G35's navigation system has a unique feature where you can see representations of buildings in downtown areas.
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The route guidance graphics for freeways are particularly rich, giving the driver a good representation of what to expect.
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Traffic reporting is offered through XM satellite radio. The system reports on traffic incidents and shows traffic flow information for major roads.
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With the G35's Bluetooth cell phone integration, you can dial numbers with this keypad. It will also log any calls made in the car, making them easy to redial.
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XM satellite radio is one of the music sources available to the Bose audio system in the G35. We liked the high-end clarity offered by this system, but the mid-range was a little muddled.
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9.3 gigabytes of the navigation system's hard drive is made available to store music in a feature Infiniti calls Music Box.
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The car also has a CompactFlash slot on the console for playing digital music. We found the slot cover a little difficult to remove.
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The interface for CompactFlash could have been better. It only lets you view folder on the card, rather than organizing music by album, artist, and genre.
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An iPod port is located in the console. This port makes your iPod music available to the car's stereo and keeps the iPod charged.
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The iPod integration is excellent, letting you select music by artist, album, and genre.
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The six-disc changer also plays MP3 CDs, using an interface fairly typical of what we've seen in other cars.
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When you put a CD into the car's changer, you get the option of recording, or ripping it, to the hard drive. Ripping only works with RedBook CDs, and not MP3 CDs.
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The G35's reverse camera is an excellent feature, as it provides overlays showing where the car will go based on wheel turn, plus how far it is from obstacles.

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