>> Take the breakthrough car of Infiniti's history and turn it into a crossover. That's the EX35, the G made car. Let's make sure it doesn't shame its roots and check the tech.
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The EX35 was first with around-view cameras, one of the first with self-healing paint and damn near the first to get lane departure prevention. So if you're looking for something other than advanced technologies, you might be knocking on the wrong door. You've got a Journey all-wheel drive, so just about everything is in this guy. Let's start with the head unit. As you can see on the screen, the Nissan Infiniti head units are starting to get a much better look. I've bitched about their nasty graphics for years. And of course, the system is snappy and it moves relatively quickly to inputs because it is hard drive based. You can see the icon there that indicates we have live traffic on the system, which is pretty common in mid- to high-end cars now and that's XM NavTraffic and XM NavWeather. Setting a destination is simple because you've got a touch screen. You've also got voice command. You've also got the Infiniti controller, so three ways to get around there. Nissan's big on different map views. They were one of the first to do a lot of this fly-by 3D and split view stuff. You've got a lot of choices here. Now the audio system, as I've said, high-end. They've got lots of stuff here. XM Radio, of course, as I mentioned, we have XM NavWeather and Traffic. That gives that away. AM-FM radio, of course. Don't have any HD radio on this car. Under the CD and Aux button, we of course have a single slot CD, which you can record disks from to 9.3 gigabytes of available hard drive space. Hit it again, you get to the Music Box. That's what they call the hard drive. And you've got a lot of options there to look at what you've got as well as see how much storage you have left. If you're really an iPod person, you may not want to maintain another hard drive full of lists and genres and music. The jury's still out on this hard drive in the car thing. Continuing on, we have Bluetooth audio, so we have the streaming Bluetooth from a Smart Phone that is so equipped with pretty good phone contact integration. And of course, this is also a DVD deck, not just a CD. So when you're parked with the brake on, you can watch a movie. And then, of course, here's our iPod, which is connected here in the console through what is now becoming the ubiquitous iPod USB jack. And down there, we also see a set of AV input, so stereo audio and a video jack. You know, I always bitch about RDS systems, radio data systems on cars. This is another example of it. I mean, first of all, here's the station, title and artist information in the bottom, real small. Here it is again up in the top in a really short text string that's rotating. This is a mess. Why can't I have just one instance of the artist information and give it to me utilizing the real estate. I don't need this icon of a radio, and I don't need all this dead space of faux brushed aluminum. Why can no one get that right?
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Now you want cameras? You've got them. Infiniti's always been crazy about them, as well as sonar beepers that are also going off right now. But notice the camera angles we've got in reverse. Here's the all-around four cam review, which is this top-of-the-car simulated, stitched together thing. You can also get your standard rear view. You can also go to a side focus. This is the curb rash cam, to make sure you're not about to mess up that nice alloy wheel. That's pretty nice. And of course, you can go all-in for the wide rear camera, which has distance markings, or you also have trajectory indicators.
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As you can see back here, this second row is pretty tight. This is basically a small car that happens to be tall. The rear compartment's interesting. It's got some touches that are both brilliant and frustrating. The first aid kit hangs here with Velcro, like a monkey clinging to a cliff. The same thing goes for the owner's manual. Nestled here inside the spare is a pancake-powered sub, part of the Bose array.
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Okay, on to the engine room. One choice only, three and a half liter V-6, kind of Nissan's tour de force the last decade or so. And they do it well. 297 horsepower, 253 foot-pounds of torque, and you're MPG's not bad, 16/23. It's a little lower than it could be because we have the intelligent all-wheel drive in this vehicle. It all goes out through a one-choice only five speed auto, which has got some intelligent shift modes to it and some really nice rev matching whether you're in the manual mode or letting it do its own thing, or in the sport mode, which kind of splits the difference. Okay, pricing the EX35 has its highs and lows. Now, $38,200 is the base, again Journey all-wheel drive, top of the line. But we're not seeing that yet. We've got to throw in the tech package. That gets the lane departure warning and prevention, the adaptive cruise, the distance control assist, the braking and collisions, all of that package for $2,400 or so. $2,150 for the Bose package is a screaming deal. You get Bose audio output, hard drive, Bluetooth streaming, DVD playback, the 3D Nav system, the plasma cluster, the around-view cameras, for $2,150? I'm in! The last one's frustrating. For $1,750 there's a premium package, but that's the only way you can get auto leveling adaptive front steering headlights. It's a weird mix.
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