Maxima's Face Leaves Some Qs

We've been scratching our heads at the Maxima's new front-end styling. The more we look at it head-on, the more we see a resemblance to a certain flagship from Nissan's luxury division. Maxima, meet Q45, the full-size Infiniti sedan that was axed from the automaker's lineup in 2006. In its swan song year, the luxury sedan cost some $58,000, a figure that put it up against the Lexus LS and Audi A8.

The resemblance is more than passing, so we asked Nissan design VP Bruce Campbell if the late Q had provided any inspiration. He chuckled — apparently we weren't the first to ask him that.

"In short, no," Campbell said. "But, you know, that's thinking of it in retrospect. There was no picture up there on the board, [with us] thinking 'Oh, that was a nice car.'"

The Maxima's head designer, in fact, might have been "too young" to remember the Q's glory years, Campbell said. That's a shame, because it would seem fitting that Nissan's latest flagship would follow in the footsteps of Infiniti's former top dog. Or maybe not — given the Q's demise, the Maxima might just as well do without its ill-fated legacy.