(photos by Mike Hayes)
(first posted 4/7/2016) When Infiniti launched in 1989, Nissan’s luxury brand’s offerings consisted of the $38,000 Q45 flagship sedan and the $23,500 M30 midsize coupe. Initial sales were less than stellar to say the least, and Infiniti was still without a true entry-level vehicle. Enter the 1991 Infiniti G20.
Little more than a rebadged version of the Nissan Primera sold in Japan and Europe, the initially $17,500 G20 occupied the middle ground in price between Acura’s Integra and Lexus’ ES250. After six years of moderate success, Infiniti dropped the G20 from its lineup after 1996, in favor of the larger Maxima-based I30, which could better compete with the Lexus ES300 and Acura TL. But the G20’s absence was only a temporary affair.
Less than three years later, the G20 was back, now with multi-link beam rear suspension and on a 2-inch longer wheelbase. Front and rear fascias were updated, with redesigned bumpers and wider rocker moldings owing to a more contemporary appearance. That being said, regardless of any new sheetmetal, the overall look was very similar to its predecessor, looking like little more than a mild face lift of the vintage-1990 design.
The interior also featured a makeover, with a redesigned dash and door panels made of higher-grade looking plastics. The available extra-cost leather upholstery (for 2002, part of a $1600 package that included power driver’s seat, power moonroof and automatic climate control) also gained a more premium appearance, with seating surfaces now having perforations and a loosely gathered appearance.
Nevertheless, by its second go-round, the G20’s interior looked very dated and downmarket. The latter was especially true in models without leather and the mild sprinkling of fake wood trim, which looked barely a step above your everyday Sentra.
Speaking of the Sentra, all Infiniti G20s were still powered by the same 2.0L SR20DE inline-4 now found in upper-trim Sentras, producing an identical 145 horsepower and 136 pound-feet torque (initially 140 and 132, respectively, for 1999). Considering that curb weight had risen over the 1996 model to approximately 2,950 pounds (some 300 more than the Sentra SE with the same engine), power delivery was lacking, and not on par with cars Infiniti targeted the G20 against, such as the 3-Series and A4, or even the humble Sentra SE, which cost roughly two-thirds the price.
Even more was that the Sentra SE-R had 20 more ponies and still cost some $5K less. Regardless, handling of the G20 was generally cited as good for a compact front-wheel drive sedan, though overall, the car was unrefined for an entry-level luxury sedan at its $21-$25K price point. Especially considering that similarly-equipped, yet larger and V6-powered cars such as Nissan’s own Maxima and the Honda Accord could be had for similar or even less money than a fully-loaded G20, the Infiniti’s value proposition just seemed questionable.
And in the end, that’s what the second coming of the G20 was: a fine, well-equipped compact car, but one that was unconvincing of its luxury brand status, and largely uncompetitive at its price point. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that the G20 was brought back primarily as a placeholder model until the larger, more luxurious, and significantly more performance-oriented G35 arrived, giving Infiniti a clearer purpose in life, at least for the time it and its G37 successor existed.
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Infiniti sells about 120,000 vehicles a year. However, every time I see one, I ask, “They still make those?”
They must be the most invisible brand there is.
I see them frequently, but none of them interest me.
My sister had one of those, which was her end of the line for American marque cars and a proper Buck’s County (PA) stylish DINK love of imports. I was very impressed with the car, would have picked it up from her at trade-in time, except that it was an automatic.
These were very nice little cars and extremely reliable and durable. I recommended one for a work colleague who was replacing her very tired Integra in 2001 – she is still driving it in retirement.
Brendan has clearly stated the problem – the lack of power and a price point too close to the much better Maxima. I actually cross shopped both cars (as well as the I30 but it’s very stodgy styling cues put me off) in the fall of 1998 when I bought a new 99 Maxima GLE. I wanted a small, nimble car but that was when the Maxima itself met those criteria (under 70 inches wide, 189 inches long, 34 foot turning circle). When you put your foot into it on the freeway, the little G had nothing to offer whereas the 3100 pound Maxima with the VQ engine was a smooth rocket.
I’m simply making an observation when I say that G20s were very popular with women here in SoCal as easy to park, around town cars with decently plush interiors if equipped with the leather package. One colleague traded her unreliable K-car New Yorker for a G20. As a testament to their durability, you still see them, as well as the previous generation model, on the roads here.
Interesting to see that this was sold as an Infiniti, as in Europe the (British built) Nissan Primera was sold directly against the Sierra, Mondeo, Cavalier, Laguna et al, not the A4 or 3 series.
Although these were sold under the Infiniti brand, they were priced much lower than other entry level luxury cars here in the US. Interestingly enough, the 1999-2002 G20’s MSRP falls squarely on top of a concurrent Honda Accord EX. Getting into an A4 or 3 series would take thousands more. I always felt it was a slightly odd marketing angle, as it seemed to undermine the Infiniti’s premium aspirations. The only true equivalent competitor to the G20 here was the Acura Integra 4 door, and then there was the problem of being able to get one of those for less, or dollar for dollar have a much faster car in the form of the GS-R.
I think undercutting the 3-Series and A4 was part of the point, though. Nissan (and Honda and Toyota, for that matter) recognized that as the new kids in town, going head to head with the Germans was risky, so they decided instead to go lower (with the G20 and M30) and position the Q45 and LS400 against the six-cylinder 5-Series or E-Class.
The real problem is that it made the G20 (or the Integra four-door) as expensive as bigger, less-premium cars, which is a tricky approach for the U.S.
Sorry a year late, but yes it was an odd marketing angle, but you know who it targeted in 1999? Me….I was 30 and finally able to afford a brand new sedan. Of course, Camry and Accord were high on my shopping list, along with Maxima, Taurus and ….er, Malibu… yes, Malibu (I wanted to help Detroit if I could.) Then I noticed this smallish Infiniti was only a couple grand more than mid-level Cam/Cords. And the idea of driving an INFINITI in ’99 was to say you were climbing the corporate ladder. I test drove a top trim G20, w/ the nice leather seats, metallic silver paint. Merging onto a high-speed Houston freeway, it accelerated like an old Hyundai Excel, I was surprised at the tepid engine! That, and a cramped interior, and a K-Mart looking dash, sealed the deal, along with the almost 24K price tag. I eventually got a Camry LE, very nicely equipped. Larger and more powerful, high quality (although very plain) interior. I heard some years later, that those 2nd gen G20s had outstanding reliability though. If the Infiniti G20 had a more upscale dash and a few more horses, I would’ve bit, definitely!
Ditto in NZ Roger – we got the Japan-built sedan and wagon, and the UK-built hatch as replacement for the U13 Bluebird. The Primera was firmly in the same mid-size family car segment of the market as the Bluebird, Mondeo, 626, Corona, Galant etc.
I thought these looked great when they were new, my neighbor a few houses down parked their brand new one in the driveway, was bright red with the spoiler, definitely tickled my fancy. Definitely a bit lacking as far as substance though, it was way more Nissan like inside than Luxury infinity – which I don’t mind at all, it’s just unexpected – and power and the general fun to drive factor was lacking.
I had a 92 Acura Integra 4 door with automatic and a 92 G20 with a manual transmission. Neither car was a rocket ship in that configuration but the G20 was the better all around driver. The steering felt better and it handled curves like it was on rails. Where the Integra might have excelled was in shift action and…let’s face it, the Integra’s styling was more adventurous.
As far as these being driven by women, the major thrust of the advertising campaign when the G20 was relaunched in the U.S. in the late 90s was aimed at women. And with the G20 being a smallish car, it was a good “fit”.
BTW, I can count on one hand the number of Sentra SE sedans I’ve seen, with maybe a dozen more on various Craigslists. G20s, on the other hand, are/were more robust and are still seen every now and then. I would be tempted to buy another if it had low miles and a manual transmission. These aren’t as good with automatic transmissions unless you want a moderately racey car that is super reliable as the 5 speed eventually develops a 5th gear pop-out, or even 5th AND 4th gear pop-out problem.
I loved my first-generation G20 (as per the COAL attached at the bottom of the above story), it was a great car and at the time I was much happier driving it rather than an Accord or whatever else was priced similarly even if (and probably despite) the other car was/being physically larger. Size and raw horsepower really isn’t everything. A V6 Accord or Camry of the day is/was frankly a bit of a pudding, the G20 was a superb handler and joy to rev to its (I believe 7500rpm) redline repeatedly.
If anything, I believe it was more comparable to something like a Jetta GLI but with more refinement. I’ve been in and driven Sentra’s of the same generation and at least as far as the early G20’s are concerned, there was no comparison. As time marched on and the Sentra improved, perhaps not. The bigger competitor actually was really the original Altima (the rounded one), it was virtually the same exact size as the G20 and nicer inside than the Sentra. But it had an even dowdier image back then and was also only available as a 4-cylinder.
Audi in the early 90’s was considered a joke by most people and the only BMW that was comparable in price was maybe the 318i (still the E30 generation when the G20 was launched), equipping it similarly to a G20 ballooned the price up significantly. After the A4 was released for ’96 the G20 did start to feel aged but was still a stellar value. I won’t claim the G20 was perfect mechanically but over the long term the cars were more reliable and required less maintenance than the Germans with the added bonus that any Nissan shop was able and willing to work on them.
Though I never got to ride in a G20 much less drive one, I have always admired them from a distance. I liked the idea of a high-quality, luxurious small car with decent appointments. There was a time when I sought one used but most of the good-to-great condition cars that I looked at were automatics, which put them out of the running. I ended saving money by keeping my 5-speed Civic a few more years.
Friend of mine had one for a while. They are a really nice car, but should have had Datsun emblems on them, not Infiniti.
I think the first generation Audi A4 was the best compact near lux sport sedan at the time. With it’s light pressure turbo 1.8, available quattro and good looks that did not resemble the Passat cousin, it was simply a cut above.
The reluctance of the Japanese to offer small turbos was a limiting factor. Even Volvo and Saab had more compelling offerings in this market. Without the turbo, these were just bland compacts with leather seats and a longer warranty.
If this were a Lincoln there would be 100 posts about how this turd is just a tarted up Ford.
Actually, there would be comments about how this was the best handling Lincoln ever made. Your comment just shows that you’re not familiar with the rather exceptional handling qualities these cars had. They’re considered to be at or near the pinnacle for FWD cars in that regard.
But don’t let facts like that get in the way of your prejudice. 🙂
As Primeras the earlier model won the BTCC they handle quite well even in standard form too not as well as Peugeots but very well for Japanese FWD cars.
Handling accolades were absolutely true of the first-gen P10 Primera/G20. One of the few basic FWD cars that could be throttle-steered at the limit. Very sophisticated and well-tuned suspension. The Touring trim with the manual and mechanical front LSD was a very underrated mild performance car in its day. The tamer automatic, open-diff base versions less so.
Then, the P11 update hit. Still a lively little car, but probably truly more similar to the B14/15 Sentra. Both with cheapened beam rear suspensions. Still good in their time, but not world class. Very similar trajectory to many other Nissans of the 90s. Really sophisticated predecessors with some legendary performance cred, cheapened with the beam rear end creep that dulled that pedigree somewhat.
I’m guessing the Lincoln-Ford corollary is due to this being truly a rebadged Nissan, but it wasn’t a Nissan that was ever available in the US. Unlike the Ford-Mercury-Lincoln rebadges, which had the same platforms available from each brand concurrently.
I had a rather rusty 1995 P10 base automatic. It was truly a dog with the auto, the SR20 needed to be revved and the JATCO gearbox was tuned for… I’m not sure what. Fuel economy wasn’t great even for a 4 cyl of the time, and it wasn’t very smooth. But it was incredibly reliable, never failing to run and with minimal broken features at 15 years and 200k+ miles of age. And that independent rear would get squirrelly on wet roads, but could easily be brought back in line with a little countersteer. Only upsettable yet stable FWD car I ever drove. No snap tendencies at all, despite the traction loss. One imagines with the beam rear, that stable character was lost for the second generation.
If you bought one of these new instead of an ES300 and were anything but a gearhead going for the Touring 5 speed, you were crazy. Mine cost me $1000 and was an awesome dilapidated used car.
I liked the second generation car although don’t recall ever seeing one with a leather interior. When I do see one.
One of the operators in the building where I do my day job owns a later model in red which has been his daily driver for the past decade or more. It has well over 260,000 Kim’s and runs just fine he says (no surprise there). He recently had to replace the front bumper cover following a minor collision. It came from Japan (no surprise) and he patiently waited three weeks for its arrival. The insurance company was not keen on paying for it and relate labour for thre fix so he worked out a deal with them as he wants to to keep the car until it dies. At the moment there are three small spots of rust on the body surface. Nothing short of amazing considering how many winters it has endured.
On a related topic, there is a lawyer in the building who has an i30 coupe and the larger Q45. He likes his cars a lot too.
A neighbor a few houses down owns a black 2nd-gen G20. I’ve not met him/her yet to ask how they like it, but it seems to be a regular or daily driver. And a friend in college bought a used G20 sometime around 2001; I think hers was a ’94 model. She loved that car and named it Archimedes, for reasons I no longer remember.
I think it had something approaching 200K on the clock when she traded it in 2005 or so on a Mazda 3 hatch (Mr. Miyagi, as it happens).
These always ended up as rusted out, destroyed, dented, fully used-up beaters here in R.I.
I never quite warmed up to the styling. Always looked a bit too generic for my taste. I’m sure they handled well and were reliable.
Long time lurker, but figured I might as well chime in as I bought a ’99 example used in 2004 and still drive it today. I’ve always kind of thought that these were kind of positioned oddly in Nissan/Infiniti’s line-up. It seems that if you wanted something nicer than an Altima you might look at a G20. If you wanted something nicer than the G20 then you might jump back to Nissan and look at the Maxima, or if you wanted a really nice Maxima you might go back to Infiniti get an I30.
I’ve spent quite a bit of time in a well-equipped ’97 Maxima and in many ways it seemed like an upgraded G20, except a V6 engine, a bit larger, and few nice touches the G20 doesn’t have, like power seats for both front seats (the G20 is only for the driver), illuminated power window switches, and a separate clock that wasn’t shared with the radio. But otherwise the two cars seemed very similar in terms of build, materials, and equipment and even shared some of the same switchgear.
The choice of the SR20DE certainly was an interesting one for a luxury car. It gets the job done, but it has always seemed a bit unrefined and underpowered. Put your foot down, and you get a lot of noise and not so much acceleration. Having the automatic certainly doesn’t help either. Turning on the A/C noticeably bogs it down (though the A/C in it is absolutely ferocious and is one the best in any car I’ve been in). The Maxima, by comparison, takes off like a rocket when you put your foot down. The Maxima’s engine is also much smoother and refined, and idles so quietly that you almost can’t tell if the car is running or not when you’re stopped. You won’t be making that mistake with the SR20DE.
I’ve always liked the styling of the G20 myself. If you ask me, it’s one the best looking Nissan cars from the 90’s (yeah, I know that’s not saying a whole lot). To me it’s always been a sharp looking small car. While some call it bland, I like its much more restrained styling than today’s cars. Then again, I also like the final-generation I35 so maybe I’m just odd that way.
My example has been very reliable, has given me very little trouble over the past 12 years, and still chugs along just fine which is why I still drive it. It’s always started and has never left me stranded. It’s developing some rust behind the wheel wells on the driver’s side, but for a 17-year old Minnesota car that’s pretty much to be expected. Parts may start to be a concern, as Nissan tweaked a bunch of stuff after 1999 to address the complaints that the car was underpowered, leaving the first year 1999’s with (my understanding) a bunch of 1-year only parts like the exhaust and transmission. Speaking of exhaust, one easy way to tell the 99 from the 00-02 models is whether the exhaust has dual tips (’00-02) or not (’99).
At this point, I’m not even sure what I’d replace it with. People like to lump the G20 in with the later G35/G37, but to me they are completely different cars (FWD vs. RWD, I4 vs. V6, etc.) And I can’t make sense out of what Infiniti has done to their line-up now that it’s all Qsomething. Every once and a while I do a search for used G20’s to see what’s out there, but nowadays it seems most examples I find are pretty beat.
The one comment above from GarryM about never seeing on with leather is interesting. Whenever I see one parked I’ll check it out if I can. At least around here, the leather is far more common than the cloth on the second-gens. What’s really rare from what I’ve seen is one without the automatic climate control. I think I’ve only ever seen one or two equipped that way. Supposedly the trunk-mounted CD changer is also rare, though I have no idea if that’s true or not (for the record, my car has leather, the automatic climate control, and the CD changer).
I have no recollection whatsoever of the second-wind facelifted version. I can think of only a few cars that were pulled from the U.S. market only to be brought back a few years later (the “Isuzu by Opel”/Isuzu I-Mark and ’50s Rambler American being others).
I recall the original G20 being a nice, practical car but it didn’t feel like a luxury car at all. More like Stanza-plus.
In 2001 I started working in sales for one of NZ’s largest beverage manufactures; the P11 Primera station wagon was the sales rep station wagon du jour, all white or silver SR20DE-engined with manual transmissions.
Although I didn’t have one, I drove a number of them at the time and remember them well. They were all pretty quick wagons, with great handling. The interiors were extremely dark – everything was black – and the seats were a tad low for me, and the resulting sensation while driving was unusual – like being in a bath of black ink with only your head above the surface. I also distinctly remember the tiny buttons on the factory (Panasonic?) CD-radio.
The reps liked the Primeras, but then along came the first Mazda6 wagon and Mazda won the rep-car/wagon market overnight (a market it still has to this day, albeit more with CX5s now).
Of course we never got the Infiniti-badged P11, but a number of the ex-JDM used imports that have arrived here have turned up with retrofitted-in-Japan Infiniti badging.
Our family had a ’96 G20 and later added a ’99 to the fleet. Both were bought used as cars for our high school and college kids. All four kids learned to drive manual on the ’96, and when we eventually sold it with over 160,000 miles the clutch was still the original. Handling on both was excellent, and power was merely adequate… a great combination for kid’s cars.
A couple things I recall were that the ’96 had very comfortable front seats and an extremely large trunk. The ’99 drove well but had a heavier feel overall. Perfect cars for the kids at the time, they proved to be very reliable, and the manuals meant their friends couldn’t borrow them!
It’s 2023 and I still have my 99 G20 that I have driven since mile 1.
Now with 300K miles and only routine self-provided maintenance. Did I mention synthetic oil since the first OC?!