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The Infiniti Q45 has a presence that draws second looks, if not stares. We stopped in front of a hotel and porters were all over it. It's being promoted as a big car that feels small, but its styling says full-size luxury all the way. It's the same overall length as the previous-generation (2001) model, but slightly wider, taller, and longer in wheelbase, increasing interior space from 97.4 to 107.1 cubic feet.

Huge headlamps make the Q45 especially distinctive from the front. There are 18 bulbs within two huge sealed lenses shaped like right triangles with fat edges. The four largest bulbs comprise two each for high beams and parking. The other 14 are high-intensity xenon-fired low beams, seven highly visible bulbs on each side forming a circle like a Gatling gun.

Such a radical appearance brings radical expectations, the ability to turn night into day. Infiniti claims that they're the world's most powerful, twice as powerful as those on the $79,000 Mercedes-Benz S-Class ("Warning: high voltage," declares the manual). Infiniti says the low beams are the brightest, based on lumens (a measure of light intensity), and have a better dispersion pattern, providing long range illumination in a narrow beam, as well as wide angle illumination in the foreground, making foglamps unnecessary. The pattern of the low beams is designed to reduce glare to oncoming drivers by cutting the beam sharply on the left side. A switch on the dash allows the driver to adjust the angle of the headlights, a feature we liked.

Overall, the front view of the Infiniti Q45 presents a handsome shape, a sweep, as if the lines were poured on. No chrome. A wide-mouthed grille, fully but sparsely filled by four long horizontal titanium-colored slats, with a chrome Infiniti emblem in the center. A subtle front bumper and fascia includes natural-looking air intakes at the bottom.

The wheels are a nice touch, a confident statement, spidery six-spoke 17-inch alloys or more spidery eight-spoke 18s. The silhouette suggests the Chrysler Concorde or LHS, although Infiniti reps were slightly aghast at our vision. We think the rear end is clean and nice. You can see Nissan all over it. Altima or Maxima on a luxury scale, and a bit racier. The roof seems to have more rake when viewed from the rear.

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There are a ton of interior features, some of them bordering on the fantastic.

Infiniti put a lot of effort into making its navigation system more useful. Allegedly, it's simpler. A Quick Reference Guide to the Vehicle Information System and Navigation System has been written since our test, and will come with the Infiniti Q45. For safety reasons, you can't program the destination while the car is still moving. You turn the display off by going into the settings menu, and selecting Display Off (see page 4 in the manual); it would be easier if there was a button you could hit in one step. Learning these systems requires some reading and can be frustrating before it's mastered. Earlier, we had been lucky to have Infiniti's product planning manager, Skip MacLean, a broadly experienced engineer, along for a 90-minute ride along the Columbia River from Portland to Hood River. He was certainly deft at operating the system, and demonstrated the cool 3D Birdview part, like looking down at an illustration of the ground from a hang glider. Like many navigation systems, it offers a choice of routes: shortest time, shortest distance, it can even point you to the nearest ferry, should you prefer to travel by sea. It will also tell you the location of the nearest ATM, hotel, restaurant or rest area; when running low on gas, it will ask you, if you want it to find the nearest gas station. The screen is 7 inches with the optional navigation system, or 5.8 inches when ordered with the standard Vehicle Information System.

The navigation display also serves as the rearview monitor, which comes with the $8,000 Premium Package. When you're in reverse, the screen displays where you're going, eyed by a tiny camera over the license plate. Unlike shuttle buses, it's in living color; but at night the car's backup lights aren't bright enough for the camera lens, and in the sunshine it's hard to see the screen. Still, it can be useful for spotting children on tricycles and other objects that you want to avoid.

Unlike most cars, the climate control system can respond to voice commands. Press a button on the steering wheel, wait for the beep, tell the dashboard what you want, and a woman's voice will reply in the perfectly efficient tone of a supersecretary, “Climate control temper-a-ture, six-tee seven degrees.” We felt silly trying to use the system without knowing how: people begin to stare when they see you shouting commands at your car. The future will tell whether this becomes a desirable feature.

The Infiniti Q45's plush interior is lightened by Bird's Eye Maple burl wood, Italian leather, and lots of glass, including a large sunroof that comes standard. Cool, functional electroluminescent gauges come out at night.

The console is massive, thanks mostly to the navigation system, using switchgear that's a combination of big black buttons and silvery dials. Big plush armrests, two sizes of concealed cupholders, big firm seats. There's a hatch under the center armrest for flat things, below which lies another deeper compartment.

In the back, there are lush armrests with cupholders. Side curtain airbags that deploy from the roof protect both the rear- and front-seat passengers. There's an optional power sunshade in the backlight (rear window). Trunk space measures only 13.6 cubic feet, about two-thirds the size of the Lexus LS430.

You can program all sorts of things to set themselves, when you get in or out: the steering column lifts, the driver's seat adjusts, interior lights illuminate or delay, or not.

We liked the tire pressure sensor a lot. Except it doesn't identify which tire has which pressure, it just reveals the numbers (37, 38, 37, 36 on our car) in a column on the VIS screen, rather than an intuitive rectangle.

There's some confusion within the marketplace of what defines a “performance luxury car.” For example, the Q45's seats are luxury: big and firm, 10-way power adjustment including lumbar, great for long freeway trips. But there's not enough bolstering to keep you from sliding around during the type of cornering the car is capable of.