Infiniti's Palmer announces QX30 small crossover production

The name of the game these days in the luxury marketplace is premium compacts. BMW has the 1 Series and 2 Series, Mercedes the A-Class, B-Class, CLA and GLA, Audi has the A1 and A3, even Lexus has the CT 200h. Among the last to get in on the action is Infiniti, but that's all about to change.

Nissan's luxury brand has been working towards a premium compact for some time, revealing the Q30 concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show last year and signing a new deal with Daimler to help develop and produce it. Now it seems that both it and a crossover version have been approved for production.

The news comes from Andy Palmer, Nissan's UK-based COO, chairman of Infiniti and one of the company's top executives under CEO Carlos Ghosn. Late last week Palmer tweeted the following:


The announcement confirms not only the Q30 hatchback but also a QX30 crossover, both to be built at Nissan Motor Manufacturing UK in Sunderland, one of Europe's largest auto assembly plants and current home to the Qashqai and Juke crossovers.

So how does this announcement relate to the new joint venture established between Nissan and Daimler to build a new generation of compact models in Aguascalientes, Mexico? We reached out for comment to Infiniti spokesman Stefan Weinmann, who told Autoblog that, "When Q30 gets launched, it will be exclusively produced in Sunderland. Aguascalientes comes into play several years down the road on a future-generation premium compact model." Weinmann told us that it's too early to comment beyond that, but that Infiniti would "make more detailed announcements on this vehicle in due course."

Given that Infiniti recently launched the Juke-based ESQ premium compact crossover for the Chinese market, of course there's nothing to stop it from launching individual models for the North American and European markets as well, but we'd expect both the Q30 and QX30 to arrive in US showrooms at some point, sooner or later.

FIA Online Championship coming to Gran Turismo

Gamers know that you can't get much closer to the action than in the latest installment of Polyphony Digital's Gran Turismo simulator series for the PlayStation. But just how close is that virtual reality to actual reality?

According to the FIA, extremely close. At the FIA Sport Conference that just wrapped up in Munich, Jean Todt (president of the motorsport body) and Kazunori Yamauchi (of Polyphony) announced a partnership that grants FIA certification to four circuits digitally rendered for the game. We don't yet know which tracks those are, specifically, but Silverstone appears to be one of them, and our money's on the other three being drawn from circuits currently used in Formula One – say, Suzuka, Monza and Spa – and will extend to other tracks in the future.

The burgeoning partnership between the FIA and Polyphony doesn't end there, however. The two are also collaborating on the launch of a new FIA Online Championship next year. We don't know much about the digital racing series yet, but according to the statement below, it will offer "the large number of Gran Turismo players and motor sport fans the opportunity to engage with real motor sport."

Aston Martin confirms DP-100 for Gran Turismo 6 and Goodwood debut

Gran Turismo 6 is set to come to life this weekend at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. That's where Mercedes-AMG will run its Vision Gran Turismo and Nissan will show a full-size mockup of its Concept 2020 Vision Gran Turismo. Now Aston Martin has announced it's getting in on the action as well with its Design Prototype 100.

Aston has released a video two teaser images to give us a hint at what it's working on, but will reveal the finished product in the Supercar Paddock at Goodwood tomorrow, although we don't know if that will be in the form of a scale model, a full-size show car, a series of design sketches or a virtual rendition existing only in the game. From the look of the two images, though, it appears that we're dealing with an LMP-style racer with Aston's ubiquitous V12 mounted in the middle of a carbon-fiber chassis.

What we do know for certain is that, when it's released for download next month, it will be the latest (but certainly not the last) in a long line of concepts designed specifically for driving on the PlayStation 3.

McLaren GT confirmed

 Today at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, in the UK, McLaren GT confirmed the first details of its next generation track racer.

The 650S GT3, built by the GT race-car manufacturing arm of the McLaren Group, is an evolution of  the successful 12C GT3 which firmly re-established McLaren at the front of the GT grid. To-date, the 12C GT3 has claimed three championship titles, 51 races and 70 podium finishes over the last three seasons.

The new 650S GT3, features improved aerodynamics, better cooling and enhanced safety, and will contest top-tier sports car championships around the globe from 2015.