With its vinyl-wrapped nose and donkalicious wheels, today’s Nice Price of Crack Pipe QX56 certainly stands out. Let’s see if those attributes help make its price a standout too.
It can be tough to be a single brand-focused automotive tuner. It’s an especially tough row to hoe when you have to compete against another performance enhancer that’s well respected, aspirational, and most challenging of all, in-house. That’s the situation faced by Alpina, which for decades now has had to position their BMW-based products against the company’s own M GmbH subsidiary.
Tough as it may be, Alpina has been making a go of it, seemingly successfully too. That’s not to say that some of their older products have aged quite as well as have BMW’s M cars. Case in point was yesterday’s 1994 Alpina B3 3.0/1 E36. Yes just about every aspect of the car had been massaged by Alpina’s capable engineers, but that didn’t seem enough to command its $26,995 asking. Not at least with all the even more capable E36 M-series cars crowding up the classifieds.
That all resulted in a lopsided 83 percent Crack Pipe loss, making it one Alpina seemingly not worth the climb.
I’d like you to think for a minute about Nissan’s Infiniti brand. Specifically, I’d like you to see if you can account for all of the marque’s model designations and assignments. It’s damn tough, right? Much like Acura who eschewed iconic and easily identifiable words for an unintelligible alphabet soup of a naming convention, Infiniti seems to have “Q’d” all their models. The only major differentiators are the numeric appendages that denote size or market position. It’s sort of like George Forman naming all his kids “George Forman.”
One of Infiniti’s models that did seem to stand out in the Queue is the QX56. That’s owed to two factors: its enormous size, and it’s styling that is pretty much in your face. When in production over the last half of the last decade, the QX56 looked like nothing else in Infiniti’s line up. That was because it looked like the Armada, the range-topping SUV in Infiniti parent Nissan’s lineup. I mean, almost exactly like it since they were for all intents and purposes the same car.
They both shared the same Titan pickup-derived underpinnings and 5552cc DOHC V8 engine, although the QX56 did get a nice 10-horsepower bump over both Titan and Armada for a total of 315. Got to make the Riches feel like they’re getting something for their money.
This 2006 Infiniti QX56 stands out for another reason and that’s the yellow and chrome wrap that covers the front clip. It’s ostentatious; it’s unique; and most importantly for many; it’s removable. Additional braggadocio maybe found in the wheel wells where huge chrome wheels wearing low profile tires do their bump and grind.
Everything else on the exterior looks to be in excellent shape for the truck’s age. You do get Nissan’s weird styling which features an odd arc to the greenhouse above the doors, capped behind by a traditional squared-off rear end. The front door handles are also traditional and stand out in their bright chrome covers, while the rear doors are opened via body-color handles in the pillars. The bumpers match this front chrome/rear paint aesthetic too.
Popping open one of those doors reveals a leather-clad and accessory heavy three-row interior. Infiniti has attempted to create tradition by affixing each of their cars with an analog clock in the center of the dash. Yeah, yawn. On the QX56 that clock tells you knees the time as though they might actually care. Fortunately that poor placement allows for more important things like the nav screen and BOSE stereo controls to fall readily to eye and hand.
Everything in here looks to be in fine fettle, with no obvious wear to the seating surfaces nor control knobs. This is impressive since Nissan interiors generally don’t hold up as well as, say, Toyota’s do. There are three rows here, but only the rear seems ready to hold more than two since the center row middle seat seems to have gone missing. Maybe it’s in the enormous load area in back?
There’s a bit of customization in here too with blue-tinted LED lights festooned throughout the back and along the dash. They’re likely powered through a fuse that could be easily yanked.
The seller claims the QX to be in “excellent running condition” and further says that all the custom work on the truck has set him back over ten-grand. In addition to all that it comes with a tow package as well as a clean title and a mere 105,000 miles on the odometer.
Those are all appreciated attributes but looks and capabilities can only take you so far. We now have to get to the meat and potatoes of the decision and consider all that in relation to this QX’s $5,900 asking price.
What do you think, could this stand-out Infiniti be worth that $5,900 asking in light of all the Tahoes and Lexus GX470s competing with it for that cash? Or, does this QX’s unique nature—custom nose, wheels, being an Infiniti—make you feel this isn’t something worth wrapping up and taking?
You decide!
Las Vegas, NV Craigslist, or go here if the ad disappears.
H/T to FauxShizzle for the hookup!
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