The ultimate road trip ride? Part 1

If you've got kids, dogs or just a lot of friends and you need the perfect daily driver and road trip master, then look no further than the Infiniti QX56.

I was fortunate to have one for my holiday in Seattle, Portland and Sausalito, thanks to our friends at Infiniti of North America.

I'm also a great test case seeing that one of my daily drivers is a Chevy Tahoe Z71.

How does the QX compare to vehicles like the Tahoe and Escalade?

Quite well.

In fact, if it were my money and the QX would have been out when I bought the Tahoe, the Ms. would be driving the QX as we speak.

The Tahoe and Escalade are ok, but they are missing the refinement of the QX.

On the outside, they're all pretty good looking trucks (I actually prefer the look of the Tahoe Z71 to the others)

But on the inside, there is NO comparison.

The QX is gorgeous and could possibly have the best interior interface/layout of anything out there in its class, except for maybe the Range Rover.

Interior room is no issue as the SUV sucks up just about anything you throw in it.

Comfort is outstanding, especially on long distance drives.

And once you have the power open/close tailgate, you'll never want to go back into the dark ages of the manual closing door.

The other area that impressed us was the gas mileage.

17.5 MPG compared to the measley 13.5 MPG I squeak out on the wife's Tahoe.

Did we have any glitches?

Just a couple minor ones...

The passenger airbag light keep blinking throughout the trip and the DVD nav as a little dissapointing as missed some pretty popular spots and seemed like it needed a gps calibration.

Both of these are easily rectified.

What would we change?

We like the individual captain chair seats in the second row that offer easy access to the third row without having to fold down seats like on the Tahoe and Escalade.

Bottom line:

If you need a large SUV with three full rows of seats and you can't wait to see the new stuff coming from GM this January, then the QX is your next ride.

We highly recommend it.











Click here to view part two