Infiniti getting more mileage out of their F1 sponsorship with the Q50 Eau Rouge Concept

The Infiniti Q50 Eau Rouge Concept is a performance concept of Infinit’s Q50 saloon inspired by F1 and heading for the Detroit Auto Show.

The Infiniti Q50 Eau Rouge Concept (pictured) will debut at the Detroit Auto Show

If, like Infiniti, you’re spending and arm and a leg sponsoring Red Bull in F1, you want to milk it for all it’s worth.

So we’ve already seen Sebastian Vettel installed as Infiniti’s Director of Performance (we don’t expect he sits in on many board meetings) and the Infiniti FX Vettel Edition as a (not particularly) high performance version of Infiniti’s FX SUV.

Now we’re getting a new model that Infiniti can hang the F1 connection on with a performance version of the Infiniti Q50 – the Infiniti Q50 Eau Rouge Concept – teased above ahead of a debut at the Detroit Auto Show in January.

Infiniti aren’t being forthcoming about what extra power (if any) they’ve given the Q50 to justify it being named after the Eau Rouge corner at Spa-Francorchamps, but they do say the Eau Rouge is their design vision of a high performance variant.

Alfonso Albaisa, Infiniti’s Exec Design Director, said:

Performance is a key pillar of Infiniti’s DNA and this car expresses a deepened design interpretation of that. The Q50, with an abundance of technologies, provides a great basis for an extreme performance version, embodied in the design of Q50 Eau Rouge.

From what we can see in the photo of the Q50 Eau Rouge, Infiniti seem to have added a front splitter reminiscent of that on an F1 car (well, if you stretch your imagination a bit), but apart from that we’ll have to wait until Detroit to see if the Eau Rouge offers the sort of performance you could reasonably expect from a car inspired by F1.