It’s no secret that several full-size SUV models aren’t exactly selling like hotcakes right now. When high prices collide with elevated interest rates and a cost of living crisis, consumers tend to buy fewer big, thirsty rigs. We saw it during the fuel price squeeze of the late 2000s, and now we’re seeing it again. If you want an example of a model that’s being hit hard this time, look no further than the Infiniti QX80.
The Infiniti QX80 may be old at this point, having undergone a name change and a series of facelifts in the past 14 years in production, but some might call that proven. From the 5.6-liter V8 engine to the seven-speed automatic transmission to the chassis, Infiniti’s had plenty of time to work out the kinks and deliver a known entity. However, thanks to that age combined with a new QX80 on the horizon, the current model is turning out to be a bit of a bargain.
With more than $15,000 on the hoods of a wide selection of Infiniti QX80 SUVs at an array of dealerships across the country, you might be tempted to have a gander if you’re in the market for a new tow rig. However, you might also be wondering why it’s so cheap and if an even better deal exists. Let’s dig into this.
Big Discounts
A litany of Infiniti dealers across the country still have 2023 models in stock, and they’re clearing them out with cash on hoods. Take this QX80 Premium Select trim, for example. It’s being sold by an Infiniti dealer in Orlando for $63,901 despite carrying an MSRP of $82,900. That’s a discount of $18,999 on a brand new SUV. With just seven miles on the odometer, it likely hasn’t even been test-driven, let alone used as a demonstrator by dealer management, and it may just continue to sit until it finds a new home.
Here’s another 2023 Infiniti QX80 Premium Select, this time being sold by an Infiniti dealer in Wisconsin. It carries an MSRP of $83,595, but this dealer is clearing this one out for $63,593. Yep, that’s a discount of $20,002 on an SUV with just nine miles on the clock. Plus, it’s been ordered in an actual color instead of a greyscale shade, a rather fetching shade of dark red.
Look a bit harder, and you can even find discounts on 2024 models. Here’s a 2024 Infiniti QX80 Luxe being sold by an Infiniti dealer in Scottsdale, Ariz. at a five-figure discount. While it carries an MSRP of $80,795, it’s listed for $63,795, savings of $17,000 on a brand new SUV with five miles on the clock. Not 5,000 or 500, five. That’s astonishing, and it makes you wonder why these things are so cheap.
An Aging Platform
One reason why the current QX80 is so heavily discounted could be that this SUV’s F-Alpha platform dates back to the mid-aughts, and you can see this in the parts under the QX80. The front upper control arms are shared with the 2004 Nissan Titan pickup truck, as are the lower front ball joints, as are the inner and outer tie rods. The rear sway bar bushings are shared with the 2004 Nissan Pathfinder, the front brake calipers are shared with the 2005 QX56, and even the damper tuning goes back to 2011. It may say 2023 on the title, but these are old trucks, with substantial parts of their skeletons roaming the streets before the second-generation Toyota Sequoia or GMT900 Cadillac Escalade first rolled into showrooms.
As a result, the QX80 does show its age out on the road. Ride quality isn’t as refined as you get in a new Chevrolet Tahoe, and handling isn’t exactly precise. Add in fuel economy figures of 13 mpg city, 19 mpg highway, and 15 mpg combined on four-wheel-drive models, and the new-old-truck vibes are complete. If you’re looking for a time capsule, this is it, but it just doesn’t feel on the level with substantially more recent competitors.
Add in the impending arrival of a new QX80, albeit at a much higher price point, and the aging current model doesn’t exactly hold massive appeal. Infiniti loyalists and gadget aficionados will likely hold out for the 2025 QX80, while general large SUV shoppers may be more inclined to turn towards a Chevrolet Tahoe, GMC Yukon, or Ford Expedition.
The Real Bargain
If the QX80 is an appealing package to you, you’ll want to know that the current Nissan Armada is nearly as nice as an Infiniti QX80 for a whole lot less money. You still get the same 5.6-liter V8, the same seven-speed automatic, and the same chassis as the QX80, and the amenities on deck aren’t far off. For 2021 and newer models, we’re talking about wireless Apple CarPlay and wired Android Auto, available heated and cooled front seats, optional rear seat entertainment, a 13-speaker Bose sound system on mid-range trims and up, the works. Oh, and most of the Armada’s dashboard is identical to that of the outgoing QX80, with only some minor trim differences between the two vehicles. However, because the Armada wears a Nissan badge instead of an Infiniti one, it’s even less expensive.
For instance, here’s a brand new 2023 Nissan Armada SL 4WD up for sale at a Nissan dealership in Kentucky for $53,350, or $11,255 under MSRP. It still has all sorts of toys like heated leather seats, the Bose stereo, adaptive cruise control, and a heated steering wheel, but it’s five figures less than what at equivalent Infiniti QX80 goes for, even with the Infiniti being discounted.
Just to show you that isn’t a fluke, here’s a brand new 2023 Nissan Armada SL 4WD Midnight Edition up for sale at a Nissan dealer in Indiana for $50,944. Considering this thing carries an MSRP of $64,855, that’s a discount of $13,911 on a brand-new full-size SUV, and the final price works out to be five figures cheaper than one of those discounted Infiniti QX80s for what is ostensibly the same damn vehicle with different badging.
So, if you like the Infiniti QX80 and are tempted by the recent deals, why not scoop up a Nissan Armada instead? Not only will it feel nigh-on identical, it could leave five figures in your pockets, and that’s a good deal no matter how you slice it. Sure, you’ll miss out on the Infiniti badge, but what could $10,000 do for you?
(Photo credits: Infiniti, Cars.com sellers, Nissan)
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The protruding bottom section of the rear bumper of the QX80 makes the rear view especially awful. Inset that lower section by the same amount that it currently protrudes and you’ll have a reasonably good looking rear end.
If Nissan made minor adjustments like this to the front and rear, it wouldn’t be so awful looking. It’s like they got most of the way to a good looking truck, and then said “now let’s get a little more weird, just because”.
These behemoths are an embarrassment.
Well I just bought a 2021 QX80 Sensory for $46k. It’s loaded and drives like a dream. I’m normally a Toyota/Lexus guy but the same year Toyota Sequoia is not to my wife’s liking and the Lexus was too expensive for a “dated” SUV. A pre-owned 2020+ QX80 is perfect for those of us that want luxury without giving up a kidney!
I’m looking to buy a cheap tow beast for a camper. I was shocked to see just how cheap Nissan Armadas and QX56 are. Is there a catch? Are they reliable?
I like that this vehicle offers something for everyone. Take the rich person who likes to flaunt wealth. They buy the car and drive it until they’re sick of it, then move on. They don’t care that it’s depreciated 60%, yet still has 80% of its life left in it. Then you’ve got the guy who buys it used because it’s a pretty good vehicle at a great price, plus it’s got a little luxury thrown in. The third owner gets it for next to nothing, and it’s still a pretty good vehicle.
I am trying hard to imagine someone buying an Infiniti QX80 to “flaunt wealth” and I’m coming up empty
That thing is a relic.
And an ugly one at that. That design is just so disjointed.
This is basically the ol’ JC Penny pricing strategy but for cars.
Take an SUV worth 60k, price it at 80k, then advertise it as on sale for 60k.
Goddamn I pity the fool who ever spent 80k+ on a gussied-up Nissan SUV that was never all that competitive to begin with. Also… it’s real ugly.
As opposed to the Jos. A. Bank strategy of taking a suit worth $100, pricing it at $300, but pretending to sometimes price it at $500, so it always looks like it’s on sale for $200 off.
I think unibody crossovers have made a lot of these massive body on frame SUVs irrelevant. Don’t get me wrong-there are still folks who need them to tow, or for whatever reason won’t consider anything that isn’t BOF with a V8, but for the vast majority of shoppers unibody family haulers are a lot more appealing.
They’re less capable, but they’re much easier to live with. If you’re a family of 4 or 5 who doesn’t need to tow or tackle trails something like a hybrid Highlander will more or less do all the same stuff a QX80 or Armada will but get nearly 40 MPG in the process. If you want something fancier you can now get a Lexus Texas (hehehehehe get it boys?) too.
Even non hybrid options like the Pilot/MDX, Palluride, etc. still don’t make you put up with fuel economy in the low teens or truck like rides. Basically I don’t think a lot of people want stuff like this anymore, and those who do more or less stick to GM. I guess there’s the Sequoia as well but the new one is not very well reviewed.
Anyway, if you’re one of the handful of people who actually needs something like this and doesn’t care about the unwieldiness or the archaic fuel economy I actually think getting one at around 60 large is a really good deal. It’s a lot of car for that price and I’m not really sure going for an Escalade is going to be worth the $30,000 price delta.
Honestly these probably make for comfy, reliable, straightforward highway missiles that can tow your boat. There are lots of deals on the newish QX60 to be had as well. They’re certainly not near the top of their class but they’re gorgeous, well appointed, and as much as we all like to dunk on the VQ engine family because of how much tooners have ruined them that engine and ZF licensed 9 speed will probably go for 200k no problem.
Everytime I wonder how GM survives I have to remind myself that they have this massively important category so dominantly under their control. These, the Sequoia, the Expedition; I hardly see any of around here. The GM twins however, have a dominant presence. It’s the official vehicle of the upper-middle class hockey family here in the Northeast. Those people have zero intention of ever giving up their Tahoes for a Nissan.
My partner has a 2019 Honda Pilot. For all intents and purposes, it’s a less useful minivan. FWD, no ground clearance, all season tires, won’t tow for shit. But it’ll haul 8 people and gets 22 mpg combined, so it’s fine for what it is.
It is, but unfortunately people just don’t want minivans.
In the pilots defense it is tie rated at 5k vs 3.5k for the Odyssey. I’d go minivan all day long if it offered matched tow ratings. I don’t need trail rated. I need boat ramp rated.
One big benefit to these being so old is that they still have buttons, knobs, and a properly hooded gauge cluster. Those are becoming killer features for me as they disappear from basically every new car that gets released.
In addition, the old “bones” are also close to a killer app for me as well. The fact that I could not only source parts for cheap, but also install them myself with a jack stand and some sockets and wrenches is fantastic. Well worth the trade-off for… slightly worse ride quality and handling?
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I honestly don’t care if I feel a pothole or a bit of body roll in massive 3-row SUV. I’ve driven older cars my whole life, and never once have I thought to myself “man, I need to sell this thing because I don’t feel like I’m floating on the road”. I’m POSITIVE that however ancient this thing’s underpinnings are, it would be just fine for me.
That said… I will never spend close to that kind of money on a vehicle, so it’s all hypothetical anyway.
I had a well loaded Nissan version a couple years ago for a rental and I’ll shamefully admit that I kinda liked the vehicle. I would seriously consider one of these for $15k off asking price.
I reserved an Armada for a family trip a while back. As I was about to pull out of the rental car lot, I realized one of the rear headrests was missing. I figured my wife might have a tiny issue with putting our kids back there, so I flagged down the employee to explain the issue. He looked at me like I was crazy until he looked into the car for himself. He had not noticed when he drove it out to me. Sort of like Red not noticing Andy’s shoes in Shawshank. I mean, what kind of psycho steals a headrest?
Maybe they liked the headrest so much they wanted it for their own car?
I have so many questions about Shawshank but I’m willing to overlook them. It’s one of my favorite movies.
(Heavily discounted) ~= (Cheap)
These have kind of grown on me, though I don’t know much about them other than that they’re based on the Patrol, which is cool, though I don’t know much about the current Patrol either. I like the look of the interior, and that it appears to still have manual controls for things, but it’s still an expensive Nissan with not much offroad capability anymore.
I know the older Patrols on the Australian 4×4 channels are badass, but obviously this has nothing to do with that. Kind of like how the 80 Series Landcruiser was so badass compared to the later ones.
I don’t see $63,901 as a good price as much as I see the MSRP of $82,900 as an absurd price. This seems more like a case of deceptive pricing than a vehicle that is genuinely discounted. I find it hard to believe many people actually paid $83k for one of these.
Also, don’t these things depreciate like a rock? There are several low mileage 2022 QX80s on Autotempest for around $40,000, and several 2021s for around $25,000. I have a hard time saying $63,000 is a good price for a vehicle that will be worth less than half of that in 3 years. I am not someone who believes in the outdated advice of “always buy used”, but this is a vehicle that is probably better to buy used.
Yes! I’ve never looked at Infiniti pricing, but there seem to be so many BETTER options at the $80k mark. That seemed like absolute lunacy.
If only we got some of the off road gizmos the Patrol gets in other markets.
Yeah. I briefly looked at an Armada when the refresh came out in 2017, but was disappointed that it lacked the off road goodies the Patrol had. Then I looked into availability to add them, as some other makes allow (like adding crawl control to the base GX460) and learned you cannot. All in all, very disappointing.
Dude, for real! At the very least, they should offer the better rear diff that has the combo rear lsd/e-locker that is in Patrols.
And frankly, with the new land cruiser and LX being available. They should offer some offroad goodies on the Armada/QX platform.
A lightly used Armada is a bargain, I really like ours.
Parts sharing with other older Nissans is great, it’s a relatively simple vehicle on an older platform that you can still maintain DIY.
Depreciation sucks, but I got ours like 10k+ less than a comparable year/mileage Tahoe, and about half the price of a Sequoia.
It’s comfy, the V8 has some good grunt, and fairly reliable as long as you avoid the earliest years.
I’m hardly breaking new ground here by saying GM makes the best entrants in this segment by a mile, but those prices would be tempting me greatly if I were in the market for this kind of thing.
No CVT, the V8 I think is pretty solid, and the amenities are competitive. Shame about the looks, but you could do a lot worse for $63K.
Two years ago I got “upgraded” from whatever it is I rented to an Armada. Extremely not impressed. Last year I got “upgraded” from the minivan I rented to a Tahoe, which surprised me quite a bit. Wasn’t bad at all.
I suppose the question then becomes if you’d rather pay $53K for the Armada or $70K for the Tahoe (or $63K for the QX80 vs $80K for the Yukon Denali).
Normally wouldn’t be a question, but at some point the price difference becomes enough to overlook a lot. The same logic applies to the Grand Wagoneer.
Normally, yes, but the Armada was bad enough that I think I’d remove it and the QX80 from consideration altogether. At some point you just don’t want to be miserable regardless of price.
Toyota: stretches the 5th generation 4Runner platform for 15 years, facelifted in 2014 and 2019, much rejoicing over Toyota Kaizen things for a decade and a half
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Nissan: produces the 2nd generation QX56 for 14 years, facelifted in 2015 and 2018, much maligning and ridicule, something, something small Nissan energy
There is definitely a “Toyota can do no wrong” vibe here.
And the 2019 update wasn’t even a facelift, it was only the addition of some tech that had been available in other cars going on a decade. In ’21 my GF bought an Elantra for 20K that had stuff you couldn’t get on a 50K 4Runner.
Heck, even the 1st year of the current 4Runner (2010) wasn’t even clean slate, a lot of the mechanicals including the powertrain were carried over from the 2003.
Do you really not understand the difference, though?
I kind of want a salvage titled recent Armada/QX80 for an off-road build.
Then I realize that it is still garbage.
I remember my sister buying a used QX80 a few years back. She was super excited because it was just two years old, had low miles, and was “only” $47,000. My BIL quickly grew to hate it. As time went on I learned from him that they had problems with the seats, seat-heaters, and the power-lift gate right from the start. The check engine light would come on randomly, tires were needed sooner than expected, a front-end parking lot tap cost $10K to fix and to top it all off, the best mileage she could seem to manage was a whopping 9 mpg.
These days she’s driving a Tahoe.
I forget these things exist until I see one on the road being chased by Captain Ahab
As someone who sold these for several years, I can tell you with confidence it is absolutely NOT worth buying one, for several reasons. First and foremost, despite having a decade plus to work out the kinks, Nissan never really bothered. The 5.6L V8 is a ticking time bomb. They pretty much all eventually grenade themselves. They drive like overloaded box trucks, they ride poorly, the interior is remarkably cramped for the size, the interior finishings feel like an Escalade from 15 years ago, the fuel economy is shockingly bad, the cabin is way too loud for a luxury SUV, and they depreciate like crazy! Pick literally anything else.
Different take, I cross-shopped ours (2020) with a Tahoe.
The Tahoe’s 5.3 was very gutless compared to the 5.6, not to mention the constant AFM problems, lifter collapses, oil consumption that plagues these even after all these production years.
And the Tahoe also rides kinda rough, thanks to the solid rear axle.
Which would be okay if it had the ground clearance for off-roading.
But some of them don’t even have 4 low in the transfer case.
I really want to like the Tahoe, since I really like the GMT400 and 800’s, but the AFM on the 5.3 scares the beejesus out of me, and the IRS on the current gen is a big turnoff.
I’m even leery of the GMT900’s, even though I love the look, especially the Avalanche.
There is NOTHING appealing about this thing. I wouldn’t pay 20K for it.
man those things are ugly