Infiniti G37 Review: 47/70

The Buyer's Guide

A buyer's guide built from our seven-category Board. Each section gives you the numbers first, then plain talk about what they mean for your decision. We scored the car as a 2009 or 2010 sedan with the VQ37VHR engine and the seven-speed automatic, and it landed at 47 out of 70, with a verdict of Buy the automatic, demand gasket paperwork, or walk.

Read that scope line again, because it says something unusual. We are recommending the automatic. On almost every car we cover, the manual is the enthusiast's answer and the one we tell you to hold out for. On this one it is the wrong buy, for two independent reasons, and we explain both below.

All money figures use a fixed set of assumptions so they can be compared to other cars we cover: 12,000 miles a year, premium fuel at $4.00 a gallon, and full coverage insurance. Prices are Kelley Blue Book private-party at 120,000 miles in Good condition. One important exception on this car: the insurance figure is an estimate, not a source. MoneyGeek publishes no G37 page, so this car's running-cost total is softer than the rest of the tier's and must not be dollar-compared against them.

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The Deal

~ our estimate, not a measured or quoted figure · [E] estimated: we found no source for it at all · * there is a caveat, and the note under the table explains it. Why we mark figures

The Deal scores an 9, and on paper this is a lot of car per dollar. Three hundred and twenty-eight horsepower, rear-wheel drive, four doors, five seats and a genuine luxury interior, for $6,945. That is $21.2 per horsepower, against the 350Z's $18.7, the NC Miata's $41.8 and the GR86's $103.

A correction we owe you, because we nearly published the opposite. Our research draft had this car at $18 per horsepower and ranked it ahead of the 350Z. That figure was calculated against an earlier, lower price estimate, before we pulled the Blue Book value at the 120,000-mile standard this tier uses. At the real price it is $21.2, and the 350Z is cheaper. The original claim was wrong in direction, not just in size, and it would have gone on camera.

So why an 8 rather than the 9 the other two cheap cars got? Because of one line in the section below. Every G37 you can afford has the oil gallery gasket problem, and the repair runs $1,200 to $2,800. You should treat that as part of the purchase price unless the seller can prove it has been done. A $6,945 car with a near-certain $2,000 bill attached is a different proposition from a $6,985 Miata where a careful inspection tells you what you are buying.

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The Drive

The Drive scores a 7. 11.1 pounds per horsepower sits a hair behind the 350Z's 10.9, on the same engine family, in a car that seats four adults in comfort. Five point four seconds to 60 in a luxury sedan that costs under seven thousand dollars is a genuinely strange piece of value, and the VQ37 with VVEL pulls hard to 7,500 rpm.

What it does not do is entertain you the way the two Zs do. This is a heavier, more isolated car, tuned for refinement, and the steering and chassis let you know it. It is quick, competent and quiet rather than playful. That is not a criticism, it is what an Infiniti sedan was supposed to be, but it is why this ties the Zs on the score rather than beating them: what it gains in usable speed it hands back in engagement.

One honest note on the weight. The 3,640 pounds is a trim-level figure for the Sport sedan with the manual, taken at the source rather than from an aggregator. An earlier version of our research claimed the G37 and 350Z were dead level on power-to-weight; that came from an unverified spec-site weight and we have softened it. The G37 is close to the 350Z, not equal to it.

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The Upkeep

The Upkeep scores a 6, and this is the one section on this page where we have to tell you our number is weaker than usual.

We could not source an insurance figure for this car. MoneyGeek, which is where every other insurance figure in this tier comes from, publishes no G37 page under any slug. It carries the Q50 and the Q60, which are the G37's replacements on a later generation and a different engine, and using those would be exactly the kind of cross-generation substitution that produces confident wrong answers. So the $1,900 above is our estimate, bounded by the two VQ-engined cars MoneyGeek does cover, the 350Z at $1,950 and the 370Z at $2,324, and nudged down because insurers price a four-door sedan below a two-seat sports coupe.

What that means for you in practice: treat the $4,932 total as directional. And be aware that the comparison you probably most want, G37 against 370Z, is the one we cannot make in dollars, because one figure is sourced and the other is not. We will tell you which is cheaper to run in rank terms and leave it there.

Everything else is straightforward. Twenty-two miles per gallon combined on premium for the automatic, which is mid-pack for this tier and 2 mpg better than the manual, worth about $218 a year. Tires are an estimate because Sport trims run staggered fitments and base cars do not, which changes the number, and we have not resolved which you are buying.

What a neglected example costs in year one

Look at what the transmission does to that table. Buying the manual instead of the automatic moves your worst case up by roughly $1,800, because it adds a concentric slave cylinder that the automatic simply does not have. That is the second of the two reasons we tell you to buy the automatic, and it is worth more than the driving difference to most people at this price.

The lines behind those totals: the gallery gasket at $1,200 to $2,800 in shop labour plus $75 to $150 in parts, ten hours at difficulty five out of five. A timing chain tensioner at $900 to $1,600. A water pump at $650 to $1,000, which you do at the same time because the engine is already apart. The slave cylinder and clutch at $1,500 to $1,800 on the manual only. Brakes, fluids and tires at around $1,200 [E].

One fact matters more than all of them. The gasket is reported to squeeze out by roughly 62,000 miles. At the 120,000-mile standard this tier prices on, a G37 is at nearly double that, so the job is either already done or badly overdue. Documented proof that it has been done is worth more than any other single fact about a given car.

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The Risk

The Risk scores a 5, and this car introduces a category we had not seen before in this tier.

Every other car here had an escape route. On the Miata, every failure is findable before you pay. On the Civic Si and the 350Z, picking the right years removes the worst problem. The G37 has no escape route. The paper oil gallery gasket affects 2008 through early 2012 builds, and while Nissan did revise the design for 2013 and later, 2013-and-later cars cost more than $10,000. The fix exists and it is outside this budget. There is no model year in this price band that escapes it.

What the failure actually does: paper gaskets behind the timing cover starve the variable valve timing system of oil pressure, which throws P0011, P0016 and P0021. Drive on those codes and you lose the engine. The repair needs the front of the engine stripped, special tools to hold the timing, and careful sealant work: ten hours, rated five out of five for difficulty.

And it is only partially detectable, which is the worst category to be in. A scan and a look for oil weep at the rear of the engine will catch a car that is already failing. It tells you nothing about a car that is about to. A clean scan is not a clean bill of health, and you should not let a seller present it as one.

Now the second failure, and this is where the transmission decision gets made. The concentric slave cylinder is the same part that fails on the 350Z, it is internal so fixing it means pulling the gearbox, and no inspection predicts it. It is fitted to the six-speed manual only. Buy the automatic and it is simply not on your car. That is the first of the two reasons the 7AT is the buy, and it is why this scores a 5 where the 350Z scores a 4: same gasket, but you get to opt out of the second problem.

A detail worth a segment of its own. The class action over that slave cylinder covers the 2007 to 2009 350Z, the 370Z, and the 2008 to 2014 G37 with the manual. That is three cars on our Board sharing one defect, across two brands and a decade.

The inspection checklist

1. Ask for gallery-gasket documentation. No paperwork means assume $2,000 or more
2. OBD scan for P0011, P0016 and P0021. Any of them means the job is due now
3. Look for oil weep at the rear of the engine
4. Cold start, and listen for timing chain rattle
5. Prefer the 7AT. Better economy, and no slave cylinder
6. Oil level and consumption history

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The Daily

The Daily scores an 8, level with the WRX and the GTI Mk6. Five seats, four doors, and an interior that was genuinely luxurious when it was new and still feels it. The Miata and the 350Z ask you to accept two seats and a compromise, and this car asks you to accept nothing.

It is a car in this tier we would call a credible only-car. You can put four adults in it, you can do a long motorway journey without arriving tired, and it does not announce to everyone that you bought a cheap performance car. For a lot of buyers that combination is worth more than the two-tenths the Zs have on it.

What keeps it off a 9 is age-related rather than fundamental. There is no CarPlay, because the car predates it, and the infotainment is of its era even on the trims that came with navigation. The GTI and Golf R score a 9 above it on modern tech and on the flexibility of a hatchback. Note also that we did not source a cargo figure, so that row reads Not captured rather than carrying a number we guessed.

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The Limit

The Limit scores a 6, a point behind the 350Z and two behind the 370Z, and the reason is simply what this car is.

The class is solid: the G37 Coupe and Sedan sit in F Street, read directly out of the 2026 Appendix A, in the same list as the 350Z, the 370Z, the Shelby GT350, the C63 AMG and the Lexus IS F. So all three of the VQ cars on our Board are cross-shoppable on a single autocross entry form, which is a genuinely useful thing to know if you want to compete on a budget.

Grip and braking read Not captured, because we found no instrumented figure for the car we are scoring and we are not going to model one.

What the 6 reflects is that a 3,640-pound luxury sedan is capable rather than engaging at the limit. It has the power, it has the balance, and it will do a respectable job on a course. It just does not talk to you, and our Limit score is about behaviour and engagement rather than lap times. The 350Z is a point ahead of it and the 370Z two, and both of those are the same engine in a lighter, sharper package.

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The Mods

The Mods scores a 6. The ecosystem is genuinely strong, because this engine is shared with the 370Z and the parts industry treats them as one platform. What holds the score down is that on this particular car, both known failures get worse the harder you use it. Track use is specifically reported to worsen the gallery-gasket weep, and on a manual, more power drives the slave cylinder harder.

That produces an unusual piece of advice, and it is the most useful thing in this section: the first modification you should make to a G37 is a repair. Steel replacement gallery gasket sets exist, from Z1 and from VQPLUG among others. Doing the gasket properly in steel before you add power converts the car's defining weakness into a solved problem, and it costs the same labour you were going to spend eventually anyway. Doing it afterwards means paying that labour twice.

We are showing Not captured for cost per 100 wheel horsepower, because we did not source an installed price for a forced-induction route on this engine and we would rather leave the cell empty than estimate it.

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The Verdict

Buy the automatic, demand gasket paperwork, or walk. It scores 47 out of 70, which ties the 370Z exactly, and the two of them get there by completely different routes: the G37 wins The Daily by four points on four doors and a real interior, and loses The Limit and The Mods. Same engine family, same race class, one third of the money.

The condition has two halves and neither is optional. Get the automatic, because it avoids the slave cylinder entirely and returns 2 mpg more. And get gallery-gasket documentation, because every car in this price band is exposed, a scan cannot clear a car that has not failed yet, and the fix Nissan engineered arrived in a model year you cannot afford.

This car is for you if you want the most usable, most comfortable, most powerful thing $7,000 can buy and you are willing to do paperwork rather than pick a trim. It is not for you if you want the manual, if you want engagement over speed, or if you were hoping to buy on a clean inspection alone. On this one, a clean inspection is not enough.

The Long Read: Should You Buy a Used Infiniti G37?

So you wanna buy a G37. Here is the short version, and it starts with something we almost never say: buy the automatic. Not the manual. The automatic. There are two independent reasons, both of them worth real money, and by the end of this you will understand why the enthusiast choice is the wrong one on this particular car.

We scored it as a 2009 or 2010 sedan with the VQ37VHR and the seven-speed automatic, and it landed at 47 out of 70, which ties the 370Z exactly. Three hundred and twenty-eight horsepower, four doors, a proper luxury interior, for under seven thousand dollars. There is a catch, it is expensive, and no model year you can afford avoids it.

How much does a used G37 cost?

Six thousand nine hundred and forty-five dollars, for a Good-condition 2010 sedan at 120,000 miles, private party, which is the flat basis we price this whole budget tier on. The full condition range runs $5,595 to $7,270. Older 2009 sedans start lower, from around $4,500.

For that you get 328 horsepower, and that works out to $21.2 per horsepower. The 350Z is $18.7. The NC Miata is $41.8. A GR86 is $103. On paper this is a lot of car per dollar.

Now a correction, because we nearly put the wrong number on camera. Our research draft had this car at $18 per horsepower and put it ahead of the 350Z. That was calculated against an earlier, lower price, before we pulled the Blue Book value at the 120,000-mile standard this tier actually uses. At the real price it is $21.2, and the 350Z is cheaper. That claim was wrong in direction, not just in size. We would rather tell you we caught it than quietly publish the right number and say nothing.

So The Deal scores a 9, the same as the Miata and the 350Z, and we used to hold it at an 8 because of the gasket. We do not any more, because that was the same bill counted twice: it is already the whole reason The Risk scores a 5. The Deal asks whether a car is cheap for a good reason or a bad one, and $6,945 for 328 hp and four doors is a good one. The gasket is still real, we will get to it properly in a minute, and every G37 in this price range needs a $1,200 to $2,800 repair. Unless the seller can prove it has been done, treat it as part of the purchase price. It just gets counted once, in The Risk, where it belongs.

What is the G37 like to drive?

Quick, and quiet, and a little bit anonymous. Three hundred and twenty-eight horsepower, 269 pound-feet, 3,640 pounds, which is 11.1 pounds per horsepower. That is a hair behind the 350Z's 10.9, on essentially the same engine family, in a car that seats four adults properly. Zero to sixty in about 5.4 seconds. The VQ37 with VVEL pulls all the way to 7,500 rpm and sounds good doing it.

What it does not do is entertain you the way the two Zs do. This is a heavier, more isolated, more grown-up car, and the steering and the chassis are tuned for refinement rather than for conversation. It goes very fast without ever feeling like it is trying, which is either exactly what you want from a car you drive every day or exactly what you do not want from a performance car. The Drive scores a 7, which ties both Zs: what it gains in usable pace it gives back in engagement.

One honest note on that weight figure. The 3,640 pounds is a trim-level number taken at the source. An earlier version of our research claimed the G37 and the 350Z were dead level on power-to-weight, and that came from an unverified spec site. They are close. They are not equal.

Is the G37 cheap to own?

Here we have to be straight with you about a gap in our own numbers.

The running cost comes to about $4,932 a year: roughly $2,182 of fuel, $1,900 of insurance, $350 of tires and $500 of service. Twenty-two miles per gallon combined on premium for the automatic, which is mid-pack for this tier.

But we could not source the insurance figure. Every other insurance number in this tier comes from MoneyGeek, and MoneyGeek publishes no G37 page at all. It carries the Q50 and the Q60, which are this car's replacements on a later generation with a different engine, and dropping those in would be exactly the kind of substitution that produces a confident wrong answer. So the $1,900 is our estimate. We bounded it with the two cars from the same engine family that MoneyGeek does cover, the 350Z at $1,950 and the 370Z at $2,324, and moved it down a little because insurers price a four-door sedan below a two-seat sports coupe.

What that means for you: treat the total as directional rather than precise. And the comparison you probably want most, this car against the 370Z, is the one we cannot make in dollars, because one figure is sourced and the other is not. We will tell you the ranking and stop there. That is a rule we hold to across the whole Board, and this is a case where it costs us the headline.

The tire line is also an estimate, and for a specific reason: Sport trims run staggered fitments that cannot be rotated and base cars do not, which changes the number materially. We have not resolved which one you are buying.

What will a G37 cost you in the first year?

This is where the transmission decision earns its keep, so watch what happens to the bottom row.

A car with the gasket documented as done, on the automatic, needs about $1,200 to $1,800. A car where the gasket history is unknown, on the automatic, runs $3,850 to $4,800. A car where the gasket history is unknown, on the manual, runs $5,350 to $6,600.

That last jump is roughly $1,800, and it is entirely the concentric slave cylinder, which the automatic does not have. On a $6,945 car, the manual's worst case is 95 percent of what you paid. The automatic's tops out around 69 percent.

The rest of the list: the gallery gasket at $1,200 to $2,800 in labour plus parts, ten hours at difficulty five out of five. A timing chain tensioner at $900 to $1,600. A water pump at $650 to $1,000, which you do at the same time because the front of the engine is already off. Brakes, fluids and tires at around $1,200.

And here is the single most useful fact on this page. The gasket is reported to squeeze out by around 62,000 miles. At the 120,000-mile standard we price this tier on, a G37 is at nearly double that. So on any car you look at, the job is either already done or it is long overdue. There is no third option. Paperwork proving it has been done is worth more than mileage, more than service history, more than trim, more than anything else you can learn about a specific car.

Is the G37 reliable? Common problems to check

The Risk scores a 5, and this car brought us a problem shape we had not met before in this tier.

Every other car down here has an escape route. On the NC Miata, every failure is findable before you hand over money. On the Civic Si and the 350Z, picking the right model years removes the worst issue. The G37 has no escape route. The paper oil gallery gasket affects cars built from 2008 through early 2012. Nissan did fix it: they revised the design for 2013 and later. And 2013-and-later cars cost more than ten thousand dollars, which puts them outside this tier entirely. The fix exists and you cannot afford it. There is no model year in this price band that escapes the problem.

What the failure does: paper gaskets sitting behind the timing cover starve the variable valve timing system of oil pressure, and the car throws P0011, P0016 or P0021. Keep driving on those codes and you lose the engine. The repair means stripping the front of the engine, special tools to hold the timing in place, and careful sealant work. Ten hours, rated five out of five for difficulty.

And it is only partially detectable, which is the worst possible category. A scan plus a look for oil weep at the rear of the engine will find a car that is already failing. It will tell you nothing whatsoever about a car that is about to fail. A clean scan is not a clean bill of health, and if a seller waves one at you as proof the car is fine, they are either mistaken or hoping you are.

Then there is the second failure, and this is where you decide which car to buy. The concentric slave cylinder is the same part that fails on the 350Z. It is internal, so replacing it means pulling the gearbox, and no inspection predicts it. It is fitted to the six-speed manual only. Buy the automatic and it is simply not on your car. That is reason one of two for the 7AT, and it is why this scores a 5 where the 350Z scores a 4. Same gasket. But you get to opt out of the second problem.

One more thing worth knowing, and it is bigger than this car. The class action over that slave cylinder covers the 2007 to 2009 350Z, the 370Z, and the 2008 to 2014 G37 with the manual. That is three cars on our Board, two badges, a decade apart, sharing a single defect. We will probably make a video about just that.

There is also a reported oil consumption issue on this engine, but the sourcing is thin and the correlation to actual failure is described as weak, so we have named it and deliberately not weighted it in the score.

Can a G37 be your only car?

Yes, and there are not many cars down here we would say that about. The Daily scores an 8.

Five seats, four doors, and an interior that was genuinely luxurious when it was new and still feels it today. The Miata and the 350Z both ask you to accept two seats and a set of compromises; this car asks you to accept nothing. Four adults fit properly. A long motorway drive does not wear you out. And it does not announce to the world that you bought a cheap fast car, which for some buyers is the entire appeal.

What keeps it off a 9 is age rather than design. There is no CarPlay, because the car predates it, and the infotainment feels its years even on trims that came with navigation. The GTI and the Golf R sit a point above it on modern tech and on the sheer flexibility of a hatchback. We also did not source a cargo figure for the boot, so that row on our page says Not captured rather than carrying a number we made up.

Is the G37 good at autocross?

It is legal and it is competitive on paper, which is not quite the same as being good at it.

In SCCA Solo the G37 Coupe and Sedan both run F Street, read straight out of the 2026 Appendix A, in the same list as the 350Z, the 370Z, the Shelby GT350, the C63 AMG and the Lexus IS F. So all three of the VQ-engined cars we have scored are cross-shoppable on one entry form, which genuinely matters if you want to go racing on a budget and are deciding which one to turn up in.

Grip and braking we are showing as Not captured, because we could not find an instrumented figure for the car we are actually scoring, and we would rather show you an empty cell than model one.

The Limit scores a 6, behind both Zs, and the reason is simply physics and intent. A 3,640-pound luxury sedan is capable rather than engaging. It has the power and the balance and it will put in a respectable run. It just does not talk to you, and our Limit score is about how a car behaves and communicates when you push it, not about lap times. The 350Z is a point ahead and the 370Z two, and both are the same engine in something lighter and sharper.

Should you modify a G37?

Yes, but the first thing you should buy is not a modification. The Mods scores a 6.

The ecosystem is genuinely strong, because this engine is shared with the 370Z and the aftermarket treats them as one platform. What pulls the score down is that both of this car's known failures get worse the harder you use it. Track use is specifically reported to worsen the gallery-gasket weep, and on a manual, more power drives the slave cylinder harder. Every path to more performance runs straight through the two things already most likely to break.

Which produces the most useful piece of advice on this page: the first modification you should make to a G37 is a repair. Steel replacement gallery gasket sets are available, from Z1 and VQPLUG among others. Doing the gasket properly in steel before you add power turns the car's defining weakness into a solved problem, and it uses the same ten hours of labour you were going to spend on it eventually anyway. Do it afterwards and you pay that labour twice.

We are showing Not captured for cost per hundred wheel horsepower, because we did not source an installed price for a forced-induction route on this engine and we are not going to estimate one.

G37 vs 370Z: which should you buy?

They tie. Both finished at 47 out of 70, on the same engine family, in the same race class, and they get there completely differently.

The G37 wins The Daily by four clear points, because it has four doors, five seats and a luxury interior against the 370Z's two seats and hard plastics. The 370Z wins The Limit and The Mods, because it is lighter, sharper and more fun to drive fast. The G37 costs $6,945 and the 370Z costs about $18,000.

So it comes down to what the car is for. If it has to do a job in your life, take the G37 and put the eleven thousand dollars you saved somewhere useful. If you want to enjoy driving it on a Sunday and you have something else for Monday, the 370Z is the better car and you are paying for that.

One thing we will not do is tell you which is cheaper to insure in dollars, because our G37 figure is an estimate and the 370Z's is sourced. Comparing them directly would be inventing precision we do not have.

G37 buy or skip: the verdict

Buy the automatic, demand gasket paperwork, or walk.

Both halves of that are load-bearing. Get the automatic, because it avoids the slave cylinder completely and returns 2 mpg more, which are two independent reasons that both cost real money. And get gallery-gasket documentation, because every car in this price band is exposed, a clean scan cannot clear a car that has not failed yet, and the fix Nissan actually engineered arrived in a model year priced out of this tier.

The G37 finished at 47 out of 70, tied with the 370Z, and it is the most usable, most comfortable and most powerful thing seven thousand dollars will buy you. It is for you if you want all of that and you are willing to do paperwork instead of picking a trim level. It is not for you if you want the manual, if you want engagement over speed, or if you were hoping a clean inspection would be enough. On this car, it is not.