In the Infiniti family of cars, the nonconformist is the 2004 M45, the elegant wild child of the bunch.

Take styling. Just about every Infiniti on the road is full-bodied, rather voluptuous, with sensuous profiles, especially such models as the FX35 and FX45.

Not the M45. It is rakish, sleek, spare and sinewy. There's nary a speck of chrome on its sharply honed flanks, nothing just for show.

	2004 Infiniti M45 (top) and interior (bottom). Click photo for larger image.

But just as is true for other families, the M45 is all in the family once it's on the road. Mash the accelerator pedal and, like other new Infinitis, it emits a deep-throated growl from its 340-horsepower, 4.5-liter V-8 and takes off like a Stealth bomber, its gleaming black paint and shiny chrome wheels becoming little more than a sparkling knife-like blur.

That's because the Infiniti continues a fine old automotive tradition: taking a huge engine from the top of the line model, in this case the Q45, and putting it in a smaller car. Buick did it with its Century. Pontiac, Oldsmobile and just about everybody else in the muscle car era did it with their intermediate models.

When you sit inside the M45, you feel like Captain Kirk, surrounded as you are by sparkling, orange-lit gauges and controls. That feeling is reinforced as you gaze at the angled center stack with the big knobs arrayed around a colorful, futuristic navigation screen with a gridlike illustration that looks like an aircraft instrument. Beneath it all is a gleaming, chrome-encircled clock, and the seats are thick and leathery, with controls to heat or cool them.

What bothered me about the interior were the emblems and lettering everywhere -- it just seemed a tacky throwback to the designer-jean era that has come and gone.

I had a more serious problem with the navigation system that also included voice, climate and audio controls. It's complicated and definitely not intuitive, which means reading the owner's manual is must. Once you do that, it's fairly easy to operate, but still has its moments.

Still, the whole system could use some smoothing. When you consider how few people read the owner's manual, carmakers need to do a better job with design on the assumption that the owner will not bother with the manual unless it's absolutely necessary.

As you might imagine, handling is top-notch in the M45. It corners well, takes road imperfections in stride and doesn't mind being pushed hard. Fuel mileage is 17 city and 23 highway. Anti-lock brakes, traction control and stability control are standard, and the base price starts at $43,250.

If you want one of these first-generation M45s, you better hurry. A new one is scheduled to debut in the spring that is purportedly a lot different from this version.