Okay, kids. Buckle up as we have a lot of stuff to talk about today.

One of these days I should put together some graphs and charts showing which car makers have the most websites listed in this whole website-checking endeavor. Some have very few. Others seem to have a different website every time the wind shifts.

Infiniti is one of those companies that routinely used unique domains and site sections in their advertising. It’s not wrong. But I would argue that using lots of different URLs necessitates a long-term commitment to maintain those addresses.

In this week’s article, we’ll take a look at how four Infiniti site sections are holding up years later. Specifically, we’re looking at site sections promoting specific models in the lineup. Seeing as Infiniti has re-branded all of their models with new names, I’m not optimistic about this.

As we’ve done previously, we’ll take these URLs (and their ads) in alphabetical order.

Let’s go!

We’ll start with this ad for the Infiniti EX, their compact premium SUV. These days, the company no longer makes the EX, as it has been replaced with the QX50.

There’s a lot of orange in that ad, but that’s fine. It’s striking. The ad itself doesn’t list a website. However, it came with this accompanying card:

And here’s the back of the card:

Ah! Now here’s where we get the interesting stuff. Yes, you could mail in this card if you wanted to. Okay, boomer. Or you could go online to the handy address they provided:

Now, it should be noted at this point that all of the sites we’ll be visiting today are hosted at Infiniti.com. That was the main domain that the company was promoting back in these days, so it’s no surprise to see them here. However, as we’ve noted before, Infiniti.com now redirects to something more regional.

Anyway, what happens now if you try to visit Infiniti.com/EX?

So something interesting is going on here. We’re basically being taken to the main Infiniti homepage (not specifically the smallest SUV page, as we would prefer). However, the page redirected a couple of times. It noticed that we came in from Infiniti.com, then it disregarded the site section of /EX, and took us to the current InfinitiUSA.com homepage. I can only assume that Infiniti is keeping the redirect data to make smart web choices in the future?

Again, it’s not bad, but it could be better.

Okay, let’s see what happens next. Moving up the alphabet, we get this ad from July 2002 for the G35, another car Infiniti no longer makes, though I suppose the Q50 is the spiritual successor.

Don’t mind the smear going down the page. This was a printing error and appears exactly the way it showed up in my magazine from July 2002. It is not a scanning error.

As for the ad, this one is just a single page, which is fine. And it’s rather tech-y with it’s suggestion that people go online to Infiniti.com/G35 for more information:

Now, while Infiniti no longer makes a car called the G35, we had good success with the EX from above, right? So surely this will turn out well, too, right?

Hmmm… Well, that’s a little disappointing. While the previous site section of /EX returned a perfectly acceptable redirect, the site section of /G35 gives us a Page Not Found error.

Interestingly (maybe it’s not that interesting), the site added .html to the end of the URL. That wasn’t what was entered but there must be some logic on the site to add .html to pages it can’t find?

Either way, this isn’t great.

Continuing on our alphabetical soup of Infiniti site sections, we next come to M.

The Infiniti M was a mid-size sedan offered by Infiniti going all the way back to 1989. There isn’t really an equivalent car in the current Infiniti lineup as the Q50 is a little smaller.

However, back in the day, the M was a decent car and it was featured in this two-page ad that only covered the bottom halves of the pages:

Now, yes, that’s a nice contrast between the cream leather and the charcoal leather. But making the contrast even more stark was a mail-in card that sat between the two. Trying to reproduce this on the web doesn’t really do it justice, but here’s the light (left?) side of the card:

And here’s the dark (right?) side:

In several places in this ad, there are references to the tidy URL of Infiniti.com/M.

I suppose, since there’s no real modern equivalent to the Infiniti M, it’s no surprise that today Infiniti.com/M takes us here:

As we saw with the G35 above, /M gives us a Page Not Found error (okay, fine, they call it “Page Not Located” but I think they’re just trying to be classy – it all means the same).

As the Q50 is the only sedan currently in the Infiniti lineup, one could argue that it would be a logical landing place for Infiniti.com/M. I suppose there could be SEO implications there, but the user experience would be so much better (and I can’t imagine Infiniti is getting much traffic to Infiniti.com/M anyway).

Today’s journey through Infiniti ends here, with the M45, and older version of the M sedan we just visited.

Back in 2002, the mid-size sedan was known as the M45. Appropriately, the ad above wants you to visit Infiniti.com/M45:

This is, of course, another Infiniti model that no longer exists today. But what about the website?

Yeah, that’s not surprising. Like the previous two examples, we are once again confronted with a Page Not Found error.

If a single site section dies in one of these tours, I can let that slide. But when multiple site sections are left to die, it shows a serious lack of attention to detail. This is made all the more clear by the fact that the first example we saw redirected to a decent page.

I’m disappointed. And Infiniti should be, too.