Mike, we can always count on you every couple of months or so to start a Nissan vs. Toyota thread. I look forward to them now.

I read the initial post a couple of times and I don't see what about it is surprising at all. Nothing in that interview seems debate worthy to me. Everything the gentleman said seems fitting for a representative of Infiniti to say. It's obvious that Infiniti's flagship is non-competitive with its counterparts. Thus the reason to reestablish the Q-series as the flagship. I don't think it matters where you start with your company, whether it's with the flagship down or the coupe up. I believe that the selling point for Infiniti's new flagship, whether it's the Q or not, is going to be power. I see a luxury sedan with 500hp or close to it. The article doesn't say this car is coming next year, it states that this is the "dream" of the company. It amazes me how nervous Lexus owners get whenever Nissan/Infiniti's name pops up in the headlines. I think that Lexus owners should sit very comfortable knowing that they have a nearly perfect automobile and be good sports about the competition. Without competition the waters become very stagnant.

 

Some people here obviously knows very little about how patents work & what can be patented & what cannot

If there can be lawsuits against other cars that have similarities in visual cues, it would be filed already long time ago. Believe me, even similar looking cars can have very different measurements in ratios & dimensions etc.when you look at the numbers, & it's almost impossible to establish it's a copy.

Toyota has a lot of patents (~more than twice Daimler Chrysler has I' ve heard), other manufacturers can have technologies in their cars that perform a similar function & looks similar, that doesn't mean the design behind them is an exact copy. . .

 

Yup, that's why I call it "knock offs" coping of the style, you know knockoffs calling themselves Panaphonics, Sorny, Tosheba etc. They can get away with it but doesn't mean they will be respected. But someone keep bringing up gauge technology(which is patenable), and Kias and GMs while telling me I am off topic.

 

I am so happy someone actually READ what I said before people started donning their cape and mask.......

 

I don't sense a lot of, well, ANY to be honest, nervousness here regarding Nissan/Infiniti. In fact, most CL enthusiasts wholeheartedly agree with your philosophy on competition. One reason I feel that Toyota continues to excel is that their corporate culture honestly believes they are about to go out of business and that every decision, every action must be taken with that in mind. It doesn't matter how many years Lexus tops the J.D. Power, they'll come out and say they have to do better.

As for Nissan/Infiniti, the emotion you probably sense (rather than nervousness) is wi****lness. We'd love to see them actually BECOME competition, but their products and corporate decisions almost seem like they've destined themselves to be perennial also-rans. Even Honda tries harder, but every new offering from Nissan just seems to fall short in some critical area or another. Then they "dream" about a new flagship. If they would put their dream into action and actually trump the LS (which could be done if they acted like the future of the company depended on it, which it may in the long run), it would be a major victory for consumers across the board. Lexus and the others would be forced to improve their products as well, but as it is Lexus has nothing, NOTHING to worry about from any car in the Infiniti lineup.

 

Great post.

 

"We'd love to see them actually BECOME competition, but their products and corporate decisions almost seem like they've destined themselves to be perennial also-rans."

"Lexus has nothing, NOTHING to worry about from any car in the Infiniti lineup."

Well, you may think that Infiniti is not even good enough to be competition, but I and many others would disagree with you with regard to some of their products.

The G35 was the first RWD Japanese sedan to offer the 3 some serious competition finally, and the G35 coupe is THE best selling luxury coupe in the U.S. The M doesn't sell as well as the GS, but to think that it's not even competition for the GS in the U.S. is absurd. You're right about the Q, it's never been a viable competitor to the LS, but Infiniti hopes to build on the success of the G and the M to maybe change that.

Infiniti doesn't offer a model to compete with the high-volume ES, RX, and GX. It's true that the FX35 is about the same price as the RX, but after you drive the two vehicles, you'd see that they are VERY different from each other. The FX is essentially a raised station wagon with a lot of sport. It offers very little utility.

I'm not saying that the G is necessarily better than the IS, or that the M is necessarily better than the GS. But I do think that the G and the M have done well enough in the U.S. to at least be deemed competition to their Lexus counterparts.

BTW, I do think that building a competitive Q is MUCH, MUCH more difficult than building a successful G or M. It's just a different ballgame in the $60k+ market (55 years old average age I think), and I'm just not sure that Infiniti has enough of a brand cachet to get these older buyers to consider it.

 

Q45 headlight sales are up thought!! LMAO



http://www7.plala.or.jp/soaristo/


A Car Whose Time Will Never Come.

Detroit. There is one car lost in the euphoria of the miracle resurrection of Nissan, which has been engineered by the latest auto industry star-of-the-moment, Carlos Ghosn. It is also the one car that has not been able to be improved upon or enhanced by yet another rendition of Nissan's rear-wheel-drive "FM" platform. And it is the one car that apparently no amount of money can cajole or pull up by its lapels to the level aspired to by the Nissan brain trust.

And that car is the Infiniti Q45.

The "Q" has been a star-crossed nameplate ever since its disastrous introduction - when it went up against Lexus armed with its infamous "rocks and trees" ad campaign, which defiantly never showed the car. This was back when the two Japanese luxury entries were trying to gain a foothold in the U.S. market. Infiniti's strategy was to position the "Q" as the driver's car of the two dueling nameplates, but that was lost in the fact that no one could see the forest, I mean the car, through the rocks and trees. And we all know how that turned out.

Lexus, the luxury extension of the Toyota product/marketing juggernaut, became one of the most formidable brands in this market, while Infiniti continued to flounder through a series of fits and starts amounting to nothing more than a sequence of marketing mistakes piled on top of bad product decisions (the ungainly previous-generation "Q" looked like a ten-year-old car the moment it was introduced and was so blatantly out of place on the road that it veered dangerously close to achieving "clown car" status), which left the nameplate as a literal afterthought.

Yes, Infiniti has recovered of late through the brilliant massaging of a single basic Nissan platform that has yielded the G35 coupe and sedan - and the distinctive FX35/45 sport utility, but the "Q" continues to be an misfit that steadfastly refuses to capture the luxury car buying public's fancy - no matter what they do to it.

Nissan sold a grand total of 3,717 Q45s last year - and a scintillating tally of just 560 in the first three months of this year. Just for the sake of comparison, Lexus sold 7,877 LS430s in the first three months of this year.

Just as Nissan is touting yet another "freshened" iteration of the "Q", which will be coming in June, I have to ask the toughest question - why? As in why now, or even better - why bother?

If Nissan is serious about having a luxury presence in the U.S. market, then they have to accept the fact that the "Q45" is a tainted nameplate. And no matter how good the specs of the "Q" sound on paper, the car-buying public is conditioned to believe that it's either not worthy of consideration, or worse - it doesn't even show up on their radar screens at all.

I rarely recommend walking away from a nameplate, because it takes so much time to establish a nameplate to begin with, and the costs to seed a new nameplate in this market are staggering (not to mention the level of patience required to see it through).

But in this case, it's clear to me that the Q45 nameplate is beyond resuscitation, and if Nissan ever hopes to gain a real presence in the luxury market in North America, they would be better off just starting over - without the letter "Q."

Thanks for listening, see you next Wednesday.
http://www.autoextremist.com/

 

I agree with the article that Mike just posted. I feel that the "Q" nameplate has had too many years of subpar performance to establish itself as a true flagship. Ultimately it's admitting to defeat, but I feel that the recent resurgance of Nissan/Infiniti will be able to overcome this and develope a competitive $65K+ luxury sedan. I feel since Nissan's 3.5L VQ engine, the progress has been tremendous and is like a new beginning for the company. Gohsn (sp?) has resurrected this company tremendously. Their outside the box design and emphasis in power will make this company a contender. Style can be argued until you are blue in the face, so that I will not mention. But the only other issue I see Nissan having is to pay closer attention to materials used within the cabin. What do you think about this...I foresee in the next 10 years...Lexus being the MB of Japan and Infiniti being the BMW of Japan.

 

I bet corporate Nissan are scratching their heads wondering why they sold more headlights than they sold cars.

 

I don't understand why the Japanese and Koreans are letting the Germans copy THEIR designs .

Let's start with the new 3 Series ... the rear looks like a Daewoo ... so what gives BMW?

The freshened 7 Series ... the headlights are almost an identical copy to the Gen 1 Lexus IS headlights ... what gives BMW?

The new 2007 S Class ... the front looks like a Lexus, especially with the headlights, heck even Benz fanatics all over the internet are calling it a Lexus copy. So what gives Mercedes?

The new M Class ... it looks a lot like a Kia Sorento ... so again what gives Mercedes?

If you wanna point fingers, you gotta make sure you're fair to both sides.

 

Yup, I ' ve seen people in MBworld posted that . . . Many cars, whether European or Asian are beginning to look more & more like each others. Those that do not, like some of the Bangle BMW's, are ugly. Honestly, I don't really care whether a car have certain styling cues that are similar to other models provided that overall, it's good looking & attractive.

 

Infinit needs to focus on being different. I am not sure how it sold everywhere else, but the j30 was all over the place in Vegas back in the day. They were nice looking and not like anything else. The new Infinit flagship should follow that philosophy of design.

 

Wow, all I can say is wow.

Always bad mouthing other manufactures making your egos all think you have the best car ever built.

 

Indeed, its part of the new global economy as cars are sold everywhere, and as no joke, womans buying power has increased. And the emergance of Japan as well, its funny how no one mentions Japanese style but clealry, the Americans copied it and now the Germans look Japanese. Audi and Jaguar have done a good job of retaining they're respective look.