Capsule Review: 1994 Infiniti J30 and the Magic Lease
#1
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Capsule Review: 1994 Infiniti J30 and the Magic Lease
Interesting insight here and funny, not much has changed in regards to magic leases to sell their cars.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/201...e-magic-lease/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVIDY...layer_embedded
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/201...e-magic-lease/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVIDY...layer_embedded
Capsule Review: 1994 Infiniti J30 and the Magic Lease
By Jack Baruth on June 5, 2010
“We need young, college-educated people like you,” the man said, “because the old way of selling cars is dead and gone. That’s why I was hired — to bring the dealership into the present day.” And with those thoroughly self-deceived words, the new sales manager at “Infiniti Of Columbus” welcomed to me to the team in March of 1994. It was the end of winter in Ohio, but it was just the middle of Infiniti’s long winter of discontent. We had three products. There was a facelifted Q45 which precisely nobody wanted. There was a facelifted G20 which cost nearly as much as a Lexus ES300 while closely resembling a Nissan Sentra inside and out. Note, however, that the G20 shared nothing but the engine with the aforementioned Sentra. On any given month, we would sell two G20s and no Q45s. In fact, during my entire six months’ tenure at the store, we only sold two Q45s, one of them to a salesman who was quitting to go work for Merrill Lynch.
It was the new-for-1993 J30 that kept the lights on and paid our meager draws against commission. The jellybean-shaped, rear-wheel-drive sedan was available as a J30 or J30t. Neither car had any options available: in an amazing reductio ad absurdum of the Japanese export philosophy, the equipment list was the same for every single car that came off the boat. The “t” model added HICAS four-wheel-steering, a rear spoiler that truly spoiled the otherwise interesting design, and some cross-spoke wheels. They were hideously expensive — $37,995 and up in an era where an LS400 could be had for fifty grand or less — and they were both controversial-looking and suspiciously similar to a Nissan Altima at a distance. (Jerry Hirschberg designed ‘em both.)
It didn’t matter. We rarely sold any outright, but more than 20 would leave the lot every month thanks to the Magic Lease.
The head honchos at Nissan USA knew the car was overpriced, and badly so. Their solution was elegant. The oh-so-English Jonathan Pryce was hired to do a series of advertisements about “the astonishing J30″, and a genuinely astonishing lease program was put into place. $1500 down, $399 a month, 36 months, 36,000 miles. Extra miles were cheap and the dealership management always just threw the down payment away, so most people paid about $450 a month, tax included, for a 45,000 mile contract with nothing out of pocket. “t” models were $15 a month more.
The numbers were ridiculous. The cars were “capped” — sold to Nissan Financial — for about $34,000. The three-year residual was expected to be about $29,000. Ha! We had six-month-old buyer’s-remorse specials on the lot that wouldn’t fetch $29K. Nissan was just sending its problems into the future. Who cares? At that price, we could make them disappear.
Still, plenty of buyers could think of reasons to look this gift horse in the mouth. Almost nobody liked the looks. The trunk was minuscule and the rear seats didn’t fold. The sunroof was steel, not glass. The car was noisy and cramped inside. Although it was essentially a four-seat 300ZX, it wasn’t a four-seat 300ZX Turbo, which meant it was slow. (JDM variants got a 4.1L V8 and a turbo 2.5V6, as I recall.) Infiniti had virtually no brand equity, to put it mildly. We all learned that our best chance to move the iron was to convince unaccompanied spouses to sign before the better half could show up and say, “$399 is a lot for an Altima.”
The irony was that there was plenty to love about the J30. It was put together like a Zenith El Primero. The materials quality shamed both Lexus and ze Chermans. The “t” was a little spooky at high speeds, since the HICAS never seemed to give the same response twice in third-gear corners, but that was part of the fun. The stereo was damned good. It really felt like a high-quality piece.
My new boss was new to the auto industry. This was good, because he didn’t do anything that sales managers typically did, such as scream incoherently for no reason. He let us take weekends off. Most importantly, he didn’t understand the NADA Guide and therefore he always paid Dealer Retail for trade-ins. Once I understood that, I called my father and he dragged his boat-anchor Audi 100LS into the shop, crossing his fingers that the transmission didn’t perform its usual gearchange gymnastics during the test drive. His wish was granted and he left with two $399/month J30s. One was triple black, the other was blue with a cream interior. Most importantly, they were 1994 models. The 1995 car was chock-full of cost-cutting and it was obvious when you sat in one.
Our no-hassle sales philosophy and enlightened approach to customer satisfaction didn’t help us sell used cars at Dealer Retail plus a few grand. The lot filled up. The floorplan overflowed. One day the dealership principal showed up at the building. It was before noon and he was sober. These were bad signs. The sales manager was escorted out of the building. The replacement was a fat, oily Macedonian fellow from a Hyundai shop in the iffy part of Columbus. His first official act was to wholesale most of the used lot at a six-figure loss. His second official act was to fire the sullen-looking college kid who parked his Kawasaki Ninja on the showroom floor in the evenings. Thus released, I walked the earth like Caine, or at least rode it like a douchebag, until my next dealership job. It was there that I witnessed a salesperson exchange sex for a chance to sell a Thunderbird, but that’s another story.
By Jack Baruth on June 5, 2010
“We need young, college-educated people like you,” the man said, “because the old way of selling cars is dead and gone. That’s why I was hired — to bring the dealership into the present day.” And with those thoroughly self-deceived words, the new sales manager at “Infiniti Of Columbus” welcomed to me to the team in March of 1994. It was the end of winter in Ohio, but it was just the middle of Infiniti’s long winter of discontent. We had three products. There was a facelifted Q45 which precisely nobody wanted. There was a facelifted G20 which cost nearly as much as a Lexus ES300 while closely resembling a Nissan Sentra inside and out. Note, however, that the G20 shared nothing but the engine with the aforementioned Sentra. On any given month, we would sell two G20s and no Q45s. In fact, during my entire six months’ tenure at the store, we only sold two Q45s, one of them to a salesman who was quitting to go work for Merrill Lynch.
It was the new-for-1993 J30 that kept the lights on and paid our meager draws against commission. The jellybean-shaped, rear-wheel-drive sedan was available as a J30 or J30t. Neither car had any options available: in an amazing reductio ad absurdum of the Japanese export philosophy, the equipment list was the same for every single car that came off the boat. The “t” model added HICAS four-wheel-steering, a rear spoiler that truly spoiled the otherwise interesting design, and some cross-spoke wheels. They were hideously expensive — $37,995 and up in an era where an LS400 could be had for fifty grand or less — and they were both controversial-looking and suspiciously similar to a Nissan Altima at a distance. (Jerry Hirschberg designed ‘em both.)
It didn’t matter. We rarely sold any outright, but more than 20 would leave the lot every month thanks to the Magic Lease.
The head honchos at Nissan USA knew the car was overpriced, and badly so. Their solution was elegant. The oh-so-English Jonathan Pryce was hired to do a series of advertisements about “the astonishing J30″, and a genuinely astonishing lease program was put into place. $1500 down, $399 a month, 36 months, 36,000 miles. Extra miles were cheap and the dealership management always just threw the down payment away, so most people paid about $450 a month, tax included, for a 45,000 mile contract with nothing out of pocket. “t” models were $15 a month more.
The numbers were ridiculous. The cars were “capped” — sold to Nissan Financial — for about $34,000. The three-year residual was expected to be about $29,000. Ha! We had six-month-old buyer’s-remorse specials on the lot that wouldn’t fetch $29K. Nissan was just sending its problems into the future. Who cares? At that price, we could make them disappear.
Still, plenty of buyers could think of reasons to look this gift horse in the mouth. Almost nobody liked the looks. The trunk was minuscule and the rear seats didn’t fold. The sunroof was steel, not glass. The car was noisy and cramped inside. Although it was essentially a four-seat 300ZX, it wasn’t a four-seat 300ZX Turbo, which meant it was slow. (JDM variants got a 4.1L V8 and a turbo 2.5V6, as I recall.) Infiniti had virtually no brand equity, to put it mildly. We all learned that our best chance to move the iron was to convince unaccompanied spouses to sign before the better half could show up and say, “$399 is a lot for an Altima.”
The irony was that there was plenty to love about the J30. It was put together like a Zenith El Primero. The materials quality shamed both Lexus and ze Chermans. The “t” was a little spooky at high speeds, since the HICAS never seemed to give the same response twice in third-gear corners, but that was part of the fun. The stereo was damned good. It really felt like a high-quality piece.
My new boss was new to the auto industry. This was good, because he didn’t do anything that sales managers typically did, such as scream incoherently for no reason. He let us take weekends off. Most importantly, he didn’t understand the NADA Guide and therefore he always paid Dealer Retail for trade-ins. Once I understood that, I called my father and he dragged his boat-anchor Audi 100LS into the shop, crossing his fingers that the transmission didn’t perform its usual gearchange gymnastics during the test drive. His wish was granted and he left with two $399/month J30s. One was triple black, the other was blue with a cream interior. Most importantly, they were 1994 models. The 1995 car was chock-full of cost-cutting and it was obvious when you sat in one.
Our no-hassle sales philosophy and enlightened approach to customer satisfaction didn’t help us sell used cars at Dealer Retail plus a few grand. The lot filled up. The floorplan overflowed. One day the dealership principal showed up at the building. It was before noon and he was sober. These were bad signs. The sales manager was escorted out of the building. The replacement was a fat, oily Macedonian fellow from a Hyundai shop in the iffy part of Columbus. His first official act was to wholesale most of the used lot at a six-figure loss. His second official act was to fire the sullen-looking college kid who parked his Kawasaki Ninja on the showroom floor in the evenings. Thus released, I walked the earth like Caine, or at least rode it like a douchebag, until my next dealership job. It was there that I witnessed a salesperson exchange sex for a chance to sell a Thunderbird, but that’s another story.
Last edited by PhilipMSPT; 11-22-10 at 07:48 AM.
#3
LOL, funny article.
My wife actually had several Lexus and Infinitis before we met, and one of her Infinitis was precisely the 1994 J30t. She says it was a great car, very fast, but totally uncontrollable at high speeds. She says she actually spun it out twice.
My wife actually had several Lexus and Infinitis before we met, and one of her Infinitis was precisely the 1994 J30t. She says it was a great car, very fast, but totally uncontrollable at high speeds. She says she actually spun it out twice.
#4
My brother thought that the J30 had one of the ugliest rear ends he ever saw. I didn't go to that extreme, but the classic egg-shape of the trunk, in back, was not exactly my cup of tea, either.
#5
The materials quality shamed both Lexus and ze Chermans.
Huh? Looks like your generic Nissan interior with some fake wood applications. If I recall correctly, Lexus and its European rivals had far more appealing interiors in terms of design and material quality.
Huh? Looks like your generic Nissan interior with some fake wood applications. If I recall correctly, Lexus and its European rivals had far more appealing interiors in terms of design and material quality.
#6
Are we really kicking Infiniti around based on a product from almost 20 years ago (Actually the J30 was a very nice car and despite its polarizing style, quite handsome)? Even they know they were directionless at that time.
#7
That's how SickLex boosts his ego every morning
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#8
If you think about it, J30 was really the predecessor to the current G35/37. A sporty, RWD midsize sedan. According to my wife it was a lot faster than first gen GS300 that we also once had. She bought it used, drove it for couple years, and sold it for the same amount she bought it for.
#9
This is the J.
#10
Actually, that's not the stock interior. The wood bits are all aftermarket stick-ons in this picture.
#11
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Maybe write an e-mail to the guy that wrote the article? Oh I see, you rather just login here to start crap and post only in Nissan threads. That way, you won't make those asinine comments seeing as I start hundreds of threads in Car Chat on a variety of topics.
Stop crying. Amazing children want to cry and complain and find every gotdamn thread/post to ***** about and rarely ever post in positive ones or ones with compliments.
Please don't continue to prove my assumptions about many of the owners.
To make it easy to show how ridiculous you sound here are some threads other recent threads about Nissan or posts I made about Nissan.
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/car...issan-fap.html
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/car...an-silvia.html
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/car...trong-yen.html
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/car...-m37-56-a.html
https://www.clublexus.com/forums/car...evealed-4.html
As well as the countless threads I just bumped.
So make another ridiculous comment.
Last edited by LexFather; 11-22-10 at 09:32 AM.