Infiniti searches for ways to penetrate the German juggernaut

Alfonso Albaisa doesn't carry the weight of the world on his shoulders, just a car brand – Infiniti, Nissan's brand of hope and dreams, as Bruce Springsteen might put it.

Albaisa, the chief designer, along with his Infiniti colleagues would like to get past all the darkness, to leave behind the sorrows of too many disappointing brand rebuilds. If not exactly desperate to find sunshine in the new designs about to roll into dealer showrooms,they're surely anxious, frustrated by past results and driven to do better.

Infiniti's challenges are shared by all second-tier premium brands. It's tough slogging in the global marketplace against the premium car juggernaut known as the German luxury brands – BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz. Infiniti, like so many other upmarket brands, has a critical need to "build awareness," says Nissan Canada president Christian Meunier, who is responsible for Infiniti in Canada.

"A lot of people know about Infiniti, but they don't really know what it is and what products we sell," he says. "Today, people have difficulty in knowing exactly what we are. Inspiring performance (the Infiniti tagline), okay, what is it? And I think the designs will make it clear. Alfonso and the product planning teams will make it happen."

Infiniti needs success from the 2016 QX50 which is making its global debut at this week's New York auto show. The coming Q30 small car (end of 2015), QX30 compact crossover (early next year) and Q60 production version of the concept coupe (early 2016) all need to resonate in ways no Infiniti before them ever could.

Further down the road, Infiniti is aiming to launch a trio of as-yet-unidentified new compact vehicles. Various reports say it will be built in Mexico in co-operation with Mercedes-Benz. But even with a bulging product pipeline, it's fair to ask if this is Infiniti's last chance at redemption.

Surely patience is wearing thin at Nissan's Japan headquarters under CEO Carlos Ghosn, as well among dealers the world over who want a better return on investment return.

Globally, BMW, Mercedes and Audi each expect to top 2 million in annual sales within the next few years, and with the euro rated low against the U.S. dollar, 2015 is expected to be good to them and to Porsche. Against the favourable environment for the Germans, the growth plans of the second-tier premium makers look sad.

Infiniti had been planning to hit annual sales of about 500,000 by the end of 2018, but company officials have lately become cautious in talking up specific sales goals – though Meunier will confirm he expects about 40 per cent growth over 2013 by the end of 2015, and 20,000 in Canada should be attainable by the end of the decade if not sooner.

Cadillac is investing $3-billion (U.S.) on vehicles and power trains are intended to put the brand's global sales at 500,000, by 2020. Lincoln boss Kumar Galhotra said that Lincoln plans to spend $2.5-billion (U.S.) over the next five years on products with a 2020 sales goal of about 300,000. GM is investing $12-billion in Cadillac.

Volvo would like to be at 800,000 by 2020. Lexus officials have said they plan to remain No. 4 in global sales going forward, while Acura, too, is being careful about going public with numbers. The great challenge for Acura, as Honda's outgoing global research and development chief just told Automotive News, is its "American brand" in a global world, said Yoshiharu Yamamoto. The same is true of Lincoln, which sells virtually nothing outside of Canada and the United States, and even Cadillac, whose non-North American sales added up to about 83,000 last year.

All these brands have great hopes and dreams, but the reality is that they will only find success if they bring products to market that buyers want. Here, they must think small and think trucks.

"The luxury market has moved quite rapidly to light trucks," says Dennis DesRosiers of DesRosiers Automotive Consultants. "In 1990, virtually all luxury vehicles were passenger cars (99.8 per cent). In 2014 for the first time, an equal number of luxury light trucks were purchased in Canada as luxury passenger cars.

"The fastest growing segment was compact luxury sport utility vehicles up 19.4 per cent in 2014 and now accounting for 21.4 per cent of the luxury market. Small luxury passenger cars remain the largest segment with 40 per cent of the luxury market."

Meunier says that Infiniti is in desperate need of these sorts of vehicles, the ones buyers crave.

"You know, one thing that is killing Infiniti today is the share of entry luxury," he says. "Entry luxury is the booming part of luxury and the small crossover is the one that drives things.

"We're going to have Q30 and QX30 and it's going to really give us more impact. We're going to have also a couple of other models that give us the opportunity to grow the business. "

Infiniti and its dealers, he adds, need to do a much better job "in terms of customer experience. I don't think we're good enough. We're middle of the pack today. We need to be at the top of the pack." Yet he also is firm in pointing to Albaisa's team and the Infiniti product developers whose goal it is to deliver vehicles with "emotion, that charming attitude of performance. "That is something we need to build on."

Even if Infiniti and the rest of the second tier get everything correct, however, the German three have deep and broad lineups, global reach, strong residual values, powerful brand images and decades of momentum. Infiniti and the rest will find these advantages difficult to overcome.

Indeed, Automotive News reports that cross-shopping data show that customers of the aspiring brands are more likely to switch to one of Germans and Lexus rather than the other way around – going from BMW to Infiniti, for instance. J.D. Power and Associates research shows that customers of the top three luxury brands are much more likely to cross-shop amongst this trio, rather than dip a toe into an Infiniti or Cadillac dealership.

Albaisa argues that this reality simplifies his team's work. It is not interested in trying to out-German the Germans; there's no future in that. Instead, it will concentrate on Infiniti being Infiniti, only more so.

"For my designers, I do feel we have this black-sheep thing. We are the group that created the FX," he says.

"We are going to get deeper into who we are, and we are artists and this is why we are doing these cars. We are artists that are naturally different than everyone else. We are Japanese and we are Western – we're fundamentally different … So it's been my job to bring that out, onto the road."

So the tier-two success formula looks like this: be authentic, no German or anything like it. Easier said than done.

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