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Reviews I've read were pretty good for this luxury brand from Nissan. One of my coworkers still drives his Infiniti J30 that he bought brand new. I personally don't care for the exterior styling but they do have nice interior. Their two sedans are both RWD. I can understand luxury buyers choose other brands over Infiniti, but I've found some people who don't even know Infiniti exist or what vehicles they sell.
I've always liked them. I drove my G35 to about 180K miles until the driveshaft fell off. But other than that I love the brand. Very sporty, RWD-biased, and performance to boot. I always thought they were fun to drive compared to Lexus.
Infiniti has made a lot of mistakes over the past 25 years.
When they first came out with their halo car, the Q45, they didn't advertise it. They also gave it a pretty peculiar front end treatment with no engine grill. The rest of the car was fantastic, 4.5 liter V8, great interior. It stacked up pretty well against Lexus, BMW, and Mercedes, but with no advertising, no one knew anything about it.
Then, due to poor sales, they decide to decrease the size of the engine to 4.1 liters and cheapen the car to save money. That was pretty much the nail in the coffin, as then the car didn't compete in the segment at all anymore.
But Infiniti wasn't done. They finally decided to go all out on the Q45 again in 2002, and the car was quite good. But by that time, Infiniti's reputation had been relegated to a "sub" luxury brand that didn't really compete with Lexus or the Germans. Sales were poor again, and still, no advertising push to get the word out. Sales were so bad, they pulled the car from the US.
They did have a hit with the G35 sedan and coupe, based on the Nissan 350Z architecture, but that wasn't a premium product like they were aiming to take the brand in the beginning.
Infiniti's advertising execs are a textbook case of what NOT to do to promote a brand.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dwatted Wabbit
When Lexus and Infinity birthed about the same time, Lexus ads were effective, Infinity were too out there. The car never took off like Lexus did.
That's my take.
Yeah, of Japans Big Three, Nissan went weird - too weird - including its upscale division. But Lexus isn't far behind, with those hideous grinning black grilles! And that disease is spreading to the mainstream bread & butter: Camry and Corolla.
The least-distanced upscale Japanese maker, from it's mother firm, style-wise has been Acura. Even the marque on the grille is just a stylized "H" made to look like an "A". MDX, RL, and TL all look simply like concepts for future Pilots and Accords! lol
Not sure why they abandoned the G series and rebranded it as Q series. Further confusing consumers. They even had a year where they had the outgoing G car selling alongside the new Q one.
They basically aren't a luxury brand anymore, at least to the consumers. They don't have a halo luxury car, just their sports cars.
But stylistically they are a lot better looking than their Asian counterparts, Lexus and Acura.
The Q50's styling will still look good 10 years down the road
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