What many expected has happened: the Japanese brand Infiniti has adopted a new strategy that involves leaving the European market and concentrating on the US and Chinese markets. This is happening against the backdrop of vague prospects for the British company Infiniti and the rapid decline in sales of brand cars in the European Union.
Last year ended with a real disaster for the European division of the premium Japanese brand: in all of Western Europe, car dealerships sold only 6,250 cars, which is more than half as much as in 2017. This is hardly the picture that Nissan President Carlos Ghosn painted in his head in 2008 when he announced at the Geneva Motor Show that Infiniti was beginning to expand into the European market.
One way or another, rumors that Nissan would curtail the loss-making Infiniti business in Western Europe appeared last year, and in January, at the Detroit Auto Show, Infiniti President Christian Meunier announced that the new generation of the Q30 hatchback would lose the Mercedes-Benz MFA platform. , although Nissan had previously invested at least $300 million to modernize its Sunderland facility. Now the company has officially acknowledged that it will be closed this summer, thus, the fate of the Q30 and QX30 models, at least in this generation, is a foregone conclusion.
Also, the new plan provides for the launch of five new models on the Chinese market at once, although the American market will not be forgotten: Infiniti will expand its line of crossovers there. The first contender for this role is the serial follower of the QX Inspiration concept car, which, as we recall, broke down at the Detroit Auto Show and could not go on stage under its own power.
As for power plants, the refusal of diesel engines has been announced, and in 2021 large-scale electrification of the entire model range will begin.
This is a fiasco: Infiniti leaves the markets of Western Europe
