Infiniti, Nissan’s luxury brand, has struggled to make sales in recent years.
It’s certainly no secret that the automotive industry faces turbulent times, and Nissan made headlines in recent weeks and months for its precarious financial position. The company’s CEO recently said that the automaker is in “emergency mode”, and another executive reportedly said it has “12 to 14 months to survive”. Unsurprising, then, that Nissan’s luxury arm, Infiniti, is tightening its belt as demand drops off and dealers struggle to profit from the brand’s standalone showrooms.
Although it has poured some resources into freshening up its QX60 and QX80 SUVs, Infiniti continues to struggle in the U.S. market. Through the third quarter of 2024 (ending September 30), dealers moved just 42,567 vehicles. That’s down by more than half from where it was five years ago, with each of the brand’s 198 U.S. dealers selling 215 vehicles (on average) over the first nine months of the year — or roughly 24 vehicles each month. Among luxury brands, it’s seen the steepest decline, even taking into account the auto industry’s pummeling during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, as the saying goes, and Automotive News first broke news of the move to merge some standalone Infiniti showrooms with Nissan stores. It’s a stark contrast to rivals like Genesis, which is expanding its standalone showroom presence across the country.
Under a wider shared location model, Infiniti dealers would share the same physical address and lot space with Nissan, but still have separate entrances, floor space and sales/service teams. The whole point of separating into an entirely separate building or lot entirely independent from the mainstream brand is a distinctive identity, however — and this co-mingling has some worried Infiniti’s brand cachet could diminish even further.
Naturally, we’ll have to wait and see what effect this move has on Nissan’s financial woes, both in the short-term and as part of a restructuring strategy that will keep both Nissan and Infiniti going in the longer term.
