By Eileen Falkenberg-Hull, Senior Editor, Autos, Travel and Lifestyle
After years of being an afterthought, INFINITI is starting to get its groove back. The automaker is amid a new product offensive that will redefine the brand over the next half-decade.
But, it faces headwinds. Sales in the U.S. have tumbled from their 2017 high of 153,415 units to just 46,915 last year, the lowest in a decade.
Nissan, Infiniti’s parent company has seen a similar slump, down from a 2017 high of approximately 1,440,000 units sold in the U.S. to a low of around 729,000 in 2022. In stark contrast to Infiniti, however, the automaker has begun to rebound, selling 150,000 more vehicles in 2025 than in 2022.
With new executives at the helm of Nissan USA and INFINITI Americas, big changes are underway. This is in part because of the voice Nissan Motor Corporation’s new President and Chief Executive Officer Iván Espinosa has allowed the region and INFINITI brand to have.
Eric Ledieu, Vice President of INFINITI Americas, is leading the company’s strategy, sales, operations and marketing in the region. Among his most interesting discoveries, he told Newsweek, is that many people don’t know Nissan and INFINITI are brands under the same corporate umbrella.
“What’s interesting is what we have found in most of our customers, and maybe even people who aren’t even intending us… most people don’t actually link the two companies together, which is really fascinating,” he said.
The corporate director doesn’t think linking the brands together is necessary for success, especially visually. Instead, he believes that that while they rely on common architecture to build models for both lineups, each brand must have its own identity.
“I think paramount to our success needs to be this architecture reliance or use that we’re going to use going forward, but there has to be visually differentiation, and there has to be, in some cases, maybe even performance differentiation,” Ledieu said.
What does that look like in practice? The leader explained that, “There may be times where we have some derivatives that are not available [to Nissan], or maybe certain things that we do from a powertrain perspective that are standard only, and it’s only an option on the Nissan business, and yet it looks completely different, and the customer experience is completely different.”
Intention is the name of the game at INFINITI these days. “We want to really work be intentional about trying to find ways to create separation and to create exclusive touch points,” Ledieu said.
Today, INFINITI’s service rivals that of Lincoln’s, another brand attempting to continue its own identity aside from its parent company. They both offer complementary pickup and delivery service, in-app service scheduling, concierge style hospitality at dealerships, complementary maintenance programs, and loaner vehicles.
While the experience varies by dealership, Ledieu is quick to point out success highlights, saying that depending on the service required, a dealer might offer a valet-like service, “They come and pick up your car. They leave you the courtesy vehicle at your place of work, or at home, or wherever they might find you. By the way, they might not drop it back up or back off where they where they picked it up, because you might be somewhere else the next day… It’s a little bit different in every market.”
Source: newsweek.com