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 There is no smoke without fire ...
Infiniti GT-R Sports Sedan |
Following earlier speculations for a GT-R based Infiniti sports sedan, Japanese
magazine "Best Car" is now reporting in its latest issue that Nissan is also working
on a 4door-coupe variant of the GT-R.
The first tip-off came when Shiro Nakamura, Nissan's global design chief, divulged
that managers were examining the viability of a new top-end lead saloon, and further
speculation came when a dealer in the US verified that a meeting in Japan took place
to talk about the likelihood of the future sedan.
Nissan's top guy Ghosn however categorically dismisses the idea that a GTR-like
sport sedan could be the Infiniti flagship. The four-door GTR is online blog
speculation, he says, just like the spotting at certain websites of the new
Nissan GTR in the streets of Paris. The GTR spotted and photographed in Paris
is of the only one there, he says: his.
Nissan's luxury Infiniti brand is just now making its launch in Western Europe.
It will sell the G37 coupe and sedan, the EX37 and the FX37/50. They're all very
new models launched elsewhere within the last year, key to Ghosn's strategy.
Coming in the wake of Toyota's Lexus, which is
struggling to gain traction in a market where such nouveau riche brands simply
cannot compete with established luxury brands like BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi, and
Jaguar.
Ghosn has set a modest goal for Infiniti. "I'm not going to make Infiniti a
high-volume brand," in Western Europe. "We have
a lot of volume already with Nissan. I'm ready to accept that it could be a small
luxury brand." It is being highly selective about its Western European dealerships
with a preference for quality over quantity, and hopes to sell just 25,000 units
per year by 2013.
Ghosn says Infiniti also wants to be in Japan and India, but he
has no plans for those markets right now. It has launched with great success in China
and Russia, he says, adding that the FX35/45 is a more common sight in Moscow
than in any American cities, where the brand was launched as a BMW alternative
to Lexus' Mercedes positioning about 19 years ago.
However the story has not ended yet ...as we know there is no smoke without fire :-)
Stay tuned, more details will follow.
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