I wrote an article here about Infiniti's aim to take on the premium car world and I wished them well while suggesting it wouldn't be easy. I have since found out the idea was to sell 500,000 cars by 2017! No, really!! In 2012 170,000 were sold apparently. The USA nudged 120,000, China accounted for 12,500, Russia 9,200, Canada 8,000 and Korea 1,100. I'm unsure of any other large market for them.
How did the company expect to so easily take sales off established, respected marques? Had they consulted me, or even any member of the general public with scant knowledge of the industry and they could have been put right a long time ago. This was never going to happen. Well, now Infiniti have realised that. Amazing.
Now the plan is to expand sales profitably, whatever that leads to. The new forcast is if sales fail to reach 200,000 by that time, things will have gone terribly wrong. That sounds more reasonable, if a bit underwhelming.
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