Eyes on the premium prize at Infiniti

YOKOHAMA, Japan — The Infiniti premium marque has seen four global brand chiefs in the last year and a half. The latest boss, now just two weeks into the job, is promising yet more change.

But Peyman Kargar, who started June 1, says it will be change for the better.

His marching orders are to make Nissan Motor Co.'s top-shelf offering a profitable premium brand for the long haul. For the time being, that means executing the product rollout plan he inherited from his predecessors. But Kargar says he will also take six months to review the operation from the ground up, with the intent of fine- tuning the strategy in a new business plan.

"The mission is very clear, to make Infiniti a sustainable premium brand of the company," Kargar, 53, told Automotive News last week in his first interview since taking the helm. That means robust customer satisfaction, dealer coverage and profitability.

"Premium brands should bring more money to the company. So that's the objective. We are not at the level we want to be."

Kargar, a Renault veteran who joined alliance partner Nissan in 2017, says the overhaul will involve fresh product on a shared platform driven by new powertrains. The Infiniti design language will get a complete revamp, and Infiniti will be the leadoff brand for introducing technology.

The soft-spoken Frenchman said future Infiniti models will be based on a "company" platform for large vehicles that will be shared with Nissan vehicles. The new platform will support gasoline, full-electric and hybrid powertrains for Infiniti. The hybrid powertrain will come in the form of a new, high-power version of Nissan's e-Power setup that will differentiate Infiniti from other premium brands.

The first Infiniti e-Power offering will arrive by around 2023, Kargar said.

Nissan Motor Co. COO Ashwani Gupta described that shared-platform strategy as "Nissan-plus."

But Kargar said the approach won't dilute Infiniti's premium focus. Commonization, he said, is an absolute must in an age of spiraling investment in electrification, autonomous driving and connectivity. The strategy will save development time and allow Infiniti to plow savings back into enhancing the brand.

"The objective is to use these assets of the company, and then to reinject the money we are saving into the luxury experience and ingredients of Infiniti," Kargar said. "We will put more money into Infiniti's future, but this money will come from the savings in globalized platforms."

Stepped-up investment will be channeled into better design, upmarket interiors and better infotainment systems. Infiniti will become the front-runner for introducing new technologies, following criticism that the premium brand sometimes lagged mass-market Nissan in getting goodies such as Apple CarPlay or Nissan's ProPilot driver-assist system.

What will happen to Infiniti's aging rear-wheel-drive platforms, which underpin the Q50 and Q70 sedans as well as the Q60 coupe, is a work in progress, Kargar said. A top concern is killing vehicles too early when there is not a next generation in the pipeline to promptly replace them.

"With the plan, we will really have a young lineup," Kargar said. "I'm trying to make sure we don't go for a very young lineup and then, afterward, we suffer again with more aging models."

Even as Nissan pares back the Nissan brand and Datsun emerging-market brand under its latest midterm plan, Infiniti remains untouched as the upmarket standard-bearer.

"I saw the products — four years of coming products," Kargar said of the Infiniti pipeline. "They are absolutely great; the technology we are going to put in them is absolutely great. And it's really a luxury experience. We're not going to downsize the brand."

Kargar, previously Nissan's regional chairman in charge of Africa, the Middle East and India, said he dialed U.S. dealers last week to gather their input. Their top demand, he said, was more product and fresher product for Infiniti's No. 1 market.

Infiniti will begin to deliver that this year with the introduction of the QX55 coupe-styled crossover. Then, the real turning point comes in 2021 with the launch of a redesigned QX60 midsize crossover and its Nissan brand stablemate, the Pathfinder. The vehicles share the same underpinnings, and their introductions will be the first test of whether the "Nissan-plus" strategy can commonize more components while imbuing each brand with its own distinct identity.

The influx of new models should also help Infiniti gradually dial back incentives, Kargar noted.

U.S. spiffs for Infiniti soared 20 percent to an average of $8,561 per vehicle in the January-March quarter, according to data from Motor Intelligence. That compared with an industry average increase of 10 percent to $3,909. Infiniti's outlays exceeded those of virtually every other premium player, even as its U.S. sales slid 26 percent to 25,558 vehicles in the quarter.

Jump-starting Infiniti is a key part of the revised midterm business plan unveiled in late May by Nissan CEO Makoto Uchida. The road map runs through the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024.

Infiniti's global volume peaked at 249,000 vehicles in 2018, before dropping 24 percent to 188,994 last year. Kargar said sales will fall again in 2020 because the brand has pulled out of Europe and because of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. He declined to give a sales target.

A steady hand on the wheel might help. Infiniti has cycled through chairmen since Roland Krüger left in January 2019 to lead Dyson's now defunct electric car program. Christian Meunier took over, but only for a few months. He left in May 2019 to become global president of Fiat Chrysler's Jeep brand. Nissan Chief Quality Officer Christian Vandenhende filled in until Mike Colleran was appointed Infiniti chairman from April 1 this year, but he has since been called back to lead Nissan Division sales for the U.S. Two months later, Kargar is now on top.

He is fluent in French, English and Farsi, and he is a student of Spanish, Japanese and Arabic. As head of Nissan's incredibly diverse African, Middle East and South Asian operations, Kargar, an engineer by training, managed everything from marketing and sales to vehicle production and development.

He expects to leverage that holistic perspective in rebooting Infiniti.

"You need to look at all the aspects of the business," he said. "For example, having a fresh lineup is not just investing in some models. It's understanding, years ahead, what the markets are asking, what the dealers are asking, what your brand is, and what you want to put into it."