Infiniti to tap Nissan UK’s fleet customers to grow sales

Infiniti – the luxury arm of Nissan – is to utilise Nissan’s fleet customers to grow UK sales by 4000 per cent in the next five years.

We do have a habit of taking the Michael out of Infinit’s efforts to grow car sales in the UK. We’ve often wondered if they’re working on a strategy that goes counter to logic in the hope it pays dividends.

For example, the obvious route for Infiniti was a hard push on private buyers of luxury cars and positioning themselves as the ‘Sporty’ alternative to that other Japanese luxury brand, Lexus.

But they haven’t really capitalised on that USP, and perhaps the moment has gone as Lexus start to broaden the appeal of their cars with a more sporty edge starting to creep in to Toyota’s luxury brand.

We also bemoan the lack of a proper Infiniti profile. Yes, that’s directed in part at Infiniti’s apparent reluctance to lend out cars for review to all but the high-profile print Media. But there also seems to be a lack of will to put Infiniti cars front and centre for the public.

But now Infiniti has come up with a plan which should help in their aim to grow sale in the UK from the current level of probably less than 500 cars a year to a a target of 20,000 cars a year in 2016. Which is a big target – more than Lexus currently manages.

Despite an understandable desire to keep parent Nissan at arms length in the public perception, they’ve cottoned on that letting Nissan Corporate sales push Infiniti’s offerings to senior management in the companies it already shift more prosaic cars to they could see some stellar improvements in sales.

This one simple move will expose a much bigger audience to the Infiniti brand than the handful of dealerships currently in the UK ever could (there are just four Infiniti dealers in the UK at the moment, with another couple due to arrive by the end of 2011) so it makes a lot of sense.

It’ll be very interesting to see what impact this move has on Infiniti sales.