The Infiniti Teaser for two Pebble Beach reveals
Infiniti are teasing two new cars ahead of a Pebble reveal in August. One is mainstream, one is performance. Neither is an Infiniti M Coupe.
Infiniti – Nissan’s luxury lot who are struggling to get a foothold in the UK and Europe – like the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. They launched the new Infiniti M there last year and the event opened with the Infiniti Essence Concept. Which is hardly a huge surprise as the US is Infiniti’s biggest market. It competes on even-ish terms with Lexus across the Pond, whereas it had managed to sell just 60 cars in the UK up until February.
In some ways that’s not a huge surprise. The marketing push isn’t exactly huge, there seems to be a lack of will to get the product under peoples noses and it seems the only way to get a car to test – for Cars UK anyway – is to go queue at a media event.
Which is something we try to avoid. Apart from it being a pain to drive across the country to queue to drive for a short period, we’re then supposed to give you – dear reader – a sensible opinion. You don’t have a real idea what a car’s like until you’ve had it a least a few days, and preferebly much longer. So these ‘Come & Drive’ events so loved of car makers are pretty much a waste of space. Unless the car’s truly awful or outstandingly awesome all you do is reinforce your preconceptions.
But we’ll continue to give an opinion. We do send staff to grab a drive of new cars we don’t get sent, either at a friendly dealers or from a friendly owner (you’d be surprised how many of those there are). Not ideal, but there’s a job to be done. That way we know enough to comment, and get as much feel for the car as we’d get – and probably more – at one of these events.
And we’re going to have two more Infinitis to judge, both of which are being revealed at Pebble in August (that’ll help the Euro push then – why not pick Salon Prive or Villa d’Este?). We thought one may be an M Coupe. Infiniti say not. Well, they didn’t tell us that, but they did tell the US media. One is mainstream, one is performance. Judge for yourself from the tease above.
It should be so much easier for Infiniti. Lexus are leaving themselves wide open to competition by going the Hybrid-only route. Infiniti should be setting themselves up as the obvious home for Lexus owners not convinced by the Hybrid route – and there are plenty of those. And get product out for review. The product seems good enough, in a Lexus kind of way.
But then what do we know. After all, Infiniti have sold a whole sixty cars here. Maybe even 61 by now.
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