Infiniti: Eau Rouge Dream Deferred, Not Dead

SAN ANTONIO – It’s been nearly four years since Johan de Nysschen swooped into Infiniti and unveiled grand plans to transform the brand into a Tier-1 luxury player.

One of the goals he put in place before his summer 2014 departure for Cadillac was a performance car to rival BMW’s M3.

That plan isn’t dead, just deferred, an Infiniti executive tells WardsAuto.

“(The Eau Rouge) was a GT-R powertrain, and that was a dream of Johan de Nysschen’s. It’s still something we’d like to do in the future,” Anand Patel, regional product manager-Infiniti U.S., tells WardsAuto in an interview here. “We’re trying to go that route eventually, but this will be the first step,” he says of the new ’16 Q50 Red Sport 400.

The Red Sport 400 compact sport sedan, on sale in late spring, is fitted with Infiniti’s new VR 3.0L twin-turbo V-6 making 400 hp. The car edges into the territory of the 425-hp M3, but falls short of the 560 hp promised in the Eau Rouge concept, fitted with the Nissan GT-R’s 3.8L twin-turbo V-6.

De Nysschen, now puttin performance cars into product plans at Cadillac, had spoken of the Eau Rouge spawning a sub-brand akin to M or Mercedes’ AMG.

Of a performance sub-brand, Patel says Infiniti would like “to go there at some point…it’s in the cards.”

For now, he says the Red Sport’s red S badging indicates an “almost” sub-brand of the sport-grade lineup.

“The regular sport model is going to be the same as the base powertrain (a 300-hp VR V-6 wears a silver S) and if you have a red-S version you’re getting into that higher range of engine,” he says of the 400-hp VR.

The next-generation Q60 coupe (formerly the G37 coupe) launches this summer with the same badging strategy, Patel notes.

“Any time we have that variety of powertrain and engine output difference, we’ll separate and stratify the two,” he says.

A halo car to draw Tier-1 luxury buyers into Infiniti’s showrooms is something still discussed, but the brand is eager to focus on revitalizing its current lineup at the moment, Patel says, noting for now the QX80 fullsize SUV fills the void.

“The QX80 is doing very well. It’s exceeding our expectations. That is our flagship right now,” he says of the body-on-frame utility that fully loaded exceeds $90,000.

Larger sedans, such as the E-segment BMW 5-Series and Mercedes E-Class, increasingly are being eschewed by luxury buyers for CUVs, he says of the segment switching.

“(Those models were) the kind of stable signal of a brand, but that segment is starting to go down.”

Infiniti President Roland Krueger, who replaced de Nysschen in fall 2014, sees the Q60 as partially filling the halo niche, calling it a “brand-shaper” in terms of design and technology.

Reports suggest a model based on the Q80 Inspiration concept and meant to go toe-to-toe with the Mercedes S-Class and BMW 7-Series is in the works, possibly arriving before 2020.

Krueger told WardsAuto in January he is “step-by-step establishing Infiniti as a top-tier player in the premium segment,” despite the lack of concrete plans for upper-echelon cars.

One area Infiniti more clearly is pursuing is autonomous vehicles. Krueger considers Infiniti a leader in the partially autonomous field already.

“You can take the car out of the showroom and drive hands-free on the highway today,” he says of the Q50, on sale since 2013 with steer-by-wire technology mated to active lane control.

“As a next step of course we want to offer autonomous drive for our cars,” with autonomous gear changes due in the future, but not in the Q50, he says.

“This feature will come later in a different car; it will come.”

Krueger was pleased with Infiniti’s global sales of 215,250 last year, an increase of 16% from 2014, but wouldn’t discuss if Infiniti still is aiming for 500,000 units annually around 2020, which was another de Nysschen goal.

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