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10 Facts About Infiniti Cars

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Infiniti is a luxury car brand that's relatively new on the market when compared with some heritage luxury auto brands like Mercedes or Jaguar. Learn more about the history of Infiniti as a company and other facts to deepen your understanding of this modern brand. If you've ever wondered who makes Infiniti cars or when these cars came on the market in the USA, you'll find answers here.

It Has a Recognizable Parent Company

Infiniti isn't an independent car brand. Rather, it's a subsidiary of Nissan, which means you can expect a luxury look and feel with similar performance to the more budget-friendly parent company brand. Nissan's decision to spin off a luxury brand has also been embraced by Japanese automakers like Toyota and Honda, who own luxury brands Lexus and Acura, respectively.

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Four Years from Concept to Market

In 1985, Nissan executives tasked a group of employees with a specific mission: to create a new luxury car brand. The internal team worked to conceptualize, design and produce the first Infiniti models over the next four years, and the brand rolled out its first cars in 1989.

The 1989 USA Launch

Infiniti's 1989 launch in the USA wasn't very small. The company started out with 51 dealerships across the nation that year, focusing on customer satisfaction as part of its luxury image. The dealerships carried only two car models: the Q45 sedan and the M30 coupe.

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Early Branding

Thanks in part to the modern age during which it was launched, Infiniti execs pursued an early brand strategy focused on an image of fresh, modern luxury. The name Infiniti is purposefully misspelled to bring a modern edge to the name, and the logo purposefully evokes the image of a road disappearing into the horizon, signifying endless possibility.

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Embracing Technology

In addition to customer satisfaction, Infiniti is known for having a focus on technological advancement, embracing features like voice control in the first few years of the 21st century. The brand retains this focus on cutting-edge tech, sponsoring a number of educational initiatives to drive innovation.

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A Simple Naming Tradition

While many other carmakers use their vehicle's names to evoke a specific image, choosing names like Mustang or Civic to make the car recognizable, Infiniti has always chosen simple names. From the very beginning, a simple combination of numbers and letters has been the naming convention of choice for Infiniti.

Consistent Vehicle Styles

Infiniti seeks a specific type of customer with its luxury image, and it accordingly has a fairly predictable adherence to sedan and coupe styles. The brand has introduced some SUV models over the years, but these are typically small in size and aren't necessarily marketed as an option for rugged off-road activities.

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Good Reliability

Like Nissan, Infiniti tends to perform pretty well in reliability tests. Though this does tend to vary from model to model, the brand overall has a fairly good reputation for producing trustworthy cars and SUVs.

Lagging Sales

In spite of its reliability, Infiniti has traditionally been outperformed by competing brands like Acura and Lexus. In 2013, a Nissan executive even publicly said the company had considered doing away with the Infiniti brand entirely. However, luxury brands do tend to bring in a lot of money for car companies, so Nissan ultimately decided to stick with Infiniti.

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Formula 1 Racing

Though Infiniti primarily makes luxury cars for consumers, the company has paired with Renault to create race cars for Formula 1. The company says this collaboration allows for greater innovation for the cars they bring to the consumer market, though of course the final designs of a Formula 1 car is quite different from what you'll find on a dealer's lot.

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Steinberg Coluseld