Canada Journal – News of the World Articles and videos to bring you the biggest Canadian news stories from across the country every day
Infiniti has no intention to offer high-performance variants of its models to rival the likes of BMW M and Mercedes-AMG. Not yet at least.
The information was revealed to Motoring by Infiniti executive Gerardo Carmona, who heads the Japanese luxury brand’s product strategy and blamed low sales for the Q60 Convertible’s demise.
Infiniti sold just 3,949 Q60s in the United States throughout 2015, most of them coupes.
“We’re actually focusing only on the coupe version,” Carmona said. “The convertible is off the table.”
The previous Q60 Convertible arrived for 2009 as the G37 Convertible and was developed alongside Nissan’s 370Z Roadster, with which it shared a platform. But with no new open-top Z to help spread development costs, it appears a new Q60 Convertible was simply too expensive to justify.
Sadly, in a separate interview with Motoring, Carmona said Infiniti doesn’t plan to launch a high-performance Q60 to take on similar offerings from BMW M and Mercedes-AMG though hasn’t ruled out such a model for the future.
“That’s never going to be off the table because Infiniti is all about performance,” Carmona said. “But unfortunately it’s not going to come very soon.”
Infiniti, under the guidance of Johan de Nysschen, hinted at the possibility of a proper BMW M and Mercedes-AMG rival when it rolled out the 560-horsepower Q50 Eau Rouge concept at the 2014 Detroit auto show. However production plans for the potential M3 and C63 rival were dropped after de Nysschen jumped ship to head Cadillac.
Agencies/Canadajournal
