Japanese premium brand Infiniti has opened its fifth and sixth UK dealers as it continues to gently expand, with another six sites planned for 2012.
Leeds and Stockport dealerships opened last month, joining Piccadilly, Reading, Glasgow and Birmingham, and the firm has declared its intention to get up to around 40 sites by 2016.
The company has targeted volumes of around 20,000 units per year by 2016, including a significant fleet percentage. “A key element for covering the fleet segment is the dealer network. We are in limited coverage in the UK and some other markets and it is clear that we can’t be competitive without it,” Infiniti’s European boss Bernard Loire told BusinessCar. “We need to have minimum coverage of 10, 20, 30 in the future. We need to deliver the product but we can’t if no-one is there to sell or service the cars.”
New products in the pipeline for Infiniti in order to reach its 20,000 units within five years include smaller diesel engines for the upper medium and executive class G and M cars, plus an Audi A3 rival and a small electric model.
“We’ve got new engines on existing products and we’ll go into new segments – four-cylinder petrol or diesel is obviously very important for the fleet market for tax and CO2, and we will also go into other segments, small cars,” said Loire. “An EV will open some doors. Around 2013/14 will be a C-segment [lower medium] sedan but with Infiniti DNA.”
