Is It Critical? Infiniti Struggles With Pulling The Plug On Eau Rouge Performance Car

I guess the rule is: if you are struggling with the idea then you probably don't need it right now.

The typical Infiniti owner probably won't cough up $100K for it anyway. Very similar to the typical Lexus owner not coughing up the cash for the IS-F or LF-A.

The core demographic for these brands indicates these buyers are attracted to the brands for low cost pseudo luxury.

They want the "look" not the costs associated with premium ownership.

It will take a while to attract the correct demographic.

Most likely what he means is that, the European luxury brands basically go all the way out of the 100k price range, and can go all the way up to 200k ~ 2 million.

And Infiniti doesn't have a car that go beyond 100k at the moment.

Yeah I'm always baffled by the continued attempts of someone in your role to perpetuate the Japanese cars as cheaper, pseudo-luxury alternatives to the Germans, driven by pretenders when I know for a fact that the $50K and change that I paid for my 2011 M37X was the same or more expensive than the 2 main similarly equipped competitors in its class - the E350 was $49k and change and the 525 was the same. I refused to buy them because I wasn't a follower and unless we're talking flagship level (S, LS, 7 series, A8) sedans, the Germans hold no advantage. Lets be real - even your vaunted competitor C&D ranked the 2006 M (which I owned) & the 2011 M (what I traded it in for) upon their respective launches, 2nd only to the A6 - yes the remaining Germans and English came in 3rd 4th and 5th.

You don't give a car a name that sounds like a fragrance bottle from Macy's if you want it to attract people that will pay $100k for a racing sedan. You don't spend so long on it that by the time it even comes close to production you are a generation behind (CTS-V is out, too late now).

The Eau Rouge is over with. Period. At this point if Infiniti wants a halo sports sedan they need to start over.

Red Water was just de Nysschen's self pleasuring and given that the GTR components could not be used and that the car would have to be dumbed down, I say kill it. And even if the GTR bits would have worked without a hitch, why would anyone want to spend as much as what a Red Water would cost on a car that's as dull looking as a Sentra that they tried to make look tough by bolting on tacky import tuner boy styling items?

It never should have been put on the table. The notion of a reworked Q50 with a starting price above an E63 or M5 and calling it the brand's halo car was ridiculous from the outset, GTR parts or not. And that name was just flat-out offputting. That, in itself, was indicative of the questionable decisions Infiniti was making. Now, taking it off the table, or struggling with that decission, further reinforces the notion that Infiniti is a bit (or alot) lost.

Infiniti, please don't make a mistake with the new Q60.

I tend to agree. This does not work as a halo car for the brand because it doesn't make a dramatic statement about Infiniti. It's a souped-up version of a car that already exists in the lineup. There shouldn't be anything else in your lineup that detracts from your halo car. The halo car should elevate everything else you have. If they wanted a true halo car then they should have produced something like the Essence or the EmergE with at least GTR underpinning.

Perhaps it was a bit too ambitious in the end.

What an incredible failure. Such a stupid name and way overpriced. Forget get, save yourself the embarrassment.

By the way Infiniti needs a true large size saloon before it puts out something like this. It's just about credibility in that price range. Infiniti needs to prove that it can sell a traditional flagship vehicle that people are used to paying $80-100K for before they spend that amount for a high-performance variant of a $40K vehicle

i don't know why anyone would want a $100k q50.
if it were the essence concept coming out with this performance then fine, but this is a q50 on steroids.

this car should cost no more than 60-65k then it would be a huge hit, but would defeat the purpose of a gtr.