Carlos Ghosn’s bright idea (formulated, one imagines, not long after he considered canning Nissan’s luxury wing entirely) of turning Infiniti into the Japanese BMW has still not gained serious traction in Europe, despite a wholesale rebranding of the line-up.
Nevertheless, the Q30, demonstrates a more cogent step forward in the strategy.
The Q30 is a premium compact hatchback – crucial fodder in Europe if you wish to generate meaningful sales volume – and a direct product of the wide-ranging partnership that Renault-Nissan sealed with German giant Daimler several years ago.
So rather than employing the CMF-CD platform that underpins both the Nissan Pulsar and the Renault Mégane, the Q30 is underpinned – quite overtly in places, as we’ll see – by the same architecture used by the Mercedes A-Class. Something that is transferred over to the QX30, which is a raised Q30 essentially, with Infiniti looking to tap into the lucrative premium compact SUV craze.
Additionally, the new models are the first Infinitis to be built in Europe, specifically at Nissan’s Sunderland plant, which has been expanded for the purpose.
Like the platform, the engines are inherited from Daimler (apart from the 1.5-litre diesel, which, while used in the A-Class, will be familiar to many as Renault’s workmanlike dCi).
