Luxury brands tend to have massive profit margins with outrageous price points so the manufacturers can cash out on rich saps dishing out tens of thousands of dollars more than they probably should. This is why brands like Mercedes, Audi, BMW, and even Lexus manage to sell a fraction of the units that Toyota or Honda do, yet are still be some of the most valuable car brands around. This raises a question; why has Infiniti, Nissan's underdog luxury brand, struggled for over half a decade and is currently knocking on death's door?

What has happened to Infiniti?

First, let's take a look back to the mid-1990s through the mid-2000s. Infiniti was king among Japanese luxury brands. There is a reason every hype beast wanted a G35 over a 350Z and why Biggie Smalls rapped about the Q45. Now though, things are different. The issue stretches back to pre-COVID times with the most significant example being that the brand was pulled from the western European market entirely.

Something else that has plagued Infiniti for years is that all of its cars are old. Sure they may have modern interiors and body styling, but peel all that away and you've got a dinosaur. The flagship SUV QX80 debuted back in 2011 and the QX50 debuted as the EX35 back in 2003. Nobody wants to buy a new car that has a 20-year-old skeleton. Well, Dodge fanboys do, but that's a story for another time.

Infiniti has more than a few problems

Infiniti doesn't have much of an identity either. Back in the day, Infiniti was trying to be like Lexus, dressed up and more luxurious versions of cars made by the parent company, only more fun to drive than anything from Lexus.

Now though, that is gone. The Q60 coupe got the axe in August 2022, which was the last shred of cool performance the brand had left. If anything, is brand identity is exactly what they are, overpriced, re-skinned Nissans.

That brings us to the Carlos Ghosn debacle, which seems more like a Tom Cruise movie than a real-life international business scandal. Ghosn's time as CEO resulted in wildly aggressive sales tactics, which meant dealers had to sell cars at a break-even price just to stay on the CEO's good side, which meant Nissan was cranking out loads of units but making dozens of dollars on each sale.

Since Nissan, and therefore Infiniti, was making cars at warp speed, they had to sacrifice stuff like build quality and engines, suspension components and tuning, and transmissions that were specific to individual models. One of the feelings this leads to is that every model is the same exact thing.

All of these problems can be wrapped up in the fact that Nissan is not making enough money to update and create good and profitable cars for themselves AND Infiniti. So, they are in their current strategy, which is to build decent but not great cars under the Nissan name and just re-skin them as Infinitis and hope nobody notices they are the same thing.

However, everyone, including Nissan and Infiniti themselves, knows this strategy is not working, and if it continues, both brands could die out. So, the only other possibility is for Nissan to kill Infiniti to save itself.