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Infiniti's Palmer announces QX30 small crossover production

The name of the game these days in the luxury marketplace is premium compacts. BMW has the 1 Series and 2 Series, Mercedes the A-Class, B-Class, CLA and GLA, Audi has the A1 and A3, even Lexus has the CT 200h. Among the last to get in on the action is Infiniti, but that's all about to change.
Nissan's luxury brand has been working towards a premium compact for some time, revealing the Q30 concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show last year and signing a new deal with Daimler to help develop and produce it. Now it seems that both it and a crossover version have been approved for production.
The news comes from Andy Palmer, Nissan's UK-based COO, chairman of Infiniti and one of the company's top executives under CEO Carlos Ghosn. Late last week Palmer tweeted the following:

Infiniti teases QX Monograph concept for Pebble reveal

Infiniti is planning on showing a new concept car during Monterey Car Week called the QX Monograph. In case you lost track of time, that’s next week, as the concept car will officially be unveiled on Thursday, August 17. Infiniti is planning on holding a press conference at The Lodge at Pebble Beach where Alfonso Albaisa, senior VP of design, will present the vehicle. Infiniti says the new concept will showcase the “future direction of InfinitiÂ’s design direction.” A single teaser image gives us a glimpse of the grille and the Infiniti logo on the front. There isnÂ’t a lot Infiniti is saying about the QX Monograph yet, but weÂ’re told it features “digital piano key” lighting, bold proportions and the aforementioned double-arched grille. Of course, since itÂ’s a QX model, we should also expect it to be an SUV concept and not any other body style. Beyond the concept car, Infiniti says itÂ’s bringing never-before-seen quarter-scale design models from Nissan archives to display publicly. In total, four of these models will be shown, including the 1916 DAT 41, 1966 Prince Skyline 2000-GTB, 1970 Nissan Skyline H/T and the 1995 Nissan Skyline GT-R. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Nissan sets 2017 sales record with help from Rogue, Titan, and Armada

Nissan Group said its U.S. sales climbed 1.9 percent in 2017 to an all-time record of more than 1.59 million vehicles sold. Free pizza in the conference rooms in Nashville, right? But a closer look shows the company mirroring overall industry trends, with plenty of declining-popularity cars but also a few aging trucks and SUVs. Taken together, Nissan's trucks, SUVs and crossovers saved the day, selling an all-time high of 765,624 total units, up 15 percent from 2016. That offset a 10.9-percent drop in sales of Nissan's cars, as volume sellers like the Altima and Versa posted steep drops. Also buoying overall results was the Infiniti division, which gained 10 percent from the previous year on the strength of models like the Q60 and QX30. Nissan's record year owes a lot to the Rogue, its compact crossover, which set an annual sales record with 403,465 vehicles, an increase of 22.3 percent. Sales of the Titan, Nissan's full-size pickup, grew an impressive 141.9 percent to 52,924 units, while the Armada, a full-size three-row SUV that was all-new for 2017, also saw a huge jump in sales (154.1 percent) to 35,667. Infiniti, meanwhile, saw overall sales climb 10.9 percent on the strength of huge gains by the Q60 Coupe, which rose 170.8 percent, and the QX30 crossover, which grew almost 524 percent. That being said, Infiniti volume is relatively low. The Q60 Coupe sold a total of 40,444 units and the QX30 14,093 for 2017, while Nissan shifted 40,172 Rogues in December alone. On the car side, the Maxima did well, gaining 7.9 percent to finish at 67,627. Volume-wise, the Sentra dominated, nudging up 1.7 percent to 218,451. But the rest of the lineup mirrored industry trends for the car segment, with steep drops for the Altima (down 17 percent), battery-electric Leaf (-19.8 percent), Versa (-19.2 percent) and Juke (-48.1 percent). Several truck, crossover and SUV models are also not faring so well. The aging Frontier pickup, last updated in 2005, fell 14.5 percent, the Pathfinder slipped by 0.8 percent, the Quest minivan plummeted 55.5 percent and the upscale Murano crossover fell by 11.8 percent. A Nissan spokesman says the Quest is no longer being built for the U.S. market starting with the 2018 model year. Meanwhile, reinforcements are coming. Nissan has said it's planning a new generation of the Frontier, its entry-level pickup, but hasn't clarified when.