Most of the world's great luxury brands were established long before our time: Chanel, Ferrari, Rolex, Hermes. Their iconic logos and legendary products are known and coveted the world over by both discerning consumers and those who aspire to be owners one day. Now imagine this:
What if a Fortune 500 company gave you the chance to be part of an elite skunkworks team to create an all-new global luxury brand?
That's exactly what happened in 1985 when Nissan's leaders spotted the opportunity to introduce an upscale brand of their own, aimed specifically at the American market. They realized that with Nissan's strong brand image in the US and the lack of luxury alternatives to the German brands, there was a huge opportunity. They assembled the top-secret Horizon Task Force, a small group of Nissan executives culled from design, engineering, product marketing and sales, among others, to put to paper a bold vision for an all-new, definition of a premium Japanese driving and ownership experience.
The timing was right. Honda was about to launch its high-performance brand, Acura, and Toyota was quietly working on its own luxury identity, Lexus (which also launched in the fall of 1989). And so the Horizon team, led by longtime Nissan visionary Takashi Oka, decided that a key differentiator for its new brand would be to make it human-centric. Bill Bruce, a member of the Horizon team and the General Manager of INFINITI at the time of its launch, said, "INFINITI's goal was to establish a new concept of automotive luxury where a personal and rewarding driving experience is more important than the car alone."
Bill Bruce, member of the Horizon team & General Manager of INFINITI at the time of launch
From that fundamental vision, the Horizon team realized that the human focus had to extend beyond the driver's seat all the way to the buying and service experiences. They benchmarked a few non-automotive brands, including FedEx (there's nothing more premium than timeliness), the Four Seasons and Nordstrom for world-class luxury and customer satisfaction. As a result, at launch, INFINITI created the Total Ownership Experience, which pledged that customers would receive no-haggle prices and a friendly service experience that included the use of a free loaner vehicle—one of the then-fledgling brand's many industry firsts.
"We believed that every other luxury car was overly focused on the product itself—technology for technology's sake," said Dean Leathers, a member of the original Horizon Task Force and later the first INFINITI head of Product Communications. "From the very beginning, we came to understand that our target buyers were very confident and independent thinkers—which is exactly in line with INFINITI's focus today on being Daring, Human and Progressive. So the brand has stayed true to its original vision even as it has grown and evolved over three decades."
INFINITI's first model, the Q45 performance sedan, was an embodiment of that promise: for starters, there was no traditional wood trim in the interior. The front of the four-door featured a sleek nose and horizontal headlights—no big, flashy grille like the Europeans were all sporting at the time. In fact, the Q45 had no grille at all. Even the logo centered on the hood underlined a message of something all new, with its purposefully symmetrical lines joining to point to the future, a symbol of the founders' desire to create an ever-forward-thinking brand.
"In addition to the Q45, some real brand magic was born in the launch training we spent painstaking years developing," said Leathers. "The word 'training' is actually misleading; it was truly a cultural immersion. We sent everyone—INFINITI's internal teams and retailers alike—to a week-long program to equip them to conduct business in a completely new way."
On November 8th, 1989, 51 retail locations simultaneously opened across the US overnight, ready to showcase the Q45—which was offered with Hydraulic Active Suspension, a world-first for a production car, and the sporty M30 performance coupe. As promised, buyers were spared time-consuming bartering and instead offered upfront pricing. When it was time for service, owners of those early cars were given INFINITI vehicles to drive while theirs were being worked on. The retailers' belief in that vision showed in their outstanding execution: In its first year, INFINITI exceeded its sales goal of 35,000 cars by 20,000. Luxury competitors were surprised and soon adopted the same practices.
Twenty-nine years ago, the Horizon team kicked off what it hoped would be a game-changing marque. Today, on the eve of INFINITI's 30th birthday and with its global imperative to continue to grow, the tradition continues with the latest world-first—the uniquely efficient and high-performing VC-Turbo engine in the all-new QX50 crossover, to name only one.
Learn more about INFINITI's history here, and watch this space for details on a thoroughly human, daring and forward lineup of anniversary celebrations.