Many other auto brands are pinning their hopes for global gains on a continued strengthening of the US market and their position in it. So why not Nissan and its Infiniti luxury brand? The chiefs of both brands are expressing their intentions to leapfrog other marques in the next few years in large part by persuading more Americans to buy them.

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said that he has ordered his team to double Nissan's sales in the US by 2017. If Ghosn also means to double market share, that would give Nissan about a 15 percent chunk of American car sales within three years, compared with its 7.7 percent share and sales of 1.1 million units last year, up in volume by 5 percent over the previous year.

With the European market difficult for its sibling Renault brand and other national arenas, including China, proving somewhat iffier, Ghosn has focused on his disappointment with Nissan's recent sales performance in the US and has vowed to correct it. Much of the problem stemmed from difficult and late launches of the redesigned bread-and-butter sedan, the Nissan Altima, and other new models last year.Continue reading...

If there's anything that Johan de Nysschen would like to do in his new post as global head of the Infiniti brand, it would be to emulate and then surpass Audi's success. The Volkswagen-owned luxury brand has achieved huge gains in sales, market share and brand equity worldwide over the last several years, and those things are exactly de Nysschen's goals at Infiniti.

Of course, he might know something about how to mimic Audi. De Nysschen led Audi of America's renaissance over the previous five years until Infiniti snatched him away early this year. One of his new ideas for Infiniti is to rename its product line, designating every sedan as a "Q"-something and every SUV as a "QX"-something. Infiniti — once a U.S.-only brand owned by Nissan — previously used "Q" and "QX" for vehicles, but now its model names comprise an alphabet soup of everything from G to M to JX.Continue reading...

Audi of America gets all its vehicles from Germany, so the U.S. arm's contribution to the sales success of Audi AG depends in large part on how well it markets an increasingly renowned product line. Partially in recognition of how he helped make Audi one of the hottest brands in the U.S. luxury segment, Audi of America's CMO, Scott Keogh, became its new CEO this week.

The company announced Keogh's ascension within a few weeks of the news of the sudden departure of Johan de Nysschen, Audi of America's CEO for eight years. De Nysschen left suddenly for a position of global oversight of Infiniti, the Nissan-owned luxury brand, that is looking for more sales worldwide — and has targeted Audi customers for some of them.

At the same time, Keogh has had a less-recognized role in setting Audi's product strategy for the increasingly important U.S. market.Continue reading...