Nissan’s Infiniti division has a new president. Announced Tuesday, Infiniti marketing and sales boss Christian Meunier will take the helm of the automaker’s luxury arm, replacing a departing Roland Krueger, who led the brand since 2015.
The change at the top is effective immediately, as Kruger apparently left in quite a hurry “to pursue new opportunities,” Nissan said in a statement.
In addition to serving as President, Meunier will also wear the chairman’s hat on Infiniti’s management committee. Prior to today, Meunier occupied the post of global division vice president of global marketing and sales operations. Past years saw the exec serve as senior VP for Nissan sales and marketing and operations at Nissan North America, and as president of Nissan Canada. Meunier joined the company in 2002, working for Nissan Europe.
Prior to his entry into the Nissan family, Meunier held positions at Ford, Rover, and Mercedes-Benz.
“Christian Meunier brings a record of success to this role, in addition to continuity based on his current global marketing and sales leadership position at INFINITI,” said Nissan CEO and President Hiroto Saikawa in a statement. “We are fortunate to welcome him to this new challenge.”
Saikawa also provided kind words for the departing Krueger, who’ll likely wash up on the shores of another automaker in short order. The ex-president previously served as a senior VP at BMW Group. Before that, Krueger held posts at Daimler and Mitsubishi.
“Roland Krueger’s contributions over the last four years steered INFINITI through an important period of growth,” Saikawa said. “We thank him and wish him well in his future pursuits.”
The Infiniti brand finds itself at the beginning of a transition to strictly electrified models, with numerous concepts appearing over the past year. Hell, even the past week. Besides introducing the industry’s first variable compression engine in the 2019 QX50, this past year also brought hints that the brand will soon field Nissan’s unusual, Japanese-market e-Power hybrid powertrain.
Despite a year-over-year sales increase of 10.3 percent in December, Infiniti’s 2018 U.S. volume fell below 2017’s figure by 2.7 percent.
[Image: Nissan]
Sounds like there’s an open position for Johann.
I thought Johann was from Infiniti. Isn’t he responsible for all the QX naming bullcrap?
I’m not sure it matters who manages the Infiniti brand at this point.
+1
To quote Apocalypse Now:
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don’t see any method at all.
Just rename the division Nissan Electric and be done with it.
They were passed by Tesla in 2018, by 25%. Infiniti is sliding lower on the ‘desirable brand’ scale every year. But I do like the QX80.
The big problem with the QX80 is the Armada, which is 97% of the content for 60% of the price.
It’s too bad what happened to this brand.I’m a bit partial after having good experiences with my cars and local dealer(g35x,g37S).
I think their styling department does a good job, I like the exterior and interior styling of the new Q50. I’ve even gotten used to the goofy naming strategy. But ultimately , their powertrains are behind the time. They finally got a twin turbo v6 just as everyone was leaving the sports sedan market and they don’t yet produce a Red Sport style twin turbo SUV that would bring some cache.The VC motor is saddled with a CVT.
They’ve already got a pretty good dealer network with freestanding dealers .In KC they’re located within a mile of a BMW, MB and Lexus store. Genesis doesn’t have that.
I’m sure an insider would have more info, but I bet Renault starved Infiniti of a decent powertrain R&D budget.
With high level of confidence I would say he is heading to Cadillac to change all model names from Audi inspired themes to BMW series one.
>The change at the top is effective immediately, as Kruger apparently left in quite a hurry “to pursue new opportunities,” Nissan said in a statement.
Avoiding Mr. Ghosn’s predicament, perhaps???
I wonder if we’ll see Mr. Krueger show up in a new position quickly or if it will take a while.
I think it will take a while for him to find a spot. He left quickly because he deduced that the Nissan C-suite is no longer a hospitable place for the gaijin.
It hurts me to see Infiniti in such a place. There’s a lot they need to do though:
– Q50/Q70 crossover analogues
– Engine alignment across platforms (i.e. all RWD vehicles should have 2.0T and 3.0TTs, 2.0T should be the Nissan one)
– More hybrids
– EV flagship
Would be nice if they made the Red Sport more serious too. Why hasn’t Nissan applied its DCT learnings from the GT-R to anything else? RS seems like an obvious candidate. Needs an LSD and more tire as well. Would be good if they paired the 2.0T with a hybrid system… the old hybrid with the 3.5 skewed too far towards power rather than efficiency.