Infiniti Q30 will be best-seller

You may never have heard of Infiniti. That's because the company only has three dealerships in Australia at present. Indeed, cars bearing the Infiniti badge are a rare sight on the road.

However the arrival of the new Infiniti Q30 small luxury hatch, which made its debut at the 2015 Frankfurt motor show, is expected to send sales northwards.

Potentially in a big way.

"We expect the Q30 to be our best-selling model in time, followed by the Q50 sedan," stated Peter Fadeyev, Infiniti Australia's general manager of corporate communications, ahead of the international launch of the car in Portugal.

Arriving in Australia in the third quarter of 2016, the Q30 sports a fashionable exterior design wrapped around Mercedes-Benz technology, sharing Benz A-Class underpinnings, including transmissions and engines.

Although pricing and specification hasn't been revealed, the Q30 is widely expected to match the likes of the A-Class, which starts at just under $36K. Aussie Q30 vehicles will be imported from the company's Sunderland plant in the UK.

Infiniti Australia is under no illusions of the challenges it still faces in Australia, and taking on the might of luxury car leader Mercedes-Benz with just three dealers on the east coast – with the fourth opening in Perth – means it's logistically impossible.

In Australia more than a million cars are sold per year and in 2015 Infiniti is unlikely to sell more than 600 vehicles this year.

One of the biggest limiting factors for Infiniti sales in Australia at present is the lack of dealers, but Fadeyev said the feeling within the company is very positive – and the Q30 will help expand showrooms and logically sales he says.

So how many new dealerships will the Q30 help establish in Australia?

"It's too soon to put a number on it, but we'll open our first Perth dealership early in 2016," he said.

When motoring.com.au pointed out that Infiniti is often derided and the butt of many jokes due to its miniscule sales, Fadeyev noted that the company was in it for the "long game".

"We have to earn our place," he said.

The brand has plenty of new products in the pipeline, with the facelifted Q70 sedan arriving in January 2016, followed by the Q30 in the third quarter and its small SUV cousin, the QX30 and the new Q60 sports coupe late that year.

The Q30 could be the game-changing vehicle that finally puts Infiniti on the map in Australia but time is the biggest factor for the brand's success, observes the Infiniti PR boss.

"It's our belief that you can't succeed in the premium car market in Australia in a brief period of time, and by that I mean three to five years," he said.

Infiniti kicked off in Australia in 2012 and Fadeyev argues that the Nissan-owned luxury car brand's rivals have been here for upwards of 50 years locally. But the resolve is there, and he insists that in time Infiniti will be a household name, a highly recognisable brand like its competitors.

"We have a long way to go before we achieve that type of recognition. Any commercial brand wants to be instantly recognisable. The one constant, whether in the automotive industry, electronics or luxury goods, is time.

"And we do expect to be recognisable to the same instance and same degree as our competitors in the coming years."