Nissan announces Aussie Infiniti boss

Nissan has begun its recruiting drive for the management team to head up Infiniti Australia. The first appointee is Kevin Snell, a Nissan product planner since 2009 and a Saab employee prior to that. Snell is officially now the General Manager of Nissan's luxury brand in Australia.

"We announced [Snell's appointment] to the employees, because he's starting to recruit folks to be on his team," explained Jeff Fisher, head of Corporate Communications at Nissan Australia.

"It was an internal announcement basically to alert employees here that he would be recruiting for the team and we would be looking for applications for those jobs -- and also we'll go out to the market over the next few months, looking to fill positions as well."

In addition to his product planning background Snell brings to the role a degree in Business, Marketing & Business Management from Monash University, according to his profile. He and his team will be faced with the challenge of deciding a launch time and the opening product range for the luxury brand in Australia.

"That's why Kevin has made the announcement internally, so he can get some staff working with him to resolve those issues," explained Fisher.

"We put a note out to the dealers saying that Kevin had been appointed to this position following the confirmation from Japan... a few weeks back... and gave Kevin the green light to start... to build a team."

Nissan Australia's MD, Dan Thompson, has previously told the Carsales Network that the company was aiming for the Infiniti brand to be established here -- with its stand-alone dealer network -- before the conclusion of the GT2012 internal business plan at the end of March 2013. Based on Thompson's original remarks, Snell's appointment seems to indicate (at this early stage), that the company is on track or possibly even ahead of schedule establishing a dealer network for the brand.

"In an external sense, in terms of the product, the structure and distribution and so on, we'll be into next year before we are able to look at some concrete decision making on that," Fisher cautioned on that point, although he advised that the company still aimed for a pre-March 2013 launch date for Infiniti.

"That's still the intention; part of GT2012 is the introduction of the Infiniti brand. [The brand's launch in Australia] would be towards the end of that GT2012 mid-term plan."

But could the brand be introduced sooner? In 2012, for instance? According to Fisher, it's too soon to tell when we'll see Infiniti officially launched.

"In calendar year 2012? The GT2012 [plan] terminates in March 31, 2013 -- it's a bit far out to be saying it's going to be January, February 2013, as opposed to November or December 2012. We haven't made that decision yet. There's much work to go before we can actually say the month when we would open a dealership door..."

A staggered launch for the dealer network seems to be on the cards, with capital city dealers opening their doors ahead of regional dealers. Fisher agreed that this was more likely.

"At the moment, regional dealerships would be lower priority, obviously with a luxury brand like that one -- especially with a new one like that, especially with limited resources, limited product to begin with. Obviously the capital cities are going to be the first priority."

Fisher hinted that we can expect to see the EX (pictured) and FX SUVs in the range, as well as the M sedan and the G model, which is available as a Nissan-badged offering in Japan. All models mentioned are built in right-hand drive and would require limited modification for ADR approval.

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