What happens when an automotive brand leaves the market?

Infiniti is just the latest in a long line of car companies to have announced it's quitting the local market.

We've been down this track before with brands like Opel and Daewoo gone for good, and names like MG and Renault back for an encore performance.

But what specifically does it mean for Infiniti owners?

At present there are still many decisions to be made in the lead-up to the brand's closure, according to Karla Leach, General Manager of Corporate Communications for Nissan Australia. The company is not expected to work out a strategic plan for winding down the Infiniti presence in Australia for a couple of months yet.

But parts and servicing are likely to remain supported by one means or another. That has to be the case; Australian Consumer Law (ACL) demands it.

"Under the ACL consumers' rights are strongly protected, and then there's a whole lot of other obligations that we need to deliver as OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] to customers," Ms Leach has told carsales.

"So I think whilst it's probably initially a little unnerving... that level of support will always be there. It may not be that it's a shop with lights and a door that you can walk into, but there will always be a mechanism for that [support] to happen."

The ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer Commission), which is the industry watchdog for consumers, stipulates that companies selling goods in Australia must ensure parts supply for those products and repair facilities "are available for a reasonable time after purchase", unless the consumer has been told otherwise.

Typically, that means parts availability up to 10 years after the automotive importer closes its doors. Infiniti is unlikely to be an exception, and Nissan dealers will presumably stock Infiniti parts and service Infiniti products, although Nissan is yet to decide how aftersales support will play out in Australia after the shut-down.

The latest precedent of this kind was Holden stepping in to support owners of Opel vehicles (and before that Daewoo owners).

In the event that a Nissan dealer is unable to service an Infiniti model, or the owner prefers to have the vehicle serviced elsewhere, most aftermarket workshops can carry out logbook servicing for the car. In short, owners won't be badly affected by Infiniti throwing in the towel, where parts and servicing are concerned.

What may be a problem for Infiniti owners is the car's resale value. Currently, according to RedBook, an Infiniti FX30d – priced at $88,400 new in 2013 – retains 32 per cent of its value in 2019. That equates to a purchase price of $28,500 in the used-car market.

In contrast, a BMW X5 (E70) xDrive30d from the same year cost $92,245 new and is now valued at $31,200. That is a retained value of 34 per cent – not much more than the Infiniti.

But now that Infiniti has announced it will close up shop in Australia, expect the resale values for cars like the FX30d and others, including near-new models, to decline at an accelerated rate.

There's no good time to sell to minimise your loss either. The FX30d example is for a car that is now six years old, and its further depreciation may not be as precipitous as newer models, but the only way to be sure of reduce the worsening depreciation is to retain ownership of the car years longer than planned.

One example to illustrate this is RedBook's numbers for the Opel Astra and the Ford Focus from 2013 – both diesel automatic hatches. The Ford was priced lower when new – $28,090 – and the Opel came in at $29,990. Retained values are $9100 for the Opel and $9800 for the Ford.

The higher-priced Opel has depreciated to a point lower than the retained value for the Ford. In percentage terms, the Astra has retained 30 per cent of the new-car price, versus 35 per cent for the Focus.

The difference? Perhaps it was Opel's withdrawal from the Australian market in August of 2013. A variance of $700/five per cent between two similar cars after this length of time is not that much.

From that insight, one conclusion to be drawn is the discounted new-car price offered by Infiniti could make the eventual hurt to the hip pocket worth it.

To clear stocks ahead of the shut-down, Infiniti is offering its Q50 sedan from $41,888, basically 20 per cent off the top of the normal retail price of $54,900. So Q50 buyers will save $13,000 now, which could be much more than the adjusted depreciation six years from now.

It all depends on whether the Infiniti product – with more of a prestige image – will depreciate faster or slower than the workhorse Ford Focus and Opel Astra models.

Taking the Focus/Astra example as a guide, the Q50 ($54,900 new) could be worth as little as $12,500 after six years – if the same 30 per cent retained value is applied to the discount new price or $41,888. Alternatively, 35 per cent retained from the full list price of $54,900 would result in a resale value of around $19,000.

The difference would finish up at about $6500. Spend $13,000 less now, recoup $6500 less in six years.

It's a win for speculative bean counters, but it may not work out that way in reality. No one can forecast how the value of cars like these will hold up in the used-car market of the future. So it's all ultimately a gamble.

But the risk of losing big can always be mitigated by keeping the car longer than six years. When it eventually comes time to sell, however, don't be surprised when you encounter a lot of resistance at the dealership being asked to accept your Q50 as a trade-in.

Don't panic when your car's importer goes belly-up
• By law (the Australian Consumer Law), parts must remain available for "a reasonable time",
• The importer should put in place some alternative for logbook servicing,
• If not, after-market workshops like Ultratune and MyCar can look after your car's servicing needs,
• Your car's resale value will likely decline, but the longer you keep the car, the less this will be an issue,
• If you've bought a new car within 12 months, don't sell immediately – you'll be offered less than the new discount price to clear dealer stocks.

Infiniti has now pulled out of Australia twice. An abortive attempt to establish the brand in the mid-1990s ended when consumers showed almost universal apathy for the single model line available here, the Q45 – a rival to the Lexus LS 400.

In recent times, German GM brand Opel (now owned by French company PSA), infamously closed down its local operations in 2013, after barely a year selling cars in Australia. The Opel decision was sudden and unexpected, unlike Infiniti, which already had form for getting out of the kitchen and started out wrong-footed in terms of its retail dealer network.

Other brands that have left with little warning include MG in 2005 – in the years before it returned as a Chinese-owned brand – and a host of other British brands that were progressively rolled into BMC first, then British Leyland and Leyland Australia, before disappearing completely in the aftermath of BL's nationalisation in the UK during the mid 1970s. These brands included Austin, Morris, Rover and Wolseley.

Chevrolet ceased to be sold here through GM-Holden back in the late 1960s after Holden developed its own long-tailed luxury sedans. Pontiac left around the same time, as did British GM brand Vauxhall. The HA Vauxhall Viva was succeeded in Australia by the HB Holden Torana of 1968.

Chrysler has been reinvented in Australia about three times since it offloaded its local manufacturing plant and vehicle development facilities to Mitsubishi in 1980. For a time, the locally-developed Chrysler Valiant model line continued to be offered by Mitsubishi and its dealers.

Chrysler returned as a full-line importer in the mid 1990s, bringing back the Jeep nameplate with it, and continuing through two different ownership structures, firstly as DaimlerChrysler and then as part of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Actually, that's three structures if you include Cerberus.

Daewoo's brief run in Australia ended after GM acquired the struggling Korean brand and closed all vestige of the company and its local dealer network. The Kalos light car and the Lacetti small car lived on in the local market as the Holden (TK) Barina and the Holden Viva, respectively.

Toyota put the sword to Daihatsu in Australia, despite respectable sales of its budget brand, including the widely admired Sirion. In 2004 Daihatsu sold over 5000 vehicles in Australia, and that's a number that some current importers would love to achieve.

Chrysler's budget brand, Dodge, gradually faded from the market as the importer ran out stocks of the Journey people mover, but as the Dodges sold were being supported through Chrysler dealerships, it made little difference to owners.

Mazda dropped its luxury arm Eunos with little fanfare (and even less disappointment from consumers).

The quirky FSM Niki 650 – a badge-engineered Fiat 126 – quickly fell out of favour in the local market, despite its incredibly low price. And the Bertone X1/9 ceased to sell here within a year or two of going on sale at the end of the 1980s.

Older companies like the Rootes Group brands (Hillman, Humber, Singer) were seamlessly absorbed into Chrysler Australia.

Rambler (American Motors Corporation) was reasonably popular in Australia, but not popular enough to stave off cessation of sales when AMI (Australian Motor Industries) opted to focus its manufacturing and vehicle assembly efforts on the Toyota brand. British brand Triumph suffered a similar fate.

Saab was a successful brand in Australia during the 1980s, but being left on the GM vine to wither reduced its appeal to local consumers, and the cars were known for reliability issues. Broader concerns globally spelled an end to Saab in Australia, when GM placed the company in receivership, two years after relaunching the ill-fated brand in Australia.

Distributed in Australia by Mercedes-Benz, smart cars are still being serviced and repaired by the three-pointed star, even though the last smart cars were sold here in 2015.

In most of these cases, there was a larger brand to step in and provide aftersales support for consumers left with an 'orphan'. That is expected to be the case with Infiniti as well, supported to date by Nissan in Australia.