NX came really late unfortunately. Remember all the rumors about dressed up Rav4 with L badge back in what? 2003? 2005? They just should have went with it. I guess XU30 did so great for them at the time that they've overlooked the appeal of small CUV - which is today considered medium CUV. BMW have pulled the trigger before anyone else on X3 and it has paid off big time for them. It's so easy to play the general now when the war has played out but back then or 15 years ago it was not as clear as it is today that SUV will rule them all one day. You have to remember that BMW and Porsche have used all of their brand panache to push X3/X6/Cayenne and remain with it as many have ridiculed it at the time. Acura has tried to do the same with RDX and ZDX but it didn't have strength to carry it through and both first gen RDX and ZDX were considered failures. There is no doubt that ZDX would have decent sales had it came out 5 years later than it did but Acura didn't have enough of brand weight to be a pioneer.
Good points. Yeah NX was very late but a power house. It’s sold much better than they anticipated. They expected about 35k sales a year and its consistently in the 50s and one of the top 3 sellers in class. Tho in retrospect maybe if it did come early it wouldn’t have done as well as the market hadn’t shifted quite yet.
The first gen RDX was early and it was compact with a turbo-4 way before the Germans and only SH-AWD. Like you said lack of badge came into play and it wasn’t fast or fuel efficient. I agree today it might work for them, I believe China has a smaller HR-V rebadge. The making of the RDX into a largerknock-off RX has worked wonders for sales.
ZDX was also early, behind the X6 but again lack of badge power mixed with pretty awful styling and lack of actual utility killed it. The X6 at least can fit rear passengers. I agree today if it at least added more utility it should sell. Some people love ugly cuvs lol. They just sell.
Acura and Honda dealers have begged for a larger Pilot. Thus the collab with GM. Though it sounds like GM is doing most of the work. Contrarily, Toyota and Lexus are making their own. It will be curious to see how GM x Honda/Acura works.
The Qx50 was early too and FM based with the VQ but so ridiculously tiny in the rear and trunk. Lack of badge also didn’t help. When we got the Chinese market stretched one sales exploded relatively speaking for it. The current generation was planned to be their new volume leader but high price, weird looks, badge and an engine they isn’t fuel efficient or powerful has hurt it. Trying to pawn a FWD, CVT QX55 coupe as a FX also doesn’t help. Talking about early, the FX pre-dates any sporty RWD, SUV. A shame they never stuck with it. It had a hard-core fanbase and with the V-8 was something else.
Nissans new plan is to just turn Infiniti into Nissan plus so I expect more execution like the QX80 (damn near a re-badge) than all new vehicles. I honestly don’t think people will notice.
If we look at the Germans they continue to add all sorts of SUVs, electric ones, coupes, tiny ones, large ones etc,