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Mystery shoppers love Infiniti, hate Tesla

Infiniti, followed by Lexus tied with Mercedes-Benz took the top two spots for best sales experience according to mystery shoppers from the latest Pied Piper Prospect Satisfaction Index, while EV manufacturer Tesla recorded the lowest overall score. Not surprisingly, premium brands dominated the top ranks. Including the three already mentioned, luxury brands occupied seven of the top ten spots and included Audi, BMW, Porsche, and the only American brand to crack the upper echelon, Cadillac. Toyota, Volkswagen, and Nissan rounded out the first ten positions. The news for domestic automakers isn't good. Aside from Caddy, the only other star-spangled automaker to score above the industry average is Chrysler. The rest of FCA, most of GM, and all of Ford fell below the line. But Pied Piper's mystery shoppers handed Tesla the biggest walloping – the company is ten full points below the next lowest brand, Volvo, and its score of 86 is 17 below the average of 103. It's baffling, considering the company's touted direct-sales model. "Tesla leaves me scratching my head," Fred O'Hagan, Pied Piper's president and CEO, told Wards Auto. "They own all of their stores, so you would think each one would be doing the same thing. But they're not. Tesla is consistent in its inconsistencies." O'Hagan added that there's a "huge variation" in Tesla's store-to-store effectiveness, and that in some cases, shoppers found showroom workers that acted more like "museum curators," Wards Auto reports. It might be popular to call Tesla the Apple of the car world, but based on Pied Piper's work, the brand has a long way to go to emulate the uniform shopping experience of an Apple Store. The news might be bad for Tesla, but even for the brands that scored below average, there's cause for celebration. Only Tesla and Mini lost points in this year's rankings, and only Mercedes and Lincoln held steady. Every other brand, including Infiniti, which topped the index for the first time, gained at least one point. The biggest improvements belong to Porsche, Land Rover, and Mitsubishi, which all jumped five points. Pied Piper's annual Prospect Satisfaction Index uses mystery shoppers – over 6,100 this year – from across the country to assess dealers and generate rankings from over 50 individual factors. News Source: Pied Piper via WardsAuto Green Audi BMW Cadillac Chrysler Infiniti Lexus Mercedes-Benz Nissan Tesla Toyota Car Buying Car Dealers study

Infiniti G37 to be renamed Q40; new flagship sedan confirmed

Infiniti has already made it known that its aging G37 sedan will live on alongside the all-new Q50 through the 2015 model year, but little else for this sporty four door has been announced past the 2013 model year. As of this writing, there is no 2014 model shown on the company's consumer website. A new report from Car and Driver, however, indicates that like other models carried over to Infiniti's new naming convention, the four-door G37 will live out the rest of its days with a "Q" name after all.
Unlike the G coupe and convertible - renamed Q60 - the sedan will reportedly wear the Q40 designation until its ultimate demise. We reached out to Infiniti for more information, but a spokesperson only had this for us: "we have not provided any product details for post-2013 models. That will come at a later time." Previously, we had been told that the sedan would continue to live out its days under the G37 nameplate.
As for products that are actually new to the lineup, C/D says that the Q30 and the next-gen QX50 are both expected to arrive before the company launches a new range-topping flagship sedan as soon as 2016. Aside from a handful of reports suggesting this sedan exists (C/D says it's confirmed for production), there isn't much we know about it - including whether it will be called Q80, Q90 or something else entirely. It would appear there's plenty to look forward to from Infiniti's upcoming product lineup, and we are eagerly awaiting a 550-horsepower Q70 sedan and/or a production version of the Q50 Eau Rouge.

A look inside Infiniti's variable-compression engine

We're sympathetic to anyone who had trouble understanding what's going on with Infiniti's new variable-compression engine. While we got a full tech briefing on the novel VC-Turbo back in August, the visual aids were lacking. The cutaway engine Infiniti brought to the Paris show fixes all of that. You can thank the little green and pink lines on the cutaway for making the whole idea a little more clear. Click through the gallery to see two lines – one green and one pink – that represent the different strokes allowing for different compression ratios. Remember, the compression ratio is the amount of volume in the cylinder on intake compared to the amount at the end of the compression stroke. Leave more room at the end and you lower that ratio. The length of the stroke doesn't change with this system, but where it sits along the cylinder does. Hence those two lines. The variable compression ratio allows this new turbocharged engine to maximize fuel economy when the turbo isn't needed by raising the compression ratio. It will see its first use in the next Infiniti QX50 crossover, previewed by the QX Sport Inspiration concept that's also on display in Paris, and has performance targets of 268 horsepower and 288 pound-feet of torque. After, it will migrate to other Infiniti and Nissan vehicles, with transverse front-drive-based applications first in line. Eventually, it's likely to completely replace Nissan's corporate 3.5-liter V6. We'll be poking around the engine a little more in Paris today to try and get some more info. For now, enjoy those cutaway images and those friendly little lines. Featured Gallery Infiniti VC-Turbo engine cutaway View 14 Photos Paris Motor Show Infiniti Nissan Technology Emerging Technologies engine 2016 paris motor show