Infiniti to build its own version of the Nissan Juke

The 2014 Beijing auto show will likely see luxury brand Infiniti reveal its own version of the Nissan Juke.

Numerous overseas reports published overnight with an image pointing to a tiny new crossover for the Infiniti brand suggest the car will be unveiled at the Beijing show on April 20.

The image, which was shown to media as part of a press conference prior to the major Chinese motor show, showed the brand’s current line-up of international offerings and included a heavily shadowed profile image of a mysterious new model that is clearly a spinoff of the Juke mini SUV produced by Infiniti’s parent company Nissan. According to our interpretation, the wording above suggests the car will be a “compact model with personality”.

The silhouette of the car clearly mimics the top half of the Juke, but it is expected to receive heavily updated front and rear ends, with its styling likely to be heavily influenced by the new Q50 sedan.

According to the slideshow, the as-yet unnamed model is one of seven Infinitis that will be sold in China in 2014. The slide shows two examples of the Q50 sedan, the lower version being an extended wheelbase model specific for the Chinese market, while there’s also a QX60 hybrid and a facelifted version of the QX80, a Nissan Patrol-based model larger than the QX70 currently sold here.

Infiniti has revealed plans to offer a model smaller than the Q50, known as the Q30, which will be built upon the same underpinnings as the Mercedes-Benz A-Class. That car will be offered with a crossover style model, the QX30, which is due to arrive here in 2016. However, this is the first time the brand has made any mention of an even more compact car, though if it were to be a crossover style model such as the Juke, it could wear the QX20 or QX10 nomenclature.

Infiniti Australia general manager of communications Peter Fadeyev told CarAdvice he’d not heard of any such model, but the company has put in a query to the brand’s headquarters for some clarification. Stay tuned for more on that.