Infiniti Is Poised to Overtake Acura in America's Auto Sales Race for the First Time Ever

They’re always bridesmaids, never the bride.

But after holding down the fort as America’s second-best-selling Japanese premium brand since surrendering to Lexus some two decades ago, Acura is now about to be bumped from its maid of honor position.

Scottie Pippen? Acura is quickly becoming Toni Kukoc.

After a record U.S. sales performance in 2016, Infiniti sales are rising faster than any other auto brand in America save for four niche-market luxury contenders. After trailing its Acura compatriot for 28 years, it’s past time for Infiniti to catch the bouquet.

If at first Infiniti’s impressive 22-percent year-over-year sales increase seems difficult to comprehend, remember the addition of a key model in a key segment.

The Infiniti QX30, the entry-level Infiniti that uses as its foundation Mercedes-Benz’s GLA, has proven vital, though not essential, to Infiniti’s U.S. sales expansion in 2017’s first six months. Infiniti reported 9,393 QX30 sales in the first-half of 2017; it even outsold its three key German competitors in February and March.

But even without the QX30, Infiniti sales would be up 7 percent this year — fairly healthy growth in an industry that’s declined in six consecutive months.

Granted, Infiniti has also been bolstered by the launch of a new Q60 coupe. Q60 sales are 5,253 units higher in 2017 than at this point one year ago. These gains, together with modest improvements from lower-volume models such as the QX70, QX80, and Q70, have helped Infiniti find its way to 79,143 first-half sales in 2017.

Acura, which outsold Infiniti in every year of their joint existence and by more than 14,000 sales in the first-half of 2016, posted a first-half 7-percent drop to 73,871 sales in 2017.

The ensuing 5,272-unit gap between the two lower-volume Japanese premium brands is not difficult to explain. While Acura sells two very popular premium crossovers, the RDX and MDX are the only crossovers in Acura’s lineup. Infiniti, on the other hand, has already sold 24,085 utility vehicles in segments in which Acura does not compete, with its QX30, QX70, and QX80.

Moreover, while Infiniti’s car sales are up 19 percent this year because of relatively steady Q50 and Q70 sedan sales and the insertion of a new coupe into the lineup, Acura’s car volume is down 11 percent. Acura has high hopes for the revamped 2018 TLX, but the brand’s other cars — an ILX based on the departed ninth-gen Civic, the forgotten RLX, the high-dollar NSX supercar — are hardly volume drivers.

If there’s hope for Acura to narrow the sales gap with Infiniti in the second-half of 2017, it will still mostly be down to the RDX and MDX. In June, for example, Acura sales jumped 24 percent to 14,038 units — 1,767 more than Infiniti — as the RDX jumped 48 percent and MDX sales increased 14 percent. Acura has moved to increase supply of the company’s crossovers by switching some MDX production out of an Alabama plant (where the Honda Odyssey, Pilot, and Ridgeline are also built) to Ohio.

As for the June performance, “In a challenging luxury automotive marketplace, reshaping our products around the performance direction of the Acura brand is clearly resonating with luxury car and truck buyers,” Acura claimed in the company’s sales release earlier this month, an apparently sudden resonance after Acura sales declined in ten of the previous twelve months.

Acura is on track for roughly 151,000 U.S. sales in calendar year 2017, well off its 2005 peak of nearly 210,000 sales. Infiniti, which averaged 115,000 annual U.S. sales over the last decade, is on track to sell more than 168,000 new vehicles in 2017.

Lexus, despite a sharp downturn in the early part of 2017, will likely sell more than 300,000 new vehicles in 2017, its fourth consecutive year above the 300,000-unit mark.

[Images: Infiniti, Acura]

Timothy Cain is a contributing analyst at The Truth About Cars and Autofocus.ca and the founder and former editor of GoodCarBadCar.net. Follow on Twitter @timcaincars.