Nissan Motor Co, Japan’s second- largest carmaker, named Johan de Nysschen, who had led competitor Audi in the U.S., as head of its Infiniti luxury brand.
Chief Executive Officer Carlos Ghosn, who moved the unit’s headquarters to Hong Kong last month to boost China sales, wants to more than triple Infiniti sales to 500,000 units in five years. Ghosn intends to raise Nissan’s share of the global luxury car market to 10 percent and is depending on China to drive that growth as it challenges Volkswagen AG (VOW)’s Audi, Daimler AG (DAI)’s Mercedes-Benz and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG.
De Nysschen, who was with Audi for 19 years, had headed the luxury unit in the U.S. since December 2004 after spending five years running the luxury brand in Japan. Audi sales in the U.S. rose 42 percent to 117,561 last year from 2005, according to researcher Autodata Corp. During his time in Japan, Audi sales more than doubled, VW said when he took over the U.S. post.
“We have exciting and ambitious plans for improving the Infiniti brand including introducing new models in all markets where premium customer demand exists,” Andy Palmer, Nissan executive vice president for product planning, business strategy and marketing communications, said in an e-mailed statement.
De Nysschen’s appointment is effective July 1. He will be based in Hong Kong and hold the title of senior vice president at Yokohama, Japan-based Nissan, the company said in the statement. His move follows a shake-up of VW’s management last week that included replacing three Audi board members.
The Audi S4 is the high performance variant of Audi's compact executive car A4. The original Audi S4, built from 1991 until 1994, was a performance-oriented version of Audi's 100 saloon/sedan. All subsequent S4s since 1997 have been based on the Audi A4; and as the A4 has evolved from one generation to the next, so has the S4. A more powerful internal combustion engine, larger upgraded brakes, firmer suspension, larger roadwheels, and distinctive sheetmetal,[citation needed] styling clues and badging have always been amongst the many upgrades the S4 receives over its mainstream 100 and A4 siblings. In markets where the even higher-performance Audi RS4 is not offered, the S4 is the top-of-the-line trim of the A4 family. Like its regular A4 counterpart, all S4 variants have had longitudinally oriented, front-mounted engines. A single turbocharged 2.2 litre inline five-cylinder powered the original C4 version, and a 2.7 litre 'biturbo' V6 engine was found in the B5 generation. The B6 and B7 versions shared a common 4.2 litre V8 engine, the first time that a V8 engine was placed in a compact executive car, placing it in direct competition with the BMW M3 which at the time had a 3.2 L inline 6. The recently introduced B8 generation uses a supercharged 3.0 litre V6 TFSI engine and competes with the BMW 335i. All versions of the S4 have their transmission mounted immediately at the rear of the engine in a longitudinal orientation, in the form of a transaxle, and like all Audi "S" cars, are only available as standard with Audi's quattro four-wheel drive (4WD) system, using a Torsen-based centre diff system. All versions of the S4 have been manufactured at Audi's plant in Ingolstadt, Germany; they are, or have been available as a four-door five-seat saloon and a five-door five-seat Avant (Audi's name for an estate car/station wagon) body styles since the model's inception in 1991. A two-door four-seat Cabriolet (convertible) S4 variant was introduced as part of the B6 and B7 generation A4 lineups. The B8 Cabriolet has now been built off the A5 coupe body style and the "S" variant is marketed under the Audi S5 nameplate.
Lancer Evo 8 vs Audi s4 vs Subaru Impreza sti
Factory production of the original Audi S4 (Typ 4A) began in August 1991 to serve as the performance version of the newly updated C4 platform 100 four-door, five-seat saloon. It was designed to replace the outgoing C3 based Audi 200 quattro turbo, which had been Audi's first true sports-saloon and had been discontinued at the end of 1990. Being the first S4 model from Audi, it is commonly referred to as the Ur-S4, derrived from the German: Ursprünglich augmentive word (meaning: original). Audi mildly updated the C4-based model line in 1994 and dropped the 100 nomenclature; all variants of the former Audi 100 line were now re-badged as the Audi A6. In line with the switch in model name, Audi temporarily discontinued the use of the S4 name and began selling an updated but fundamentally identical version of the car, based on the "new" A6 and badged as S6. Despite the change in name, differences between the outgoing S4 and incoming S6 were primarily cosmetic. A more powerful, more expensive and more exclusive variant known first as the S4 Plus and later as the S6 Plus was available from October 1992 through to July 1994.[3] Built in very small numbers, the "Plus" models featured numerous performance enhancing upgrades; including the use of Audi's 4.2 litre V8 engine in place of the then current inline-five engine. An all-new C5-based Audi A6 debuted for 1997, after which the S4 and S6 became distinctly separate models based on very different platforms. The C4 variant S4 ended factory production after less than three years in July 1994.
Based on the Audi TT RS roadster, Senner Tuning's POWER TT certainly lives up to its name boasting a 2.5-liter turbocharged engine with 430 ponies. The German tuning firm's package also include interior and exterior appointments, alongside new alloy wheels and suspensions tweaks.
What seemed like a good idea at the time.... Red faces for Audi as publicity stunt goes wrong.
The faces among Audi's crack driving team matched the colour of this rather worse for wear A1 this weekend.
The car was being driven up and down a specially-constructed half pipe in the Parc du Cinquantenaire in Brussels as part of the build up to the car's public launch.
But instead of demonstrating the car’s skateboard-like handling and fun-to-drive character, one of Audi’s drivers got carried away and rolled the MINI-rivalling hatch onto its roof. The good news is, nobody was hurt, and the car barely damaged. (which is where Audi should have promptly went into a safety rant....)
Driver and passenger were quickly freed after the car was pushed back onto its wheels.
According to Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad, Audi was keen that photographers didn’t take pictures of the stricken car. But a few snaps have leaked out of the innocuous event.
And while the crash is a slight annoyance for Audi as the build-up to the car’s arrival in showrooms begins, very few A1s are likely to be subjected to the full Tony Hawks X Games treatment when the car arrives here in late 2010.
