Infiniti who now?

Red Bull’s actually-really-Renault engines have been renamed ‘Infiniti’. It’s a cunning plan to try and get more people to buy Infiniti cars, and I suppose it might work if Red Bull continue to do well. For fans in the know, however, it’s still the same Renault engine that Renault and Lotus have. Cunningly, the engines are being supplied to the Milton Keynes-based Austrian team for free, meaning they have a decent amount of extra money in their budget.
So what’s Infiniti’s connection to Renault? Infiniti are a child-company of Nissan, launched in the US in 1988 but now found around the Far East, Russia and Europe (they arrived here in 2008). They’re supposed to be luxury Japanese cars, although until yesterday I had no brand recognition (that’s technical talk for ‘I saw their logo on cars but I had no idea who the company was’). This doesn’t explain the Renault connection. Well, in 1999 Renault and Nissan formed the ever-so-cunningly named Renault-Nissan alliance, making the two into a single company. It’s probably comparable to Peugeot-Citroen, except that these aren’t two car companies from one county: this is Japan and France.
With Renault backing out of F1, it seems that this is a move to encourage sales of a fairly new car make in Europe. I have seen quite a few Infinitis on the streets of Edinburgh, but that might just be because they sell them in Glasgow. Think I’m going to stick to second-hand myself, at least until I can afford a new car!