Your G20 is a high-end Sentra that sold for twice the Sentra price. Of course, the resale will be bad. I would certainly hope that your G20 wasn't at $28K back in 99' when I30t's were $30K. If so, someone took you for a ride. My brother in law bought one in 98' for about $20K new. There is a huge difference in looking at a model that is a more-frills version of another car sold through a different outlet than a unique vehicle to a lineup. If you want to do an apples to apples comparison, look at Toyota Camrys versus Lexus ES300's. The Lexus takes a worse beating. Plus, I don't see the survival of high-end economy cars. When looking between a G20 and a base Maxima, I immediately went for the Maxima. Beyond a couple shiney badges and some nicer leather, what was there to justify a higher price? Plus these they were well over priced when new for the market.

The S2000 is a limited production vehicle sold only through Honda. The IS300 is a unique model for Lexus, unlike the ES300 which is an upgraded Toyota. Remember when Cadillac came out with the Cimarron? ie..the upgrade Cavalier. Sales were poor and so is the resale today. Nissan also has already looked at this same thing. Look at how bad Infiniti sales were 2 years ago. People asked why they should spend $5K more for a Maxima with different styling at an Infiniti dealer to call it an I30 and decided instead to just buy the Maxima. Nissan was working hard to compete with itself at 2 sets of sales outlets. As a result, Nissan decided to make some major changes in their Infiniti division. The G35 is in common platform with the 350Z, but there is no variant of it sold through Nissan dealers. There is also no 2-seater variant of the 350Z at Infiniti dealers. The FX is based off the RWD G platform while the similar Murano is based off the FWD Altima platform. They are completely different vehicles rather than one being a styling upgrade of the other. The G35 is right now in the same class as an IS300. It is an aggressive priced unique product for the market. Demand is high and production is kept reasonable to not flodd the market. This will keep the resale up as long as Nissan/Infiniti continues to follow the same formula.

04' G35 Coupe(finally in the garage)
6-sp Diamond Graphite/Willow w/Premium

 

These are very incorrect statements for the sports car industry. Look by comparison at Corvettes and Supras. The 6-MT in Corvettes was an expensive option and has a higher resale. In Supras, the 6-MT adds a $3000+ premium over an auto. Other sports cars like NSXs, RX7s and 300ZX-TTs that disadvantaged the auto models with less power are extremely hard to sale with slushboxes. There is a single counter that I know to this though: 350Zs. I was talking to the parts manager at my Nissan dealer last week and auto 350Zs are in high demand because there are so few made(extremely few < 10%).

Only 28% of coupe production are 6-MTs. They are the top model in the line. No auto gets Brembos from either Infiniti or Nissan(Track models are also 6-MT only). Due to their lower production, they are in higher demand. This is very different from other cars where there is a stripped down manual model as the base and a top-of-the-line auto model. The limit on the number of 6-MTs is actually based on transmission availability, not on demand. Dealers are very limited to the number of 6-MTs allocations they can get each month. 350Z's get priority at the factory on 6-MT trannies and G's get priority on autos.

By comparison, the 5-MT model of the Lexus IS300 is the base model of the line. Although it lists for $1400 less than the auto model new, the resale is only $500 less than the auto model after 1 year. Now which has the worse resale? I also don't know if you actually looked at sedan vs. coupe resales, but BMW 330Ci and 328is models have higher resales than their 4-door brothers. If you want to check these claims further, look at EDMUNDS.COM, KBB.COM and NADA.COM. As far as sedans being more popular, Infiniti was building 60% of the G35 production as sedans. To try to catch up with sedans, they reduced sedan production to increase coupe production to 50% of the line. Right now the coupes are more popular. Once the AWD sedan and wagon it the market hit may change though.



04' G35 Coupe(finally in the garage)
6-sp Diamond Graphite/Willow w/Premium