Infiniti, Acura and Australia's Rarest Car Brands: A Practical Accessories Guide
CarMoods TeamIf you drive an Infiniti, an Acura, a DS Automobiles, a SsangYong, or one of the small number of Rivians, Lucids, VinFasts, Tatas or Mahindras on Australian roads, you already know the frustration. Search any big accessory retailer for your car and you get either nothing, or a generic universal product with no mention of your actual badge. Dealer networks for these brands in Australia are either gone, tiny, or never existed in the first place, which means the usual accessory supply chain — the one that keeps BMW and Toyota owners well stocked — simply doesn't reach you.
This guide is for owners of those cars: what's actually going on with each brand's presence here, what genuinely fits your car versus what's just generic gear with a badge sticker, and where to find accessories that are at least brand-appropriate when nothing else is. We've covered this same problem before for a different set of badges in our guide to Jetour, LDV, BAIC, Hongqi, AITO and JAC accessories, and the fixes below follow the same logic.
Why These Brands Are Harder to Accessorise in Australia
Car accessory supply in Australia follows sales volume. A brand that sells twenty thousand cars a year gets dedicated floor mats, branded key cases and steering wheel covers sized to its specific wheel diameter, stocked in every servo and big-box auto store in the country. A brand that sold a few hundred cars over a handful of years, or that's never had an official importer here at all, gets none of that. The accessory industry simply doesn't build tooling for a market that small.
That leaves owners of these cars with three real options: generic universal-fit products that work but carry no brand identity, parts sourced from overseas (slow, and often the wrong plug, wrong units or wrong-side-of-the-road fitment), or accessories from a retailer that's bothered to stock something for every badge, popular or not. The brands below fall into roughly three groups — brands that left Australia after a real run here, brands that never had an official local presence, and brands that are only just arriving or re-arriving — and each group has slightly different practical implications for what you can expect to find.
Infiniti and Acura: Nissan and Honda's Lost Luxury Divisions
Infiniti is the more straightforward case. Nissan's luxury division had a real run in Australia, selling the Q50 sedan, Q60 coupe and a handful of QX SUVs through dedicated dealerships, before pulling out of the local market after a difficult few years of thin sales and limited model relevance to Australian buyers. That means there are still Infinitis on our roads with no factory dealer network to lean on for cosmetic extras, even though the cars themselves are perfectly ordinary to service (many share mechanical bones with equivalent Nissan models).
Acura never arrived here at all. It's Honda's premium badge in North America and parts of Asia, but Honda Australia has always sold its upper-tier models — the kind that would wear an Acura badge in the US — under the Honda name itself. If you've imported or relocated with a genuine Acura, you're not dealing with a withdrawn brand so much as one that was never sold through any official Australian channel, which means zero local parts or accessory infrastructure by design, not by retreat.
Infiniti Branded Automatic Umbrella
Infiniti Car Seat Headrest Pillow
Infiniti Carbon Fibre Leather Steering Wheel Cover
Infiniti Nappa Leather Neck Pillow
Both of these badges respond well to the same approach: a steering wheel cover sized correctly to the rim rather than one promising a factory fit, and a neck pillow or headrest cushion that at least carries the right logo, since those are the two accessories people actually notice day to day in the cabin. A carbon-fibre finish on a steering wheel cover also does a reasonable job of matching the sportier trim these cars tend to have inside.
SsangYong, Now Badged KGM: Keeping an Older Tivoli or Rexton Comfortable
SsangYong is a slightly different story again. The brand hasn't left Australia — it's rebranded locally to KGM (Korea GM Motors, now simply styled as its own name), meaning new showroom stock now wears a different badge even though the cars themselves are direct descendants of the old SsangYong line-up. If you're driving an existing Tivoli compact SUV or a Rexton seven-seater bought under the old name, you're in an odd middle ground: your car isn't orphaned the way a withdrawn brand's is, but the current dealer network is actively moving away from the badge on your bonnet, which means SsangYong-specific gear is only going to get harder to find from here, not easier.
For these two models specifically, a correctly shaped headrest and lumbar cushion is the easiest win — it's a wear item people replace regardless of brand loyalty, and getting one shaped for the actual seat profile rather than a generic rectangle makes a noticeable difference on long drives.
SsangYong Tivoli Headrest & Lumbar Cushion
SsangYong Rexton Headrest & Lumbar Cushion
DS Automobiles, Rivian, Lucid and VinFast: Cars You Mostly See Overseas
This group covers brands that most Australians have never seen on the road at all. DS Automobiles, Citroën's upmarket spin-off under the wider Stellantis group, sold a small range here for a period before quietly dropping off local price lists, leaving existing owners with essentially no retail accessory presence to speak of. Rivian and Lucid are American electric vehicle makers that, as things stand, don't have an official Australian retail or distribution arm — any example on our roads has typically arrived through private import, a demonstrator programme, or an owner relocating from overseas, so there's no local showroom to walk into for so much as a key case. VinFast, the Vietnamese EV brand, has publicly flagged interest in establishing an Australian presence, but as of now doesn't have an active local dealer network selling into the market.
If you own one of these, branded merchandise is often the only way to put your actual badge on anything in the cabin, since the aftermarket hasn't built fitted parts for cars that officially aren't sold here yet. A boot-stashed umbrella at least gives you something recognisably yours rather than a generic black one — the same idea we covered in more depth in Car Umbrellas and Drinkware by Brand.
DS Automobiles Automatic Umbrella
Rivian Automatic Umbrella
Lucid Automatic Umbrella
VinFast Automatic Umbrella
Tata and Mahindra: India's Utes and SUVs on Australian Roads
Mahindra has rebuilt a genuine, if modest, Australian dealer footprint in recent years around dual-cab utes and mid-size SUVs, so parts and servicing support for current models is more established than for most brands on this list, even if cosmetic accessories lag well behind what Ford or Toyota owners can walk into a store and buy. Tata's presence here has stayed smaller and more fragmented, largely moving through niche, fleet and commercial channels rather than a broad consumer dealer network, which makes branded accessories for Tata-badged vehicles genuinely hard to come by anywhere in the country.
Owners of either brand are in a similar position to the EV brands above: universal-fit gear covers the practical gaps, and brand-printed extras fill in the identity gap that a generic product can't.
What To Do When There's No Dealer Accessory Catalogue for Your Car
A few practical rules make shopping for a rare-brand car much less frustrating. First, measure before you buy anything marketed as "universal fit" — a steering wheel cover sized to your actual rim diameter will always sit better than one sold as a generic one-size product, and the same goes for seat covers against your specific seat width and headrest shape. Second, treat brand-printed items as identity pieces rather than performance upgrades: an umbrella or a cushion with the right logo won't fix a mechanical issue, but it's a cheap, low-risk way to make a car that nobody else on the road recognises feel properly yours. Third, don't assume a model that's still in production overseas will stay unavailable here forever — brand presence in Australia shifts more often than people expect, so it's worth rechecking every year or two whether a dedicated local range has appeared.
If your exact badge isn't stocked anywhere yet, the neck pillow and lumbar support range and the steering wheel cover collection are the two categories most worth browsing for a universal option that still looks considered rather than an obvious afterthought.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Why can't I find Infiniti or Acura accessories in mainstream Australian auto stores?
Infiniti withdrew its official dealer network from Australia after a limited run of models, and Acura has never been sold here at all under its own name — Honda Australia sells equivalent models badged as Hondas instead. Both situations mean there's no local distribution chain pushing accessories into mainstream retailers, so stock has to come from specialty suppliers.
2. Is SsangYong the same brand as KGM?
Yes. SsangYong's Australian operations have rebranded under the KGM name, and new showroom stock now carries that badge. Existing SsangYong-badged cars like the Tivoli and Rexton are mechanically the same lineage, but accessories specifically printed with the SsangYong name will become harder to source over time as the badge phases out of current use.
3. Can I buy Rivian or Lucid branded merchandise if the brand doesn't sell cars in Australia yet?
Yes — branded accessories like umbrellas don't require an official dealer network to exist, since they're sold independently of the car itself. This is often the only practical way to get something with the correct badge on it while the brand has no retail presence here.
4. Will a universal steering wheel cover actually fit a rare-brand car properly?
In most cases yes, provided you measure the rim circumference rather than guessing from the vehicle's size. Universal covers are sized by diameter, not by brand, so a correctly measured cover will sit as securely on a Mahindra or a DS Automobiles as it would on a mainstream brand.
5. Should I worry about long-term parts and accessory support for Tata or Mahindra vehicles?
Mahindra's dealer network has grown steadily in Australia, which generally points to improving parts and accessory support over time. Tata's local presence has stayed smaller and more fragmented, so owners should expect to rely more heavily on universal-fit products and imported or online-only branded items for the foreseeable future.
Owning a car from a brand that's left Australia, never arrived, or is only just getting started here doesn't have to mean an interior full of generic, unbranded gear. Between correctly measured universal products and the handful of brand-specific pieces that do exist, most of these cars can look as deliberately finished inside as anything with a dealer network behind it — it just takes a bit more digging to find them. Browse the full car gift and accessory range for more brand-printed options as new badges get added.
