All Entries Tagged With: "LEXUS"
Lexus Outsells Mercedes In USA. Why?
By Gunnar Heinrich
ACCORDING to Toyota (and they should know), in the year 2007 the Japanese automaker’s Lexus division sold 329,177 units to Americans; marking their twelfth consecutive year of market growth.
Mercedes-Benz, by contrast, sold 253,433 cars to US car buyers; marking the Germans’ fourteenth consecutive year of growth.
Lexus currently offers nine model series if you count the F-Series IS sedan and omit the hybrid variants of the LS, GS, and RX models.
Mercedes offers thirteen model series if you include AMG as its own line.
Counting out possible model permutations from each, the Germans offer more than twice the number of choices than the Japanese. And yet, Lexus sold seventy-five thousand more units in the US than did Mercedes-Benz.
Per che?
[Linked: Autospectator | Toyota Media | MBUSA | Lexus]
Die S-Klasse Trumps Lexus LS In Quality Survey
By Gunnar Heinrich
HELL, YEAH! Let’s hear it for die volk auf Stuttgart!
San Diego based consumer research firm Strategic Vision, Inc. has this day posted its New Vehicle Experience Survey findings on customer feedback in the statistical broadsheet that is America’s car market.
In the luxury car segment, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class has beaten the Lexus LS to win the company’s “2008 Total Quality Award.” The big Benz scored 950 points in the Top Quality Index whereas the LS finished a respectable 922; still above the industry average of 911.
Trouble is, the survey as a whole may be bogus because, according to Strategic, the following cars weren’t included in the results:
Acura RL
Audi A6 Sedan
Audi A8 Sedan
Audi RS Sedan
BMW 7-Series Sedan
Infiniti M35/M45
Jaguar S-Type
Jaguar XJ
Lexus GS Sedan
Mercedes-Benz CLS
Volvo S80
For reference, the BMW 5-Series beat Benz’s E-Class in the company’s TQI scale, though both midsize sedans came in under the industry average at 904 and 900, respectively.
What this survey likely demonstrates is that customers who bought an S-Class were more enthusiastic about their purchase than their Lexus counterparts – and that’s pretty much it.
Countering Strategic’s claim, Consumer Reports (with its more comprehensive survey system) gave it’s top 2008 luxury car pick to the Lexus LS460L.
[Linked: Strategic Vision | Consumer Reports]
When The British Copy The Japanese, Things Get Ugly
Twins?
By Gunnar Heinrich
READING two somber reviews recently that focused on Jaguar’s XF got me to thinking that it’s been some time since anything has been written on the midsize cat, herein.
When I found the above picture posted on ThePassionatePursuit.com, I knew it’s been far too long.
But let’s come back to that later and first discuss some other recently published pictures.
In their melancholic review, The New York Times did post some appealing [P.R. sourced] shots of one XF sedan finished in Blue-Hair blue. Some might be given to calling the paint’s color “Calypso” but I think that’s being charitable.
Regardless, some angles of the cat that hasn’t ever crawled out from its conceptual forebear’s shadow show traces of elegance and even sport. That rounded roof line that summits before the B-pillar and then gently slopes into a short boot is, true to Jaguar form, graceful.
The muscular hood is another fine aspect of art that managed to sneak its way past Ford’s ugly mill. There’s ample surface tension present and the central power dome suggests that this car did plenty of lap time at the Nurburgring.
But that’s where the excitement ends.
FRUMPY
The XF looks as everyday common as the Ford Five Hundred Taurus. And when the high gamma, PhotoShopped images give way to the bargain lot shots that trickle in on Ebay, more people will get a very clear picture of how frumpy the Jag really looks.
And now back to you the aforementioned image up top that shows the eerily similar profiles of the Jaguar XF and Lexus GS.
The image is sourced from ThePassionatePursuit.com (a nicely done blog, by the way) to Le Blog Auto whose people rightly observed that the production model XF had a little too much in common with its competition.
To rip one off of Sammy Davis, Jr., I’d say their too close for comfort.
TWINS
From the five spoke rims, to the angled lens of the headlamps, to the door sills, bulky rearview mirrors, triangular C-pillars – you name it – this is an example of severe design overlap.
Was it corporate espionage?
Or a tryst between designers in rival departments that led to one copying another?
Or are Lexus and Jaguar plotting to mainstream a joint design of the Vanilla executive sedan in an effort to woo Acura RL drivers?
Hard to say for sure. But what isn’t is to know that when the British copy the Japanese, things do get ugly.
[Linked: NYT | ThePassionatePursuit.com]
