I owe the Cadillac Escalade some thanks. The Escalade was the car that brought me to Autospies, it was my first comment, laughing at this massive, chrome swathed pudding of a car. Somebody tried to change my opinion of Cadillacs, citing genuine French leather (what’s so good about French leather I’ll never know) and Bvlgari clocks. It didn’t work, I still can’t make myself like any of the current Caddy line-up.
However, I had other opinions, namely about Lexus. Lexus to me, a common or garden European, was a Japanese knock-off; a cheap, dull, imitation of the masterpieces Stuttgart, Ingolstadt and Munich churned out. I couldn’t count the number of Lexi I liked, as no such thing existed. Lexus was reliable, sure, everyone knew that, and quiet and cheap, but that was it. I got a shock when many Americans on this site confessed to owning Lexi, as I knew 1 person who owned a Lexus, compared to the hundreds I knew who owned 1 of Germany’s finest. I couldn’t understand it, why did these people like Lexus, and not like Audi?
Then I discovered the advertising of the respective companies, and heard of the 60 minutes scandal, and it all made sense. Lexus have been force-feeding, to great effect, the qualities of their cars on TV, on radio and in newspapers to Americans for 16 years, whereas Audi was quiet, and did little. The opposite was true for me. I saw Audi adverts all the time, I understood Vorsprung Durch Technik, and thought “The Pursuit of Perfection” was ridiculously rose-tinted and pretentious. Lexus’ advertising was very quiet, didn’t tell you anything about the car, or even what class it was in (due to pricing, the RX was suddenly in the X3 class). I, like many Europeans, paid no attention to Lexus advertising. We liked Audis. Audis were for smart, well dressed people with good taste, Lexi were for people who didn’t understand cars. Who would want to buy a Lexus, and why?
But my opinion has changed. I found out 3 days ago, that apparently the IS handles quite well, and does not have steering more wooden than a coffin. Lexus have never, ever advertised the IS as a sports car. It was a quiet, luxurious car, but handling? It was never mentioned in the silent shots of an IS cruising through an empty city. And that is where Lexus got it wrong. By styling the IS young, but advertising old, it missed its target market of young, affluent people, who desired such things as 3 series coupes, tourings and convertibles, CLKs and A4 Avants and cabriolets, which all offered a proposition of “sport”, and were all advertised as such, with skis, snowboards and driver enjoyment all emphasised. By not offering any of these niches, Lexus was, in a word, boring, and was suffering exactly the same fate as the Jaguar X type, by being a boring saloon for boring old people.
The people on this site have been never-relenting though, telling me that the IS handles well, the GS isn’t so bad, and apparently, the LS is brilliant. Being surrounded by fans of Lexus has made Lexus credible for me, and the badge has been elevated from somewhere around Volvo to something on par with Alfa Romeo. This is the “buy for the badge effect”. Now I know Lexus is appreciated by people, it suddenly seems an awful lot more desirable. This advertising has actually changed my opinion to the extent that (if they offered it in the UK), I would consider an IS350, and even an LS, and an IS coupe would be on my list like a shot. While I may not be able to afford either of those cars, I find myself telling friends “don’t knock Lexus, they make alright cars”, something I would never have said before. Japanese s**tbox would have been the word I would have used before.
So really, it comes down to advertising. Do it right, and you end up with a great reputation, a whole image of a buyer in your head, and you know exactly who buys these cars. BMW have become experts at this; with edgy adverts involving electro music and the constant implication that if you buy BMW, you are cool. Do it right, and you end up with sales success, as Lexus has done in the US, and as Audi is starting to do there too. Do it wrong, and you end up selling a 10th of your rivals’ volumes, and with no good reason. However, no amount of advertising could ever persuade me into that Cadillac Escalade, as there are three good reasons not to own one: its length, width, and height.