Why is Lexus thought of as being equal to MB or BMW in the U.S. but Audi isn't when worldwide it's a different story?

This is why Autospies.com sucks now. You have idiots writing articles. Bring back the old newsletter!

This is kind of an argumentative "article".

The internet equalizes everything...I agree this article is dumb but the people who will comment will let that be known and make the author look foolish...001

P.S. The newsletter never went away...001

Okay...who are we allowing to post these articles? This does not make any sense at all. I personally think they are just looking for a blacklash from us.

Next time you Euro-readers wonder why the US market loves Lexus consider not just reliability but that also a large part of the reason is the enhanced value that Lexus has generated in the US luxury market.

You can beg Lexus in Europe to put in smaller engines, cloth seats, hell why not manually winding windows? – we smug Americans laugh at you because we can buy luxury vehicles that are fully loaded for the price of your stripped-down taxis. Lexus is the brand that forced Mercedes to cut prices (the E Class in the 1990s) and all Germans to boost their specifications and performance.

Lexus will continue to gain market share in the US, Europe and worldwide - why?


New Product Development:
(i.) the marketplace is evolving and customers put a premium on new designs - check out the US sales figures, newer vehicles tend to sell well
(ii.) it costs money to develop new products
(iii.) profitable companies will be able to develop new products faster
(iv.) Lexus is part of a very profitable company, Toyota
(v.) Competitors such as Mercedes and Audi are part of companies that are much less profitable (DCX and VW)
(vi.) Lexus can afford to make more mistakes in new product design and performance - for example I think the GS is not going to age well - but can reduce cycle times to the next new model. A mistake may be relatively less costly to Lexus than say for Mercedes or Audi.

Pricing:
(i.) Anytime Lexus wants additional market share in Europe all it has to do is slash prices and watch the competition squirm.
(ii.) Luxury vehicle prices in Europe are much higher than in the US. Please note that some try and attribute the price difference to taxes, but this is only part of the difference.
(iii.) In Europe, Lexus prices are sometimes equivalent to Mercedes and BMW offerings. This is not the case in the US, where Lexus have traditionally sold at a discount to Mercedes and BMW for equivalent equipment levels.
(iv.) At the moment, Lexus does have some opportunities to lower prices and boost sales in the US. For example BMW is offering impressively cheap lease deals on the 3 series as well as free maintenance for, I think, 3 or 4 years. Also last month [June] Mercedes had thousands of dollars of dealer incentives on each C320 or is it C350 I can't remember. Try and get a cheap deal on the new Lexus IS or new Lexus ES and you’ll probably be laughed out of the dealership.

Capital Efficiency:
(i.) Compared to BMW, Audi, and Mercedes Benz, Lexus has been able to achieve a lot with relatively few resources in the US. Lexus outsells all three but its dealer network is much smaller than BMW and Mercedes, so its dealers are more profitable. Imagine how much more Lexus can sell as it continues to grow its dealer network worldwide.
(ii.) Lexus doesn’t make the same number of body styles and engine selections as the competition. Thus it saves on engineering investment and production costs and can select which segments of the ma

continued

In the US, total Lexus ES and IS sales recently exceeded those of the BMW 3 Series. What! - you claim this is not a fair comparison since that’s two models! Well the 3 series is more than two if you count sedan, coupe, wagon, convertible, not to mention M3 variants, separately! When Lexus finally gets around to releasing the IS coupe, IS convertible, IS sportswagon, a manual transmission in the IS350 and the rumored V8 engine high performance IS we’ll have a better comparison with the 3 series range.
(iii.) Lexus can leverage the best, reliable components from Toyota. BMW can’t. Audi has VW to leverage, but at least in the US, VW is a poor starting point because of chronic unreliability issues. Conceivably Mercedes could leverage Chrysler, but it’s hard to think of areas where this would be an advantage.
(iv.) Lexus has lower warranty expenses. Lexus does a better job at making vehicles reliable when first introduced. Lexus is not perfect, but it doesn’t have to spend as many $$$$ to rectify engineering problems after introduction as, for example, Mercedes.

Summary: In spite of a long and occasionally illustrious history, Mercedes may not be in as strong a strategic position as Lexus. Lexus is likely to be the more profitable for the foreseeable future. If VW succeeds in its turnaround efforts [product and profitability] then its conceivable Audi could really make a much bigger global impact. BMW will do fine as long as its core 3 and 5 series products maintain an edge in the market – problem is that BMW is looking to further expand its line-up of vehicles, potentially diverting its engineering resources away from the 3 and 5. Every time BMW introduces a new 3 or 5 series it is basically betting the company. Others such as Mercedes, Audi, Lexus have a greater margin for error.

Looks like were going to have a novel. LOL!

No acid trip: just fed up with Euro-nuts knocking Lexus!

Finally, somebody who makes sense. Lexus RULES!!!

Is simple really.

In Asia all Lexus are badged as Toyotas and they do have lexus badges but the power is weaker as comapred to the Toyota carbon copy. For example the lexus IS VS the ALTEZZA. Same with the GS, RX(has another name but forgot) LX (Land Cruiser) etc. Just recently in Japan they finally opened up hundreds of Lexus Dealerships..but sales are bad even in their homeland for the Lexus. Usually in Japan and other Asian markets, for that price, they would rather get Europeans like MB, BMWs, AUDIs and even American like Cadillac!

In Europe, allt he car companies had a long establishment, heritage and history. Moreover hafn't anyoen noticed that the NEW LEXUS are immitating European Engineering (suspensions design style etc. the L-Finnese is actually coined and design by an European Firm) So for the Europeans..Why Buy immitation when they can get the real european stuff? The Japanese needs to have a distinctive japanese taste to their cars in order to succeed in Europe. they need things like Japanese Food styles and SAKE or their culture/ heritage to really mark themselves as "different"

While in America...they just simply think differently. Why? Cuz European cars and japanese cars are both "Imports" and they don't really see the extremely close knit between Toyota/Lexus.

Japanese cars are cheap in the USA because the Japanese buy tons of American Dollars to keep their currency artifically low. This ensures that their products can be sold for far cheaper prices in our market. This is also known as an UNFAIR TRADE PRACTICE. The European Euro is a strong competitor to our Dollar, and hence European products will be more expensive in America. Simple economics.

Not to troll, but Lexus is flopping in Japan. There was a news article recently about how the Japanese are becoming wealthier and those looking for luxury cars are buying everything else, except a Lexus. Let me find the article and I'll post it right here.

I've posted that article many times, but Toylex boys think they are smarter than the rest of the WORLD including the Japanese consumer.