Lexus launched at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in January 1989 with the Lexus LS 400, a luxury marque from Toyota that intended to compete with Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Jaguar, among others, in much the same way that Toyota and Honda had spent the 1980s making huge gains in the non-luxury American car market.
It was a heady time for Japanese automakers, inspired by strong sales but also an asset bubble in Japan: Infiniti, Nissan’s luxury division, was launched in 1989, too, while Acura, Honda’s luxury division, had a bit of a head start, having launched in 1986. Amati, Mazda’s planned luxury division, never really got off the ground, but not without some big ambitions.
Lexus would best them all, but at the time the upstarts were seen as bold, if not insouciant, such was the entrenched power of the German automakers whose cars, like Mercedes’ S-Class, are still frequently referred to as, at any given moment, the best cars in the world. Lexus, Acura, and Infiniti didn’t set out to beat them, per see; merely being recognized as a peer was accomplishment enough.
Lexus and Acura succeeded on that front, and so did Infiniti, in the beginning. Lexus succeeded to such an extent that one of its cars, the LFA, is frequently called one of the best cars ever made, period. More importantly, today Lexus sells a full stable of cars, SUVs, and performance vehicles to match almost any luxury automaker in the world. Lexus is also here to stay, which was not always a given, especially considering the experience Mazda had with Amati. Lexus has hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and battery-electric vehicles, too, as they position themselves for the next several decades. Genesis, Hyundai’s nascent luxury division, is in the middle of following Lexus’s playbook, and that’s no accident.
Let’s look at some interesting facts from Lexus history.
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Lexus Won a Trademark Dispute to Keep the Name Lexus
Image Credit: Lexus Lexis, a legal database company, tried to stop Lexus, Toyota’s new luxury marque, from operating as Lexus, arguing that the name Lexus was too similar to the name Lexis. A federal judge initially sided with Lexis before Toyota and Lexus won an appeals court ruling in March of 1989. Lexus launched later that year in the United States and by August was “overrun with orders,” including for the ES250, which started then at $21,500.
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Two Months After Lexus Began Selling the LS400 It Issued Recalls
Image Credit: Lexus The LS400 was Lexus’s flagship car when it launched, sold in the U.S. then for around $40,000. By December of 1989, there were already recalls, which are common in new car launches but a less-than-welcome look for an entirely new marque. The New York Times reported then that there was a problem potentially with the cruise control switch not turning off, in addition to possible problems with the center brake light and dead batteries. Around 8,000 LS400s were recalled.
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A Challenge to BMW
Image Credit: Bob Carey The Lexus IS was introduced as a competitor to the BMW 3 Series, a compact luxury car with exceptional drive dynamics that was a direct challenge to BMW in a category that was its bread-and-butter. Early reviews of the IS were admiring but still skeptical of the new kid on the block. The auto writer Dan Neil, for example, wrote that the IS 300 “seems to lack the BMW’s maturity and seriousness, a quality that political pundits might call gravitas.” The IS would go on to become a respected peer, and the rivalry continues to this day.
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The IS Did Have the Best Instrument Panel, Though
Image Credit: Bob Carey Pundits at the time said so, and, if anything, it has aged even better, a model of elegance and simplicity. This was a differentiator for Lexus, a new kind of look inside, and so was the automatic transmission that the IS exclusively came with. “Whatever you think of the IS interior,” Car and Driver wrote in its review. “it’s certainly not inspired by the typical Teutonic coal bin. And despite the seemingly eccentric design touches, it is still neutral enough in tone that you don’t feel as though you’re stuck in an art deco display.”
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All Hail the LFA
Image Credit: Lexus The Lexus LFA is now considered an all-time classic, a triumph of engineering, design, and styling, which is no less than Toyota expected after spending an untold amount of money building a car that was meant to rival any supercar on the planet. A champagne glass was shattered by the LFA’s exhaust sounds in a famous commercial, back when Lexus’s tagline was still “the pursuit of perfection.” The LFA was also meant to counter Lexus’s reputation at the time as selling cars that were simply too well-built for their own good, and not brash enough. It didn’t quite do that, but it did tell the world that Lexus could compete with anyone on their own terms, if it chose to.
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Lexus Has Been Selling Hybrids for a Long Time
Image Credit: Tim Andrew In 2008 and 2009, when the price of gasoline was spiking in the United States and automakers pivoted hard to smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, there were rumors that Lexus might pivot hardest among luxury marques, and go hybrid for every one of its models. Toyota had been selling the first mass-produced hybrid car, the Prius, since 2000, and, on paper, going hybrid for Lexus made sense. The brand was known, chiefly, for competence, reliability, and class, not performance. The CT200h was the Prius-based Lexus that might have led the hybrid charge, but, eventually, gas prices went down and so did all the hybrid talk. The CT200h was later discontinued in the U.S. after the 2017 model year.
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F Meant Flagship
Image Credit: David Dewhurst Lexus competed well with the BMW 3 Series with its IS, but it had its sights set on a bigger prize with the introduction of the IS F in 2007 in Detroit: the BMW M3, a sport sedan that, for many, defined the segment. Both cars had eight-cylinder engines, and both started at around $50,000 back then. In their tests in California, Car and Driver declared the E90 M3 the still-undisputed champion of the class but also said the IS F is “quieter at 70 mph, the relationship between the driver’s seat and the controls is about perfect, and it scored points for not having BMW’s infuriating Drive. We’d never kick this car out of our garage.”
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F Meant Flagship
Image Credit: Lexus Lexus launched the GX, a midsize SUV at the time, in 2002 in Detroit, six years after the American launch of its first SUV, the LX, in 1996. Lexus was early among luxury automakers to make SUVs, and today its SUVs dominate sales in the U.S., and Lexus obliges consumer taste with a slate of SUVs so varied it verges on the redundant. Lexus sells the UX subcompact SUV, the NX compact SUV, the RX midsize crossover, the TX full-size SUV, the GX full-size SUV, and the LX full-size SUV. Many of those have stablemates with Toyota, like the TX and the Toyota Grand Highlander. It’s an SUV world, and Lexus is living in it.
