A few photos from my trip... Lexus everywhere, and I mean everywhere.

Most impressive are these LS460s - about 5 parked in a row at my grandparent's country club:

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(I think there must have been a reason the valets chose to park 5 next to each other, but still, it shows the popularity of the car in their area).

In these next few shots you can see the popularity of the ES350! The ES350 is the best-selling luxury car in the USA. I've seen hundreds since I've been here:

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You can see that Lexus outnumber Mercedes about 2 to 1 in this area. The LS460 sells about 35,000 a year (compared to 250 or so in Australia), and has outsold the S-Class and 7-Series since it was introduced.

Another shot of the main road, lined with Lexuses and other luxury cars as far as the eye can see:

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Lexus are less popular with the young, though. At the car park of the local high school, I saw only a couple of IS250s and RX330s, one old ES, and NO LSs at all.

I don't know about everyone else, but to me, Lexus IS a Toyota.
LS400 - Celsior
IS200 - RS200
ES300 - Camry
Harrier - RX300 etc etc etc

When you consider the prices you will also buy the Lexus.

New LS460 in the US has a price of $63,000 if you're serious dealer will let them go at about $55,000, which is a price that will definitely sell lots more of if only they cost the same here in Australia.

Mercedes S550 (Yanks don't believe in smaller engine capacity for the S class) are at $88,000 and best haggling you're going to do will drop it down to about $80,000.

Difference of $25,000 may not sound like much but it costs 45% more than Lexus. Probably cheaper to service and cheaper to run (never owned both simultaneously to give you a true comparison).

ES350 are running out the door in the US at $30,000. Because it is branded as a Lexus thus Americans think they are not driving a Toyota. The earlier Integras the Americans call Accura, the earlier Pulsar, Maximas the Americans called Infinity.

* all dollars above are in USD.

Believe it or not, I did see an S450 while in Florida. I didn't get close enough to see the license plate. Perhaps it was from Canada, as I don't think they're sold in the US.

Not any more though. Ever since 2005 Lexus has been sold in the Japanese market, which means there is no longer any need for a Toyota-branded equivalent. Lexus models were never based off Toyota models anyway (apart from platform sharing, engines etc), the Toyota model was just the home-market equivalent (and never sold outside of Japan, just as Lexus was never sold in Japan until '05). All Toyota-rebadged equivalents were discontinued at the end of the model cycle after the Lexus marque went local in '05.

The only Toyota model with a Lexus clone that existed before Lexus was created was the Soarer (Camry for the ES doesn't count, as the ES was standalone based off the Vista and then rebadged as a Windom) - the Celsior, Harrier, Altezza, Windom were all co-developed with their Lexus counterpart. The other exceptions to this rule of late has been the LX/Landcruiser and GX/Prado (not sold here), but these are much newer than the creation of the Lexus brand and are significantly more upmarket then their Toyota equivalent.

Yeah, but for answering the OP's Q, Yes, Lexus should still count as a Toyota as far as being of interest to the forum.
Feel free to disagree.

Oh without a doubt Lexus should still count. Ironically, the Lexus logo is the little icon which comes up in the address bar when I type in au.toyotaownersclub.com and the auto-complete does the rest.

for the current models of lexus yes... they are kinda off topic... HMMMMMM read a magazine the other week cant remember it clearly, but it mention some where that the IS-F should of been made as a toyota to bring back toyota sports range... what do you guys think?

SOOOO many ES350s... here's more photos from sunny Florida:

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would of been a very expensive toyota

but think of it.... if it was toyota there wont be as much in cabin luxuries so therefore price drop

Your WAY off in that!

US never had an IS200. We had an IS300, then the Gen 2 had the 250 and 350.

ES300 - Windam, NOT camry.


To the original poster, both Lexus AND Scion should be under Toyota discussion or similiar, since they are all made by Toyota Motor Corp

Actually it's the inbuilt cost of the chassis that would be the prohibitive factor. Ford had the same problem over in the US when they were designing the current Mustang, they had an excellent RWD chassis in the form of the DEW (a Lincoln/Jaguar platform) but it was too expensive to use for the Mustang, so they had to significantly redesign it as the D2C platform to make it cheap-enough to use for the mass-produced Mustang. Of most significance is the switch from double-wishbone rear end to live-axle, and the use of C1 (ie Focus, Mazda3, Volvo) suspension parts up front to keep costs down.