Originally Posted By: wirelessF
Originally Posted By: Noey
Ah, toyota, what a feeling.
When you have no distinguishable history, something that readily identifies what your car is and thru the ages to folks who dont even know or care of cars..say the Benz star or the RR lady or the BMW roundel, the Chevy bow tie, the Ford blue oval... you have to rely on style or marketing over substance. At least with lexus..a completely made up name, btw..makes sense...they're at least being honest in presenting that what they're offering is fluff anyway. That some consider this a "luxury car" and are willing to spend upwards of $100k means the last laugh is on us....
Lincoln, Mercury and Acura are only glorified Fords and Hondas. At least Lexus has the guts to design individual platforms and powertrains way different from Toyota. They spent a lot in R&D when they designed the LS400 to get their name into the wild, while others just badge-engineer.
Oh, I agree that Lincoln and Acura are just glorified..although it's unclear to me exactly what the glory there is. Lincoln, a sad deterioration from a once great product, at least Ford is trying some reinvention. Acura? Honda? Luxury? What do they know about luxury? Can luxury be manufactured by a company with no history or product? If so, can I make a credible luxury car?
I have a hard time with toyota, a humble company that has based (fooled?) it's reputation on bullet proof reliability and durability marketing a large car..even with exclusive engineering and dealerships...as true luxury. Especially when they are such blatant styling rip offs of earlier S class Mercedes and BMW 7 series. Corporations that have achieved acknowledgement as true luxury cars lead, they don't so self consciously follow. That's confidence.