1999 Lexus Gs400 Base Sedan 4-door 4.0l on 2040-cars

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2014 Infiniti Q50, Lexus IS 250 fail to achieve Consumer Reports 'Recommended' rating

Infiniti and Lexus might be a little concerned now that both of their new luxury sedans, the Q50 and IS250, were unable to net Consumer Reports vaunted "Recommended" rating during their first year on the market. In fact, not only did the two fail to earn a "Recommended" rating, they finished behind the vast majority of the competition after testing, including the BMW 328i, Mercedes-Benz C250, Lincoln MKZ and Volvo S60 T5.
The Q50 managed to snag a "Very Good" rating overall, but CR criticized it's road manners for not being as thrilling as the car it (sort of) replaces, the G37. The mag called the handling mundane and the steering dull, while also remarking on the poor controls. According to CR, the interior quality is "nothing special." Shade was also thrown at the Q50's reportedly poor ride.
Compared to the IS, though, the Q50 got off easy. CR called it "neither sporty nor luxurious," while criticizing the 2.5-liter V6's lack of oomph and poor fuel economy. The mag then went on to lambaste the IS's handling, steering, interior, cabin space and infotainment system.

Lexus in no hurry to be a big player in China

For a while now, China's spiraling wealth, population and development has had the world's luxury automakers in an expansionist fervor, with many executives exhibiting the sort of gleefully maniacal behavior historically reserved for gold-rush prospectors. Yet Toyota, of all companies, is exercising a surprising amount of caution in the Asian nation.
As The Wall Street Journal notes, Toyota's premium brand, Lexus, sold all of 64,000 vehicles in China last year, while BMW cleared its books of 326,000. In fact, it didn't even bother entering the market until 2005, while rival Audi built its first car in the market a decade and a half earlier. Even now, Lexus doesn't build any vehicles in China, and with the country's notoriously high tariffs on imports, that's a major disadvantage. Yet the business daily quotes Lexus executive vice president Mark Templin as saying that the brand is nowhere near ready to start building cars in the market. "We're not having those discussions about when we're going to go to China... We have a lot of work to do before we get to that point."
Part of that work includes establishing a more expansive dealer network - Lexus only had 99 stores as of 2012, while rival Mercedes-Benz had over two-and-a-half times as many, and it's still expanding. Adding a lot of dealers without having a goodly number of competitively priced offerings for them to sell may seem like an odd strategy, but Templin tells the WSJ that the goal is to "cultivate our image for quality and customer service and let the customers that we have go tell that story for us."

2022 Lexus UX gets new colors and a single new feature

If you were waiting to see what Lexus would do with the 2022 UX before committing to buy, the answer is "make tiny cosmetic changes." Outside, the biggest addition is that shoppers have a choice of new colors, although we can't tell yet what those colors are. Between the Lexus press release and images, the new colors mentioned are Grecian Water and Cloudburst Gray. Grecian Water is the rich blue hue that appeared on the 2021 UX Black Line special edition toward the end of last year — very pretty, but there'd be signs to avoid the beach if the Aegean ever turned this color. Cloudburst Gray featured on the 2021 Lexus IS and is migrating to the UX, and looks like an overcast day. And also as on the UX Black Series, buyers who opt for the Premium, Luxury, or F Sport packages can choose to have the UX body color extended to the normally black wheel arches. Inside the cabin, Grecian Water comes with a choice of either Black, Birch NuLuxe, or Birch NuLuxe with a Lapis washi dash. Cadmium Orange is available now on the 2021 UX and carries over, but will offer new interior choices to go with.  The UX received a refresh for this year consisting of a minor nip and tuck and some safety features being added as standard. The powertrains remain the 2.0-liter four-cylinder in the UX 200 putting out 169 horsepower and 151 pound-feet of torque, and a more efficient version of the same 2.0-liter assisted by a hybrid system in the UX 250H for 181 system horsepower. The runt of the Lexus litter is outsold in the U.S. by everything else in the lineup save for the flagship LS sedan and the ancient LX SUV, and we'll wager that changes when the new LX arrives. Even so, the UX sold fractionally better here last year than it did in 2019, and the numbers so far in 2021 are better than last year. We've asked Lexus for more information about the paints for next year, we'll update the post if we get a response. Related video: This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.