Silver On Black Navi Reverse Camera Sat Radio We Finance! Trades Accepted! on 2040-cars

Auto blog

These are the top luxury cars bought by people entering the segment for the first time

Let's say you just got a big promotion at work or the kids are moving out of the house, and you finally have some extra money. You decide to blow it all at once and treat yourself by upgrading your ride. Naturally, you look to a luxury automaker. What do you choose?
Models like the Audi A3 and Mercedes-Benz CLA-Class may be tailor-made to introduce buyers to the premium segment, but a new study finds that they don't garner the highest rates of non-luxury customer conquests. It turns out that a Volvo leads among folks moving up to a premium brand, and it isn't even one that's made anymore, at that.
A recent study by Polk and IHS Automotive looked at what models had the highest rates of buyers upgrading from a non-luxury segment. The information comes from its new vehicle registration data through April 2014. All ten top models boasted conquest rates of over 50 percent, but the Volvo C70 led the field with 68.01 percent of its customers coming from non-premium brands.

Lexus NX will be produced in Canada

OTTAWA/MONTREAL — Toyota Motor Corp will build its Lexus NX luxury crossover vehicle at a Canadian plant starting in 2022, the company said on Monday, a decision that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said demonstrated the value of the country's international trade agreements. The plant will invest hundreds of millions of dollars to produce the Lexus NX and its hybrid version at the factory in Cambridge, Ontario, "supplying the entire North American market," Trudeau said in a presentation with Fred Volf, president of Toyota's Canadian unit. Citing Canada's trade agreements with Mexico, the United States, Europe and Asia, Trudeau said: "We have preferential trade access to two-thirds of the global economy. In fact, we're the only G7 country that has free trade deals with every other G7 country." Trudeau, who faces a tough re-election contest in October, said the plans by Toyota, one of the world's largest carmakers, will help guarantee 8,000 jobs and the factory. The announcement is a "counter narrative" for Canada's automaking industry following recent bad news from other automakers, said Flavio Volpe, president of the Toronto-based Automotive Parts Manufacturers' Association, especially in the province of Ontario. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV said in March it would cut a shift at its Windsor assembly plant, leading to 1,500 job losses, and General Motors said last year it would shut its Oshawa factory by the end of 2019. Plans to assemble the NX in Canada "means that Toyota's Canadian manufacturing operations are here to stay," Volf said, adding that the cars are "the most technologically advanced and the most in-demand cars in the Toyota-Lexus global lineup." On Sunday, Trudeau hosted Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Ottawa. Both touted the benefits of a Pacific trade deal that U.S. President Donald Trump walked away from. Trudeau said he had discussed the project to build the Lexus NX in Canada with Chief Executive Akio Toyoda on April 1. "When we last chatted just a few weeks ago, we discussed the potential of this new Lexus mandate," Trudeau said.

Toyota and Lexus will have standard automatic braking by 2017

Last week, NHTSA and IIHS announced that 20 auto manufacturers and three agencies had agreed to include automatic emergency braking (AEB) as standard equipment by 2022. Toyota was one of those 20 companies, but this week they upped the AEB ante: Nearly every Toyota and Lexus model and trim level will have standard AEB by 2017. That's next year. Many models already offer AEB as part of the Lexus Safety System+ and Toyota Safety Sense packages, but consumers have had to pay extra for these options (unless they leased a Toyota Mirai hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle; it already has AEB as standard equipment.) By the end of next year, all but the Lexus GS, Toyota 4Runner and Toyota 86 — which was developed together with Subaru — will have AEB installed at no extra cost. (Interestingly, the new Prius Prime unveiled at the New York International Auto Show has Safety Sense as an option rather than standard equipment.) The AEB function is part of Toyota's safety suites, which will be included in 25 Lexus and Toyota models. Both makes have a precollision system that detects the possibility of collision with the car ahead and engages the brakes if the driver doesn't react quickly enough, as well as lane departure alerts and automatic high beams. Toyota's move leapfrogs ahead of Honda making its Honda Sensing system, which includes AEB tech, available as a flat $1,000 option on every Civic Sedan. Related Video: This article by Kristen Hall-Geisler originally ran on TechCrunch, a leading technology media property, dedicated to obsessively profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news.