1993 Lexus Sc400 Base Coupe 2-door 4.0l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

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."

Lexus IS builds, new F performance structure get SEMA reveal

Lexus just announced a new F brand strategy at SEMA, and while the products themselves are not getting a massive overhaul yet, it’s vital to understand the new terms if you plan on being in the market for a sporty Lexus soon. Prior to today, we had F Sport, F Sport Performance and F. The F Sport cars were mostly aesthetic upgrades, and while some of them had performance upgrades, not all of them did. Only one F Sport Performance vehicle exists now, and itÂ’s the IS 500 F Sport Performance. Meanwhile, we have a number of F models, which is LexusÂ’ highest-performance moniker.  Going forward, there will be four performance tiers: F SPORT Design, F SPORT Handling, F SPORT Performance and F. WeÂ’ll lay out LexusÂ’ definitions of all four below for you. F SPORT Design: These vehicles may feature sport-inspired exterior design, including unique front and rear bumpers, grille and wheels. F SPORT Handling: Will build on Design with sport-tuned suspension components honed at the track, including Adaptive Variable Suspension. F SPORT Performance: In addition to the updated suspension components, these models may receive a higher-performance powertrain, as seen in the 2022 IS 500. F: As the highest expression of Lexus performance, F models will be further upgraded with innovative components developed for the racetrack, including upgraded brakes, advanced aerodynamics and lightweight materials. So there you have it. Similar to the Germans with multiple layers of AMG, Audi Sport and BMW M, Lexus will have multiple layers of F. In addition to this actual product news, Lexus revealed a pair of SEMA show cars. Both of them are from the IS tree, with one being an IS 500 F Sport Performance, and the other being an IS 350 F Sport. WeÂ’ll start with the IS 500. Hiraku & Townsend Bell is behind this “Street Performance” IS 500. Nothing much changed with the powertrain, but it does add an AÂ’Pexi induction box, TOMS Racing carbon fiber suction pipe and AÂ’Pexi exhaust system. Handling is enhanced with TOMS chassis braces in the front and rear. Plus, it gets an AÂ’Pexi adjustable coilover system. Rotiform LAS-R 20-inch wheels are wrapped in Nitto tires, and a Brembo GT braking system improves stopping power.  You can tell that the IS 500Â’s appearance has been modified, too — itÂ’s sporting a one-off 3-D-printed body kit. The Hiraku Co.

Toyota settles first wrongful death suit related to unintended acceleration

Toyota's sales seem to have rebounded from the unintended acceleration issues from 2009 and 2010, but the automaker is far from done dealing with this situation. Following a settlement worth up to $1.4 billion for economic loss to affected vehicle owners, Toyota has settled rather than going to trial in a wrongful death lawsuit stemming from an accident in Utah in 2010 that left two passengers dead. This isn't the first case in which Toyota has settled, but it was the first among a consolidated group of cases being held in Santa Ana, CA.
According to The Detroit News, this case was scheduled to take place next month, and it was for a November 2010 incident in which Paul Van Alfen and Charlene James Lloyd were killed in a Camry when, based on findings by the Utah Highway Patrol, the accelerator got stuck causing the car to speed out of control and hit a wall; the terms of the settlement were not announced.
The article says that while Toyota will settle on some cases, it doesn't plan on settling on all of them as it still wants to be able to "defend [its] product at trial." This will probably be the case in suits claiming that software for the drive-by-wire accelerator was the cause of an accident in a Toyota or Lexus vehicle. The question of whether or not the electronic accelerator played any role in this problem has been a hot-button topic since the beginning. Toyota has issued recalls in the past to attempt to prevent unintended acceleration caused by trapped floor mats and faulty accelerator pedals, but it also says driver error was to blame in some instances.