Thanks for that, but I strongly urge you to read about the “history of Lexus”. There are I think a few now written, that will explain everything to you. I don’t think top end Toyota would have cut it. At the end of the day, the product must sell, and you must do whatever it takes to achieve that. Toyota were moving into a completely different market, taking a huge risk with the unlimited budget they committed. They also developed a completely different product, with new everything for their cars, nothing resembling Toyota at the time. They had brilliant management and separate massive standalone new factories, to actually differentiate from Toyota. I agree now the two are more intertwined, but that is more about technical development, like Honda.
Coming up with the name Lexus is now considered generally to have been marketing genius.
As you may expect I have driven and owned Lexus for many years, my first in 1997. Took some adjustment, until a lightbulb moment when it made me realise what brilliantly made cars they were.
I stupidly sold my last LS430 3 years ago, and went over the other side to Merc, which I will forever regret.
However we forget this is a Jazz blog, and all my life’s experience converge to spot a particular car when it comes along and my view is the Mk 4 Jazz Hybrid is fantastic, a moment in time, is my wife’s, but I just love driving it.