Monday, July 12, 2010

No story. No sale.

Last night I saw this spot for the new Lexus LFA and it intruiged me enough to want me to learn more about the car.



Here's what I found out. About 10 years ago, the engineers at Lexus apparently got tired of being known for creating perfectly boring, luxury automotive appliances so they started work on a supercar. And that's what the LFA is.

A beautiful carbon fiber body sculpted over a 560 horsepower V-10. Incredible handling. Massive brakes. Hand-built to your exact specifications. And if the spot is to believed, it sounds fantastic. This is a spare no expense paean to automotive excellence.

This is not surprising. When Toyota digs in and decides to do something right, they generally do. What is surprising however is the price.

At $375,000 base, this car is at least 20% more expensive than a Ferrari 599GTB. Now, I know it's faster (.1 second 0 – 60) but at the end of the day, it's still a Lexus, a brand with no performance heritage. When you buy a car like this, you're not just buying numbers. You're buying a connection to its lineage. Your 599 comes with world constructor's championships, Fangio, and Mille Miglia's standard.

You have to explain why you paid that ungodly sum for the Lexus. You don't for a Ferrari, Porsche, Aston Martin or Lamborghini. And no amount of excellent advertising is going to make up for that.

1 comment:

  1. The thing is Toyota is (or was) making money on the rest of their cars so they had the resources to let the designer and engineers play. I dont really think they are planning on selling many but just making a statement that LOOK what we can do. This car is so fast that they wont even let you buy one until you pass an extensive driving course.

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