The Lexus Hoverboard: The history
Success here will depend on whether Toyota can create an identity for Lexus, and give him the luxury stamp kind for which consumers are willing to pay a premium to do this, Toyota needs to convince Japanese drivers that cars are more than Toyota with new name plates and fatter price tags.
Why it took the company so long to bring Lexus in Japan, a nation feverishly conscious brand, is a bit of a puzzle.
One answer may be that the Toyota Motor Corporation, the most profitable automaker in the world, never had trouble selling its cars in this country as Toyota Company officials also say the Japanese car market is just now reached the verge where it can support a large luxury segment.
We want to raise the level of our cars, Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe told reporters last month If we make a luxury brand, there will now be a market for it in this sense, Japan is becoming like the rest of the world.
But Lexus delay may also have been a mistake, given the success that the German luxury car manufacturers like Mercedes-Benz and BMW have enjoyed here.
Toyota, but was not the only one to stay behind the high-end market Neither Honda nor Nissan brought their lines Infiniti and Acura in Japan.
Analysts offer another explanation Japanese automakers may have wanted to wait until the luxury brands were established in the US and other countries before making the huge investments required to commercialize in Japan.
Toyota spent more than two years and, according to some estimates, nearly 2 billion to prepare for that introduction, he refuses to say how much the cost of deployment.
But despite the success of Lexus in the US and 40 other countries, the concept can cope with its work the hardest sales at home.
Will they move Mercedes and BMW The reality is that it can be difficult, said Kurt Sanger, auto analyst at Macquarie Securities in Tokyo They're just taking Toyotas and sell them elsewhere.
When Toyota introduced the first Lexus models in the US there are 16, he was able to win the American luxury car buyers with sumptuous showrooms, meticulous service and products always at the top of the quality ranking were so successful Toyota's efforts to create a distinct identity by using a separate sales network and marketing campaigns that some Americans did not know that Lexus was made by Toyota, or even that he was Japanese.
Analysts say Lexus will have a much harder time accomplished in Japan, where three of his Toyota high-end models will be sold with their Lexus names, similar options and about the same price as in the US Cars are already familiar in Japan Toyotas and unlike the United States, attentive service is already common in Japanese showrooms of Toyota and those of other automakers.
Then there's huge presence of Toyota here - the company dominates 3 Market 96 million vehicles in Japan for passenger cars and trucks with 45 percent of equity analysts say it will be difficult for Lexus is distinguished from such a well known brand and presents itself as something distinct and upper tier.
Toyota took a step to solve these problems is a complete redesign of the three models that will appear in the Lexus showrooms.
The IS series have wider body, larger and hard drives on board that can hold maps for the navigation system and 20,000 songs for the sound system outside the engine is having more aerodynamic styling.
We want customers to be able to come, see, feel that they are different cars, M. Watanabe, president of Toyota, said.
Toyota also said it is not seeking to challenge Mercedes and BMW, which dominated Japan 200 000 vehicles per year the luxury market instead, company officials say, they seek to position themselves in what they call a gray area between the German manufacturers and the top of their own current line.
Finding such a market is important for Toyota, whose sales in the saturated market of Japan reached a plateau over the past five years at around 1 75 million vehicles per year.
Toyota hopes to sell up to 60,000 Lexus cars a year within three years, and possibly increase as 100,000 per year with the aging of Japan's population amid declining birth rates, the company sees another potential market former Toyota drivers who would like to exchange up to a Lexus.
The company also said there is an untapped pool of Japanese who want luxury cars, but do not feel comfortable buying foreign vehicles.
Masanori Suzuki, President 28 years old, a company that manufactures aluminum foil in a central Japanese city, Shizuoka, perhaps such a client.
M. Suzuki drove a Toyota Celsior, a luxury sedan sold in the US as the Lexus GS.
M. Suzuki said he is happy that Lexus finally arrived in Japan, he said he wanted to buy a luxury car, but thought Mercedes and other European brands had gauges, instruments and interior green lights wood that did not appeal to the Japanese sensibility.
My next car will probably be a Lexus, M. Suzuki said by telephone.
But then he added a Lexus is really just a Toyota There are probably many Japanese who wouldn t want to pay big money for a Toyota.
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