Jason2801

For some reason I think it's time for Toyota and Jim Lentz to go their separate ways. A few months ago an article came out on Motor Trend where Jim Lentz doesn't see why Toyota should be building a Sports Car or in his words 'So why bother building another Supra? I think Aikio loves Sports Cars' and then ends to say the 'Tacoma is our Sports Car'. (http://blogs.motortrend.com/1502_alt...g_picture.html)

I think all this guy cares about is sales and no caring about the brands image. Seems like Toyota and Lexus are trying do just that renew their image to bring in a younger audience and what's best way than to make Sports Cars / Halo appearance. But he has been coming out to the public lately saying a lot of what he thinks the company should be doing instead of what they're actually doing. Your a top executive, shouldn't your ideas and voice be kept in house rather than complaining to the public? To me it sounds like not everyone is on board with what his ideas are and therefore he's complaining and making it seem like he has better ideas on how to manage this company. I don't know Aikio, I think it's time for someone to take his place who can agree and see the vision you see for Toyota and Lexus.

cino

iTrader: (1)

Coupe costs more, and have higher insurance rate while not having enough clearance for a regular use? Can you think of a 1 seater car with lower insurance rate, costs less and has enough ground clearance?

On a serious note, most 3rd row SUV owners never utilize their 3rd row. It's their money, and their choice. May not be ideal, but whatever works for them. You can give me a scenario a non off-roader unibody SUV works better than a minivan. Because minivan doesn't have that "SWAG".

corradoMR2

From a financial/volume standpoint, a three-row CUV should have been released first, but from an image rebranding standpoint, a coupe was desperately needed with the SC and LFA leaving huge gaps.

What is Lentz worried about if a three-row (TX) should be right around the corner? Unless of course, his very statement on disappointment with the release of the RC implies the TX is still far away.

RNM GS3

These are the type of money hungry executives that have ZERO Passion and Vision for the products they sell and NO idea about brand image.
BTW Lentz has NO engineerimg or product development background - he is about 1 thing = SALES.

Toyota/Lexus will be the Buick/Lincoln of next generation if they continue this thinking.......

MattyG

Making SUV's and CUV"s is relatively easy. Making a sports coupe that plays in the high end of the market with the Germans, not so easy.

That's a handicap any mainstream manufacturer will always deal with. You're making Camry's and Prius's one day. Next day you decide you want a halo vehicle and come up the RC coupe.

BMW and the other German manufacturers only had to ever concentrate on the premium end of the market so that's all they and their adoring automotive "press" ever had to worry about.

That said. The RC could have gone without a V8 and also trimmed its pork down to about 3500lbs. Trying to be all things to all people and trying to guess about three row SUV's is a tough place to be in.

I agree about Lentz being a sales guy. In my industry sales people have decimated it because the bottom line is more important than passion, quality and product.

chikoo

Toyota and Lexus even more cannot give up the luxurious ride afforded by a flexible chassis, the one that made them famous around the globe, and are pursuing a dream in the land of hard as rock german chassis.

mmarshall

Lentz may have a point, though. Look what happened to the Supra when Toyota DID sell it here in the U.S......it fell flat on its face from lack of sales, and Toyota had to drop it. Outside of Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc...and a few other niche sports-car manufacturers, few mainline auto manufacturers can stay in business with too much emphasis on sporting machines. Mazda, so far, has been one of the few exceptions, but it is nowhere near Toyota/Lexus's size.

You might be making the wrong comparison. Buick is been doing pretty well lately, and Lincoln, while suffering from past mistakes, seems finally starting on the way up.

RNM GS3

Supra and Lexus SC were never volume cars.
Sales figures are secondary, what they do as IMAGE cars for the brand is way more important.
After all these years - Supra has a brand equity in performance for Toyota that a zillion Camrys cant match.
1st gen SC is still prob one of the best cars to wear the Lexus name.

MB CL, SL, SLK sell horribly - but MB still makes them.
CLS63, S63, S65, ML63 etc - all very low volume
The new MB-AMG GT will be extremely low volume.

BMW Z4 is a joke in sales - guess what ? new generation is on its way......
M6, X5M, X6M, etc - these cars dont sell that much.
New i8 is very low volume.

If you are a Tier 1 Luxury brand and you want to be at the top - you need to have vehicles that are built on passion for engineering rather than just pure sales goals.


Nobody in their 20s or 30s or even 40s cares about Buick or Lincoln. (Just watch some of the new Buick commercials)
Cadillac is slowly recovering but still has a long way to go to shake that stigma.

-J-P-L-

Funny how we were debating 3 rows in the RX thread weeks ago.

Yes, Lexus absolutely needs it. It's one of the hottest segments right now and I can't see why they couldn't just use the Highlander as a basis for it, albeit many modifications to make it a true Lexus.

The debate shouldn't be over what Lexus should have developed first, this, or the coupe. Lexus should've did both of them. No reason that the worlds largest automaker with the most capital can't cover all the bases.

Vladi

Now its perfectly clear why RC is not riding on a platform of its own. Its a compromise between people like this guy on one spectrum in Toyota and other executives, engineers and dealers on the other.

In other words its an internal struggle and that cannot be good for business in the long run. What's even scarier is that it sounds like it was either a three row SUV or coupe which means they couldn't do both at the same time. That's Toyota's conservative/hesitative approach to product portfolio right there. Besides that they knew a decade ago that SUVs will go 3rd row yet they couldn't pull the trigger on TX sooner.

Bottom line is this, Lexus is in the sweet spot right now where they have some independence as far as the styling goes but when it comes production costs and all other costs they turn to daddy Toyota do make it happen and Toyota has the final word. Problem is that their predator grill and styling doesn't reflect their business philosophy which is all based on Camry. We could see what happens when someone goes almost independent within Toyota and the result is the LFA, and icon surpassing anything they made so far including legendary 2000GT. Yes it was bleeding money so Toyota was quick to make it bleed as less as possible by limiting the production but they failed to capitalize on it by making RC coupe that doesn't reflect nothing LFA was (far away from implying that RC is a bad car). It was like they said "whoosh we stopped the bleeding" and never looked at LFA ever again, like it was some sort of bad experiment. Of course it was a bad financial experiment but it was a milestone in every other area which they failed to capitalize upon and instead of milking it by using the same chassis for a successor or something else they just let it rot together with the engine. Ferrari has been abusing one chassis for almost three decades now and it became profitable cause they were in it in for the long run.

If Lexus was solely run by this guy we would have seen gazillion versions of Camry with different shells, number of doors and ground clearance. Who knows maybe you need a guy like this to keep everything balance but no matter what Lexus is still is scared of flagship product that puts people in showrooms which end up buying NXs and RXs anyway. LFA was killed quickly to serve that purpose and gap was left open for way too long for SC replacement to arrive and take over the crown from LFA. Once SC comes to the showroom it will have to
pick up the crown from the ground, dust it off, pretend to be the king and do the LFA job from the top again instead of having a luxury to succeed the mantra from LFA.

The reason why ES sells so much is LS and don't you think for a second that you can go ahead and kill LS and expect ES to sell as much as it sells. Those numbers would just go down as the time goes by. LS is a product that supports and generates ES sales. The same equation needs to be found for new generation products.

LoveCT

Being an Engineer myself, although I never appreciated sales personnel, I have now come to an understanding that sales is important to sustain an organization and it's expenses on engineering, research and designs.

If your flaming Lentz for suggesting 3 row crossover, think again. The Lexus sports car purists here know very well that these racy over engineered products are low volume, high risk businesses. And let's not forget it caters to mainly the boy racer journalist crowd who just want to see the latest and greatest tech, until they move to the next best thing. Keeping up with that is a losing game, and is only meant for the halo image, while the bread and butter is the company's staple offerings. If you disagree, look no further than the already much maligned RC by these journos for borrowing parts and platform from other Lexus offerings. And GS F is again if I am not mistaken is getting lukewarm welcome.

The CUV/SUV crowd are much easier to appease. No one minds the until now RX's deliberately vague drive feel, or the easily available features on other non luxury cars. Image is everything for these cars. On Porsche,the same journos flame the Cayenne for using the trusted AISIN 8 speed over its PDK. Guess what, Cayenne sells, because it does what is needed. The Porsche image is everything for this niche.

A bigger CUV for the market would have hurt minimal to the Lexus bottom-line, while earning rich dividends. So why not? Even more so, when Lexus was very early entrant to Luxury CUV market. Why is QX 60 selling so well, even with a subpar dealer network and a less reliable vehicle? Why could Lexus not do anything sooner? Perhaps with the profits from its bigger CUV, it actually could have built a better RC, by not borrowing from three platforms and making a bloat that is universally hated by the journos.

Changing gears, when you talk about the Lexus brand, what brings to your mind? It's reliability, for me. Reliability and time tested go together. Time tested and the latest and greatest tech does not go together. Well, unless you're charging 500k for a sports car and still losing money, which by the way is sustained by the Camrys and the RX's.

Kudos to Lexus for trying the sporty image, but Lexus knows it is taking risks for trying the latest tech on a 80k RC, which might backfire when reliability goes down. Lexus is no Porsche, who is a weird combination of time tested design and engineering on its sports cars that allow high reliability. Even then it's volume Cayenne, Cayman, and even Panamera is propping the purist crowd.

Akio is the main reason why I am with the Toyota and Lexus brand. And Akio knows quite well that people like Lentz are required to keep what Toyota does best. Making reliable vehicles at low development cost.

I am with CorradoMR2, that perhaps Lentz's statement on the upcoming 3 row is pointing that it might be delayed further. Well, I couldn't wait any longer so went to the best offering from Toyota. If Lexus could build a swag minivan or a similarly equipped 3 row, I will lap it up. And where I live, there are lots of superficial people like me, who puts image first. RX is a prime example that those people are all across North America. They don't complain much about the latest tech, or the drive feel. They just want a safe reliable and high demand luxury vehicle that the family can ride together. Don't you get it?

Ice350

iTrader: (1)

But its not a true 3-row vehicle. Only little kids can sit in the 3rd row.
If you use that 3rd row for kids, can't put any luggage back there.
Lexus does need a true 3 row vehicle. People come in to look at the GX and love the way it drives and feels but leave disappointed at its lack of utility space.

-J-P-L-

I just see it as building what people want. It's a business. You can sprinkle the lineup with some low volume fun image/halo cars but when it comes down to it, the lineup has to include the body styles that realppeople want to buy. "Chasing sales" makes it sound bad but really you're just serving the customer. Lots of people bash Camry but Toyota continues to make what buyers want. Nothing wrong with that. Mazda builds what journalists want (Mazda6) and it sells at a fraction of Camry volume. So which makes more sense?

The reality of the market is a move to SUV's and in particular CUV's. Whether enthusiasts like it or not, America is becoming more and more a Truck and SUV landscape. It's why Luxury makes and even Porsche dove into the business heavily when they originally only built cars. Hell, the MDX is all that keeps Acura a living brand. Expect more and more crossover models everywhere.

The future isn't little electric cars, it's crossovers. Gas will remain cheap enough. There's more oil than we could ever use out there.

-J-P-L-

Thing is, only full size SUV's offer plenty of 3rd row room plus plenty of cargo with seats up. And those are truck based. I think the model we will see will be similar to the Highlander. A mid-size unibody CUV. Companies haven't really developed any true full size unibody CUVs. I wonder if that will be the next segment to become popular. We're talking vehicles the size of Expedition/Suburban/Sequoia but not full size truck based. So the towing capacity wouldn't be there.

GS3Tek

iTrader: (8)

RC was needed b/c everybody *****ed (including me) that lexus offered no sports car.

The TX needs to come sooner. One thing about lexus is they really drag their feet.
Heck, I'm not running lexus so what do I know?

Bingo.
Not only that, GX460 became a 7 seater vs. 8 seater GX470.
I do love the new spindle grill on the 460 though