Och

iTrader: (3)

Fixed

10char

Faymester

you need the badge of your car to tell other people how pristigious your car is? or more to the point: how much money you have?

shouldnt you have bought the car because you like it as opposed to because it shows how much disposible income you have?


that said: I think the names are cooler personally, but I don't think I want to tell people I drive a "Lexus Intellegent Sport" ... so unless I can have a better named car, I'll stick to calling it an IS

Och

iTrader: (3)

Well, like JC has said - "Nothing says a man has failed in life quite like the ES badge on the back of his Lexus. Besides maybe a Porsche Boxter".

UDel

Why would owning a Lexus ES mean "a man has failed in life". That is a pretty bold generalization. Most people in this country can't realistically even afford a brand new ES and it does not mean they are failures either. A ES is very nice and expensive luxury car especially when you compare it to what most people in this country can afford and and buy which are Corollas, Civic, 4 cylinder Accords, Camries, Altimas,Malibu's,Kias,Sonotas, RAV4s,CRVs,Mazda 3, 6, small trucks, etc. The amount of money a person spends on their car does not determine if they are a failure or not. There are many rich successful people who don't spend over 30K on their cars because they don't feel the need for a luxury car or status symbol and are fine with Camries and Accords. Someone may choose a less expensive car because they are putting kids through college, pay for vacations, get screwed over by the IRS, doctors bills, etc. The ES has plenty of merits on its own and reason why many may choose it over a more expensive Lexus like more room then the GS,IS and better gas mileage then other more expensive models, or having the safety of fwd for wet/winter driving compared to more expensive rwd models. When most people see a guy who bought a brand new 35K plus luxury car like a ES the first thing that comes to mind is they are probrably doing pretty well not that he has failed in life because he did not get some more expensive 50K+ Lexus.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Come on man, have a little sense of humor!

LexFather

I don't buy all this "who cares about badge" holyness. If that was the case car makers wouldn't have a marketing department and all owners would take their badges off their cars.

The fact is a mix of alpha-bits sounds luxurious to people, no matter how crazy or non-related the name is. I am not a fan of IS, and it comes after GS so it just technically doesn't make sense. It should be
ES, GS, IS, LS but its ES, IS, GS, LS

then you have RX, GX, LX, which makes no sense either...it should be
GX, LX then RX....all things being equal

Now that I think of it Mazda had, 323, 626, 929, RX-7, MX-5 for sometime.

One last point

Since many cars today are exported worldwide, it makes it easier to call and advertise your car a letter/number since its universal unless you name your car 666. There have been cases where a car company has named a car one thing in one country and it means another thing in another country. This can cause a car to be laughed at or sit and rust on dealer lots.

In essence, I agree with Iceman though and wish Caddy/Acura/Lincoln would keep their names and the others try to make better sense of their names.

RXGS

iTrader: (2)

honestly, i think people who don'tknow cars just look at two things, the badge, and the size. Why else would there be a reason for suv's like the escalade. thats why most , when they see an s class, a 7 series, or the ls and lx, they know its expensive because it's huge. Cars like c230, or a bmw 323 are basiclly the dirt of a brand and people think that because they are small, at least those who don't know cars, this is what i have experienced but it may not be the same where luxury cars are every where

GS3Tek

iTrader: (8)

Without the 1 series, I remember correlating:
3 series: $30k
5 series: $50k
7 series: $70. Of course that's the absolute case.

Regarding bmw, shouldn't they name the X6 as X4? It's bigger than the X3, smaller than the X5.

It's basically:

SMALL
MEDIUM
LARGE

I agree with sickchicken on the lexus naming
Too bad they didn't carry over aristo, celsior, harrier....

LexFather

lol at sickchicken

The funny thing is I've debadged my GS 400 (it was funny to get tickets) and my black GS 430 has black pearl emblems and now an L-tuned grill on the front.

I KNOW what I drive, no need to advertise. THough I was all about the gold emblems in the 1990s.

Has anyone ever really looked at a Ferrari? Must be 30 emblems all over the car in bright yellow, non worse than the 2 giant ones on the front fenders.

I also hate the cheap "Acura" stamped on the TL bumber and "F430" stamped on the side view mirrors. That is trying to hard.

Don't get me started on these 4x8 giant emblems that started with SUVS and now plauge cars.

Do you know the rear Lexus circle badge on the IS is bigger than on an LS? lol!!!

markesc

iTrader: (2)

Maybe we should just all put our fico scores, dti ratio, and marital status on our vehicles? That will be fun, and reality the way our gov't is going.

My fave custom plate is: "Paid For" <---- since that's about 1% of anyone with anything anymore.

People that drive simple cars just label other people with nice cars as being "probably in tons of debt" anyways...I'm not even sure if nice cars get you respect, I think they get you more negativity from others if anything.

This is the very reason why I bought a wrx with a garbage interior. I'm sick of all the presumptions that come with owning any Lexus of any year. Maybe those toyota soarer emblems would have been cheaper in retrospect!

Maybe I don't want the constant pressure of maintaining the image of a clean 'perfect' lexus, isn't the pursuit of perfection pretty dumb if you think about it? The pursuit of the unattainable???

PhilipMSPT

iTrader: (5)

Maybe it's just an optical illusion...



I think the good thing about abbreviations and numbers is that it simplifies the heirarchy of class.

For example, I think it's easier to describe to people that the heirarchy of Cadillac sedans is CTS -> DTS -> STS, instead of saying Catera -> Deville -> Seville. Although the heritage of the name has gone, it does help define the hierarchy with better ease with only a single letter difference.

Faymester

yea my IS is debadged too ... i love how people just look at it and go "what ... is it?"

caller: "i'd like to report a car, driving agressively"
police: "what kind of car is it?"
c: well, it's [insert color], has four doors ...
p: make and model?
c: i don't know ...


that's funny about the circle badge ... for a while i wanted to get the word Lexus and put it in the middle of the trunk (a la lambo), but they all seem to be too small, and the SUV badges aren't any bigger!