2013 Lexus GS 350
So Lexus wants to be taken seriously now. Certainly the brand is a heavyweight – and has been since the moment it launched 22 years ago, changing the luxury market almost overnight. It’s just had trouble garnering the respect of the cognoscenti, the car enthusiast types, the sorts of people who can see a pair of taillights flash by and identify year, make and model.
Lexus representatives are not shy about the issue, in part because it’s hard to ignore years of critics calling your cars bland and soulless, while smirking, self-avowed “car guys” trade their BMWsedans in on new BMW sedans, even as they grumble about electronic nannies, iDrive and Chris Bangle.
That’s why Lexus built the LFA supercar, say the company’s flacks, who seem unnaturally willing to admit that previous models were lacking a certain something, having settled upon the word “emotion” as the politically correct way to describe what was wrong with this last generation of Lexus products. But the real reason behind such refreshing, if specious hindsight, is that the Lexus braintrust thinks it has the solution to winning over its detractors in the 2013 Lexus GS 350.
