Merc1
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DETROIT - Admitting the industry and economic downturn has taken a hard toll on luxury-car sales and possibly altered, at least for a while, customers' thinking about their "wants" versus their needs, the sales boss for Toyota Motor Sales USA's Lexus luxury division says the worst may have passed.
Mark Templin, Lexus group vice president and general manager, says luxury has been beaten down - maybe even disproportionately in relation to the battered overall auto market - but he believes customers will come back to luxury cars, despite enduring a once-in-a-generation recession.
"We all have short memories," Templin says of the suggestion the collective economic experience of the past year may forever dampen enthusiasm for luxury vehicles. "I'm more optimistic than most."
Templin says Lexus customers aren't the typical luxury-car buyers, their gravitation to the less-established Lexus brand one indication they don't necessarily need to send the signals of status transmitted by the market's more time-honored European brands. So he doesn't think they will be as affected by the supposed future consumer disdain of conspicuous consumption. And he doesn't think younger buyers will long abandon their aspirations, either.
"I still think people will want to own good quality," he told AutoObserver at media event here for Lexus' new IS C convertible and 2010 Lexus HS 250h hybrid-electric sedan. Lexus is forecasting to sell about 12,000 IS convertible models and about 25,000 HS 250h hybrids a year.
Full Article: Edmunds Auto Observer - Lexus Says Luxury Car Sales May be Coming in from the Cold
Interesting. He seems to admit that trying to sell performance hybrids could be a mistake. He is wrong about the GS being at the end of its cycle. It came out for 2006, it has at least 2-3 more years to go so if they're giving up on it now it is going to get crushed for real byt the new E and 5-Series. Not that they don't already crush the GS in sales now.
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