LA 2009: 2011 Toyota Sienna could wear a Lexus badge

[Mr. Mercedes]

Not sure what distant galaxy you reside in now, but where do you see a Lexus minivan? .... this IS a Toyota..and is badged a Toyota.




What re-badging bullshit are you referring to? You mean how Lexus products share a lot with their Toyota counterparts? ... no different to VW and Audi.




Having lived in Australia between 1990 and 2008..and now past year and half in USA, I think you're letting your negative bias towards Toyota get the better of you. Toyota is the strongest brand over there, and they're having no problems selling those same re-badged bullshit Lexus vehicles that they sell in America. ....and VW and Audi aren't facing any problems either. No loss of credibility whatsoever.

Sorry Beemer. It was my mistake for just reading the headline and not reading the entire article as mentir pointed out.

Toyota is no doubt a very strong brand, and their sales performance ahead of Holden and Ford is admirable. I have no beef with that.

What does bother me is the relatively shallow brand differentiation that takes place with certain Lexus and Toyota models. The similarities are blatant. The HS250 could easily wear a Toyota badge. In fact I believe it was originally concieved as a Toyota. And the Lexus 4WD/SUV range seems to be a fleet of Toyota's with fancier grills. At least the RX and Kluger are quite different in this respect.

I have no problem with Toyota as a brand. But this poor brand differentiation, though some would argue it ingeniously astute, bothers me. For example, what happened with the unique L-finess design idiom? This was supposed to be reserved for Lexus. But here we have a Toyota MPV wearing an similar extremely akin to the one in the RX.

I disagree with the suggestions that Audi's and VW's brand differentiation is as shallow. Perhaps I am bias and I have trouble seeing past my affection for German Cars, wut while I see clear evidence of part sharing etc. I believe considerably more effort is put into ensuring the product offerings, design DNA etc. are largely unique.

 

[Floydian]

I disagree with the suggestions that Audi's and VW's brand differentiation is as shallow. Perhaps I am bias and I have trouble seeing past my affection for German Cars, wut while I see clear evidence of part sharing etc. I believe considerably more effort is put into ensuring the product offerings, design DNA etc. are largely unique.

I totally agree to this point.

VW, Audi, SEAT, and Skoda might share parts engines etc. but their design DNA are different. It can easily be argued that Audi is for customers expecting luxury/premium, SEAT for customers expecting sportiness, Skoda for customers who are expecting cheapness but still a good reliability.

As for Toyota and Lexus, Lexus was/is for the luxury/premium market. BUT now the line between a Toyota and a Lexus is increasingly blurred. Luxury Toyotas can easily be confused as Lexus if they didnt have the badge. Or some Lexus'es as Toyota. On the other hand, this won't happen in VW group cars, at least today. A VW Phaeton would never be mistaken for an Audi A8 or an Audi A3 for a SEAT Leon.

In the VW group the designs are very distinctive from another (Design differences between VW, Audi, SEAT, and Skoda). This is not the point for Toyota and Lexus unfortunately.