One brand sits atop the J.D. Power Vehicle Dependability Study. Consumer Reports ranks this car second in its annual ranking, just a few points behind Subaru. The brand is also one of the few that many people drive over 250,000 miles.
Lexus is Toyota’s luxury brand. It launched in the United States in 1989, at about the same time Honda launched its luxury brand Acura and Nissan brought the Infiniti brand to market. Each of these companies wants a piece of the high-end and very profitable U.S. market. At that time, the U.S. was the largest car market in the world.
Each Japanese brand had to take market share from two groups of luxury vehicles. The first was those made by U.S. car companies. There were GM’s Cadillac and Ford’s Lincoln, both in the market for decades. The other brands were Germany’s Mercedes and BMW. Each entered the U.S. market during the mid-1970s.
Over time, the market share of Cadillac and Lincoln dropped sharply. Meanwhile, Acura and Infiniti never gained ground. That left Lexus near the top of the market-share ladder, alongside BMW and Mercedes. Tesla is also considered a contender, based on the demographics of its buyers and the high sticker price of its cars.
BMW sold 371,000 vehicles in the U.S. last year, followed by Lexus at 346,000 and Mercedes at 325,000.
Lexus, Mercedes, and BMW have one thing in common. That is, each has a large number of models across sedans, sports cars, crossovers, SUVs, hybrids, and electric vehicles (EVs). The other luxury car brands do not have a broad range of models. That may be because these brands are failures. Or, the lack of models may have kept buyers away.
Lexus also offers models across a broad price range, as do Mercedes and BMW. The entry-level Lexus is the IS sedan with a base price of $41,830. At the high end of the range, the huge LX 700h has a base price of $116,685.
Lexus has sat at the top of most auto quality rankings for years, along with Toyota. If that does not change, neither will its large luxury vehicle market share.
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