The FIRST LASTING THING WE BUILT WAS OUR PHILOSOPHY.

In 1983, Japanese cars were mostly known as small, simple and easy on gas. The thought of a Japanese car company building a luxury car was the last thing on anyone's mind. But when we started Lexus that year, it was the first and only thing on our minds.

In creating the LS 400 luxury sedan (pictured below), we had no blueprint to follow, no precedent to build upon, and very few believers -- but we did have an unshakable philosophy we called "The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection." This company-wide mission challenged us to treat our customers with an unprecedented amount of respect, and to understand their wants and needs better than any car company ever had.

So before we formed the first clay model for the LS 400, we found out exactly what our prospective customers were looking for in a luxury car by spending countless hours with them. We joined them on golf courses, accompanied them on shopping trips and went along while they examined luxury yachts. What we learned along the way was truly invaluable, and this insight became the foundation for building our first Lexus luxury vehicles.
With all of the thinking in place, we then assembled the best design team in the world and spent the next six long years in development, eventually logging more than one million test miles and building 400 prototypes to create the Lexus LS 400. We made our prospective dealers work hard, too, by judging them with the same stringent standards that we set for ourselves. Although 1,600 dealers initially applied, just 81 were deemed worthy to join us in 1989 to introduce the first Lexus LS.

All of this hard work paid off handsomely. Shortly after its debut in 1990, the Lexus LS 400 was named "The Best Imported Car Of The Year" by The Motoring Press and achieved the first of many number-one rankings in the J.D. Power and Associates Initial Quality StudySM [1].

In the end, we not only proved that a Japanese car company could build a world-class luxury sedan, but we believe that we raised the expectation of what a luxury vehicle should be.

Now, on the eve of our 15th anniversary, Lexus has been America's top-selling luxury automotive brand for four years running [2], and our "Passionate Pursuit of Perfection" is still inspiring us to look for ways to improve our company and build even better and more innovative vehicles -- as evidenced by our anticipated introduction in 2004 of the world's first luxury hybrid SUV.

We've introduced a lot of changes to the luxury-vehicle market over the years, but one thing that hasn't changed and never will is our focus: we're committed to putting the driver first, and offering a product experience and level of service that simply cannot be matched.

We're proud of all that we've achieved since our inception, and we can't wait to see what the next generation of Lexus vehicles will bring. If history tells us anything, it will be countless innovations, numerous awards and an abundance of satisfied customers.

 

hey i got that too. pretty interesting.

 

Yeah, US TOO!!!

 

How did you guys get on the e-mail list? I've got my e-mail listed in the Owner's Garage section of the Lexus site, I must have chosen to opt out of advertisements, and miss out on things like this, too. At least you guys posted it for the rest of us

 

I spent a month in Tokyo in 1970 and remember that the Japanese did make larger cars for the Japanese market back then, along with there having plenty of electronic gadgets in them. They just didn't export this stuff back then. Any other old-timers care to share their recollections on this?