Target breached?
Parable of GM, Toyota and Ford - Motoring
Written by Full Tank / Al S. Mendoza (andysevilla@yahoo.com)
Thursday, 16 April 2009 17:33

SITTING pretty?

That’s what I was told.

Even months before Lexus Manila boisterously and glamorously opened its doors to a segment of society that is nothing but classy, ritzy and utterly wealthy (do you know that Lani Misalucha was transported from Las Vegas to Manila to sing in the Lexus launch reportedly at a hefty sum of no less than a million bucks?), the sales target for the year of Toyota’s answer to luxury riding had already been clinched.

We have just practically hurdled the first quarter (a.k.a. first three months of 2009) and, naturally, the balance sheets had been scrutinized, scanned repeatedly to validate what the figures said.

Two hundred fifty had been supposedly the year-end sales projection of Lexus nationwide.

But if grapevine visionaries are to be believed, that target had been hit and been comfortably breached even.

In short, what Lexus is now enjoying stupendously is merely gravy.

And who am I to question?

“Look,” said one wag from Davao City. “Lexus is absolutely for the rich and famous. It is expensive only to the not-so-rich, but to the so-called filthy rich, it is merely chicken feed.”

Elaborate, please?

“Well, how much would one yacht in this country cost?” he said. “Twenty million bucks might not even be enough. But the most expensive Lexus, the RX570, doesn’t even cost more than P8 million! And how many yachts do you see parked right this minute at the Manila Yacht Club, eh?”

I get the drift. If one can own a P20-million yacht, what more with an P8-million Lexus?

And there aren’t only 20 in this country who could afford a P20-million yacht.

“One guy I know had ordered four Lexus models even before Lexus Manila opened,” the guy continued.

Is he surnamed Pacquiao?

“Nah,” he said. “But he’s got millions, too, like Pacquiao.”

Some days back, Ray Butch “Elvis” Gamboa, the Motoring Today pioneer, cornered Danny “Sir John” Isla and fired this question point-blank: “Is it true you have hit your 2009 target of 250 units sold, Sir John?”

I eagerly awaited for Sir John’s reply.

“Well, whoever told you that must be a keen student of the goings-on in the automotive business,” said Isla, the soft-spoken, exceedingly modest president of Lexus Manila. “But if we did, I’d be the happiest man on Planet Earth today.”

The reply was, of course, neither here nor there.

Or was Sir John merely echoing Toyota’s benchmark motto? “We don’t intend to be the best, we only want to be better than the rest.”

But be that as it may, it is almost an open secret that, yes, sales had been going on briskly ever since Lexus Manila unveiled its five variants—no, make that six now—on January 9 at the Global City in Taguig that even Lexus chairman Alfred Ty is often seen smiling from ear to ear these days.

This, despite assessing P50,000 to pre-Lexus Manila owners of Lexus as membership fee to Lexus Manila. For buyers of Lexus from the gray market areas after Lexus Manila’s opening on January 14, it’s P500,000 as a one-time membership fee—and P50,000 more for every service visit rendered at Lexus Manila.

Fair enough.

As the saying goes, “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”