5 Cool Facts About Lexus and How It Came to Be

Lesser Known Facts

By now, most automotive fans are well aware of how Lexus originated as the luxury arm of Toyota. The LS launched as its very first product to much fanfare as a more affordable and reliable alternative to its European counterparts, and the rest - as they say - is history. However, there are some other cool, lesser-known facts that accompany that monumental time in the automotive era as well. 

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1. American Roots

Interestingly, the idea behind Lexus was born not necessarily from Toyota's home country of Japan, but rather, a trip that Chairman Dr. Eiji Toyoda took to the West Coast of the U.S. in Laguna Beach, California. It was way back in 1983 that Toyoda gathered up his best engineers and designers there with the intention of creating the greatest luxury vehicle to date, and just two years later, that mission was well underway. 

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2. Costly Creation

However, it would be four years before the first fruit of those efforts - the LS 400 - even saw the light of day - at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Michigan, way back in January 1989. Toyota reportedly spent a whopping $1 billion creating its new luxurious flagship, which - oddly enough - didn't go on sale in Japan until 2005. 

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3. Meticulous Engineering

That significant cost and development time can be attributed to the fact that Toyota was rather meticulous in its mission to make the ultimate luxury vehicle, of course. In fact, Lexus employed a whopping 24 engineering teams on the LS 400 project - consisting of 1,400 engineers - along with 60 designers and 2,300 technicians to bring it to life. 

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4. Thorough Testing

That massive team tested a whopping 450 prototypes over the course of those several years to ensure that they got every little detail right, and that process brought forth a ton of innovation as well - including a new automated welding process, painting completed by masters of their craft, and even the use of fake fingernails of different types to make sure that every button and switch operated perfectly, regardless of what one's hands look like. 

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5. What's In a Name?

As for the origin of the Lexus name itself, Toyota leaned on its advertising partner Saatchi & Saatchi and its internal group Team One to come up with something that would convey a sense of luxury. That team also partnered with the image consultants at Lippincott & Margulies and ultimately came up with 200 possibilities - though Lexus wasn't among them. Instead, that name stemmed from the character "Alexis" from the TV Show Dynasty, from which Toyota derived the new name for its luxury division. 

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