Lexus, Infiniti and Acura

Toyota, Nissan and Honda all tried to position their cars further upmarket by creating a luxury sub brand to capture more customers who were looking for luxury when typical Japanese cars were not luxurious enough. However, the original reason for the creation of Lexus, Infiniti and Acura was to sell more cars to the US when the import quotas limited the volume of cars that could be imported into the US. By creating a second brand Toyota, Nissan and Acura were able to sell more cars to US. This worked well and Toyota, Nissan and Honda had to try to create something a little different from the run of the mill Japanese car.
Toyota was the first to do this with Lexus and they did a good job of improving the sound insulation, tuned the suspension to suit US driver's tastes and improving the quality of the materials used. Honda and Nissan followed up and did the same. The strange thing is that in Japan itself the local Japanese would not accept these luxury sub brands as they were just viewed as expensive Japanese made cars.

After so many years of producing these so called luxury models, it appears that Lexus and Infiniti are not different from the regular Japanese models. Lexus now have the RC-F and the F series high performance engines that are not available in any of the regular Toyota models. Nissan too have new high performance engines such as those found in the Q50 and new Q60 which are not found in regular Nissans. Having such models will allow Lexus and Infiniti to create some visible difference between itself and its mother brand. Honda on the other hand uses Acura more for the US market but the models are still very much the same as the regular Hondas sold in Japan with some minor cosmetic tweaks.

The Lexus RC-F and the IS-F models were definitely a breath of fresh air for Lexus seeing that their model line up was quite boring to say the least. They have been trying to benchmark themselves with BMW and trying to attract more younger buyers when Lexus has been often labelled an old man's brand. Infiniti also injected some excitement with their Q50 and Q60 models with powerful turbo engines. Both car makers trying to emulate German car makers with a front engine rear drive layout. The general acceptance of both Lexus and Infiniti outside US is growing and slowly they are chipping away at the luxury car market that is dominated by BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Porsche.