Lexus Follows The Crowd

Brian E : October 31st, 2007 at 12:14 pm "NICKNICK: isn’t that called the WRX?" (d'oh!) Yes it is. I'll stop whining now.

Johnster said: "Or way back when Infiniti offered the FWD 4-cylinder G20. The first G20s were decent, but they didn’t sell well." Hey! I used to own a G20. I know, I know, they were small, underpowered, faux-luxury mobiles...and people had a reason to question their existence. The thing is - I live in a city, and my daily commute is not optimized for a) open road driving nor b) gas mileage. So at the time, I was looking for a smallish sedan with nice options and best of all - an efficient engine. The G20 came standard with leather, sunroof, 4 airbags, auto-climate control, blah, blah, blah. I got 27 or so MPG (in town) with that thing - it was a nice little car for those who could appreciate it. The problem with the second-gen G20 was that the venerable SR20 engine still only made 145hp, which was woefully underpowered for a 3000lb "sports" sedan. Take it from me, I'm apparently one of very few adult male Americans that thought that the G20 was "fast" enough - although the handling was impeccable, the acceleration was quite slow (9.5 sec 0-60 if I recall correctly) for most people's taste. Also, thousands of ignorant folks just assumed that since it was similar in size that the G20 = Sentra. It actually was just a rebadged Nissan Primera, a well thought-of sedan in Japan and Europe. Nissan would have been better off bringing it to the US as a Nissan model and pricing it for around $10k cheaper without all the faux-luxury leanings. But that would have crowded out the Altima and Sentra - and they wanted Infiniti to have a A4 and C-class fighter. Obviously Infiniti decided to back out of the compact sedan market and got it right with the G35. I still think an improved engine offering in the G20 (G25 anyone?) would have made it a competent offering. People who haven't driven them write them off as wannabe "luxury" Sentras - but they had some nice qualities about them. They were also bulletproof with reliability. The thing is, I'm also one of very few Americans that likes the idea of a compact-luxury niche. I loved the first-gen IS300 as well. Unfortunately, most Americans equate luxury with 1) excessive power and 2) vehicle size. So a 4-cylinder "luxury" car is somewhat of a joke to most people. Audi and Mercedes Benz have done it for years (note their ubiquity today for folks wanting a status symbol) but I guess they have a brand cachet about them that Infiniti either doesn't have, or at least didn't have at the time. That said, if a Lexus compact looks anything like the Corolla, I don't think it'll go over too well. There's nothing luxurious or sporty about the proportions of that jelly-bean.

Has Lexus announced if the car will hit the US market? Honda only sells the Acura EL (previous gen) and now, the CSX in Canada, while Toyota only sells the 5-door Yaris in Canada as well. It may very well be a "It's not for you!" product wrt the US market.

Lexus (Toyota) has a great opportunity to repair its reputation among sporting drivers. I hope they can deliver something comparable to what the company offered in its I-6 RWD glory days. If they engineer it to the kudos of European drivers, who have deadpanned the brand so far, I think they will have an overall winner on their hands. RWD or FWD drive.