Ahoy: Lexus Now Focusing on Premium Boat Business

Matt Posky
by Matt Posky
ahoy lexus now focusing on premium boat business

Lexus sales slipped in the United States over the last two years. While overall deliveries remain relatively strong, the Japanese luxury brand saw its annual volume surpassed by Mercedes-Benz in 2013. BMW followed suit in 2017 and the gap only looks to be widening this year. So, what does a high-end nameplate do to lure back customers?

The answer is an obvious one: it starts building boats. It might shock you to learn this, but boats have actually been around since prehistoric times and physical examples have been discovered that are at least 10,000 years old. Meanwhile, most cars aren’t even 100 years old. Basic math proves boats to be the more sustainable product and a sounder investment. Cars had a good run, but autonomous vehicles and ride-sharing services are about to convert driving into a passive and homogeneous experience in a totally hypothetical and undetermined amount of time. Boats will be where it’s at very soon and every automaker will eventually become a sloop manufacturer.

Alright, I’ll stop being a prick (for now). What Lexus is really attempting to do is gussy up its image, endearing itself to the growing legions of super-rich people by providing contemporary yachts — something Mercedes-Benz has done in the past.

The fancy boat market is minuscule and the profit margin isn’t nearly large enough to trump car building at any meaningful volume. Lexus, no doubt, already knows this. But the automaker saw an opportunity to remake itself as a premium lifestyle brand by designing the Lexus Sport Yacht concept — honored by Japan’s “Boat of the Year” committee at the country’s International Boat Show in Yokohama last week.

Now, it has expressed its intent to build a bigger version of the watercraft and put it on sale by 2019. “Based on our amazing experiences in engineering, building, testing and showing the Lexus Sport Yacht concept last year, we’ve decided to take the next bold step of producing an all-new larger yacht that builds on the advanced nature of the concept while adding more comfort and living space,” said Shigeki Tomoyama, executive vice president of Toyota, in a statement. “We plan to start sales in the U.S. in the latter half of 2019, with sales in Japan following in the spring of 2020.”

Planned as a larger 65-foot sport fly-bridge cruiser, the new yacht will have luxury staterooms below deck and entertaining space for up to 15 guests. The boat will also make use of Toyota’s new Mobility Services Platform to provide internet connectivity, security, smart phone integration, and diagnostics.

While we’d like to see Lexus continue its focus on making sport utility vehicles customers can’t say no to (and amping up the performance of some of its sportier models) — without sacrificing that legendary dependability — the boat impulse isn’t a terrible one. Toyota already has marine division and luxury brands seem to sell better the more they distance themselves from the mainstream. As mainstream cars grow in quality, luxury brands have been forced to place a serious emphasis on cutting-edge tech or adding desirability through careful branding.

“Improving the quality of the cars themselves is important, but we also need to present car owners with a dream-like vision of the luxury lifestyle,” Tomoyama explained. “A yacht is a very effective part of that.”

We’re wondering if it will pay off in the long run. Plenty of Lexus shoppers won’t care if the brand is attached to seafaring luxury or not. But if the automaker can tap into more enviable lifestyle accoutrements, there’s a chance people will begin associating the brand with wealth. That could help move everything from the $36,000 NX crossover to the $92,000 LC coupe.

[Images: Toyota Motor Corp.]

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  • Dukeisduke In an ideal world, cars would be inspected in the way the MoT in the UK does it, or the TÜV in Germany. But realistically, a lot of people can't afford to keep their cars to such a high standard since they need them for work, and widespread public transit isn't a thing here.I would like the inspections to stick around (I've lived in Texas all my life, and annual inspections have always been a thing), but there's so much cheating going on (and more and more people don't bother to get their cars inspected or registration renewed), so without rigorous enforcement (which is basically a cop noticing your windshield sticker is out of date, or pulling you over for an equipment violation), there's no real point anymore.
  • Zipper69 Arriving in Florida from Europe and finding ZERO inspection procedures I envisioned roads crawling with wrecks held together with baling wire, duct tape and prayer.Such proved NOT to be the case, plenty of 20-30 year old cars and trucks around but clearly "unsafe at any speed" vehicles are few and far between.Could this be because the median age here is 95, so a lot of low mileage vehicles keep entering the market as the owners expire?
  • Zipper69 At the heart of GM’s resistance to improving the safety of its fuel systems was a cost benefit analysis done by Edward Ivey which concluded that it was not cost effective for GM to spend more than $2.20 per vehicle to prevent a fire death. When deposed about his cost benefit analysis, Mr. Ivey was asked whether he could identify a more hazardous location for the fuel tank on a GM pickup than outside the frame. Mr. Ivey responded, “Well yes…You could put in on the front bumper.”
  • 28-Cars-Later I'll offer this, offer a registration for limited use and exempt it from all inspection. The Commonwealth of GFY for the most part is Dante's Inferno for the auto enthusiast however they oddly will allow an antique registration with limited use and complete exemption from their administrative stupidity but it must be 25 years old (which ironically are the cars which probably should be inspected). Given the dystopia being built around us, it should be fairly simply to set a mileage limitation and enforce a mileage check then bin the rest of it if one agrees to the terms of the registration. For the most part odometer data started being stored in the ECU after OBDII, so it should be plug and play to do such a thing - this is literally what they are doing now for their emissions chicanery.
  • Probert For around $15 you can have a professional check important safety areas - seems like a bargain. It pointed to a rear brake problem on my motorcycle. It has probably saved a lot of lives. But, like going to a dentist, no-one could say it is something they look forward to. (Well maybe a few - it takes all kinds...)
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