INFINITI AND LEXUS AT 25

摘要

In the late 1980s, the luxury-car market received its greatest shock since the worldwide energy crisis more than a decade earlier when the cash-rich Japanese auto industry decided to make a serious run at the comfortably profitable luxury segment. The multibillion-yen effort would create new brands and fresh products that allowed the Japanese to finally ascend to the upper end of the market. Ironically, the seeds for their plans had been sown with the Japanese government's voluntary restraints on car exports, a 1981 agreement that was supposed to ease the pressure on the U.S. domestic auto industry. With the total volume of exports capped, however, the Japanese carmakers suddenly faced incentives to maximize profits by switching from exports of low-margin cheap cars to more expensive ones. First out of the gate was Honda, with its near-luxury Acura nameplate, in 1986. By then, a research team of Toyota engineers from Japan was already in California, laying the groundwork for the eventual introduction of the Lexus brand. Meanwhile, Nissan was also on the move, having formed a secret task force in 1985 with the goal of creating a luxury brand, Infiniti, designed to take on all comers. Both Lexus and Infiniti made their world debuts at the 1989 Detroit auto show.