A large swath of American drivers today have always known Lexus as an established power player. But when Lexus unveiled its first car, the LS, at the Detroit auto show in January 1989, America had a lot to learn about Toyota’s upstart luxury brand.
Toyota’s idea? To build cars as luxurious and gratifying as the Germans while delivering what those cars didn’t: commuter-car reliability. That brief generated the 1990 LS 400 sedan, which was launched alongside a business plan to undercut the traditional brands’ prices while giving customers a highly attentive dealership experience. It worked. The cars and eventual SUVs lived up to the hype, and
