Well here’s a surprise, large corporations owning car makers are now thinking of moving production to, instead of away from, the United States of America.
In this case it’s a brand that’s very important to the American market, namely Toyota’s luxury division, Lexus. They’re thinking about the ES sedan to make the shift.
Obviously, there are some reasons behind this thinking, none of which really have a lot to do with the build quality levels of the American workers or anything like that.
The first, most obvious reason behind Lexus’ decision is the current economic climate. Due to some, frankly quite boring financial reasons, the Japanese Yen is out of control these days.
Therefore, any car maker producing cars in Japan is going to take a serious hit to the profits when they export the cars to other markets.
Moving on from this reason, Lexus is obviously still suffering with US sales after the PR disaster that swept Toyota last year.
Having dealers which can sell to people saying the car was built in America certainly sounds appealing to the people interested in buying a new luxury car.
Both these reasons are actually quite sensible but aren’t really the ones that Lexus want to own up to them.
According to Tim Morrison, the company’s vice president of sales and dealer development the idea is part of a trend to consolidate operations on a global level.
For the rest of us who don’t really speak marketing, that’s them basically saying that Lexus want to make more people around the world aware of their cars.
