AutomoBear.com - What the 2006 Lexus IS is, and isn't

March 7^th, 2005

What the 2006 Lexus IS is, and isn't

The beginnings of a more focused, homogeneous, unique approach

Lexus’ 2006 IS – launched in Geneva last week as a sign of intent to BMW’s E90 3 series

Lexus GS 2006

Comparing the recently-launched 2006 Lexus GS midsize-luxury car to the 2006 IS entry-level sports sedan hints at Lexus' strategy.

The IS is the second car to feature the L-Finesse design language, and both cars are clearly cut from the same cloth, but the GS is more geometric; more conser-vative (in a way that midsize luxury buyers have been known to appreciate).

It is, interestingly enough, the reverse of BMW's strategy (the 2006 E90 3er being widely acknowledged as more conser-vative than the 2004 E60 5er).

Then again, the 3er sports sedan, in whose segment the IS plays, is BMW's icon; its Heartland car in terms of both sales and image. Lexus started in 1989 with a luxury car (the LS400)

We find the IS' hood particularly interesting: a clamshell affair that curbs at the grille and does not quite extend from the headlamps where you might expect. Beyond the hood, the flanks bulge outwardly, lending the car a muscular stance that, viewed from dead-on front, is attractively assertive. To reign this in, the grille's furthermost lines are canted inward from the headlamps, and the grille itself features vertical slats.

Think of the 'fattening' effect, on a person, of wearing a horizontally-striped T-shirt. Here, the vertical slats do exactly the opposite, even as the body itself extends horizontally. The contrast is a pleasing one; indeed, Lexus is finding the sophistication inherent in subtly-contrasting design

We find it intriguing that Lexus has taken its former weakness - flanks too bland to fit the rest of the car - and turned it into a feature (i.e: the flanks are now designed to be slab-sided)

Lexus GS 2006

Note the more coiled rear stance of the IS, with respect to the GS.

"The upward slant of the lower rear corner of the back door is a welcome change from the straight-bottomed Hofmeister kink pioneered by BMW and so frequently copied by other carmakers," suggests Joaquin Ruhi, Jr., Editor of My.IS. We agree

The weakness of the surfacing on the vertical panels, however, makes the rear end the weakest part of the design.

The relatively slim tail-lights and large bumper make for large expanses of metal – metal which has not been given the same intricate treatment as, say, the hood (or, indeed, the trunk, with its smoothly curvaceous integration with the C-pillar and flanks)

The intriguing lower valence panel, which houses the two tail-pipes, indicates what could have been

Inside, we see more signs of a Lexus moving to diverge itself from the competitors in this category, rather than benchmark them.

While BMW’s E90 3 series has moved toward a simplicity that pays homage to the spartanly Germanic cockpits of its iconic predecessors, Lexus' IS is lavish, yet sporty.

Things are less characterful in here than is the competition - less identifiable - but this may well come with time. Note, for instance, the inverted L-shapes in the door panels

The chronographs are gone. This car has matured.

The IS has lost a little of its focus in this transition to the second-generation, but it no longer attempts to emulate the focus of someone else's icon, either

Leonardo Fioravanti - behind the L-Finesse design strategy...

... including the 2006 LF-A Concept, shown in Detroit this past January.

We commend Lexus for signs of a renewed focus on aerodynamics (once its core value).

Having called on the brand for just this focus, we also note with some satisfaction that the LF-A Concept, which perhaps best exemplifies Lexus’ resurgent attention to aerodynamics, was preview-ed in Europe to great acclaim

The 2006 IS - and, in particular, the higher-powered IS350 variant - will debut for North America at the New York International Auto Show on March 23^rd

We firmly believe that this industry, in going forward, would do well to look back occasionally. This belief manifests itself in our continued focus on history and heritage, an attempt to place contemporary models in context. Lexus' comments in Geneva last week, made by Toyota Motor Corporation Design Head Wahei Hirai, were thus of particular interest to us:

"We will refocus Lexus design based on two factors that define both the future and history of the Lexus brand."

Those two factors (apparently, "the leading edge" and "the depth of finesse") lead us into a separate, yet related, area of regular interest on these pages: design.

By corollary, we also take avid interest in aerodynamics. Our September '04 Lexus article, 'Lexus: in the Lap of Latent Luxury,' called on Lexus to return to this realm, a key tenet of Chief Engineer Ichiro Suzuki when the first Lexus - the LS400 - was launched in 1989.

Vehicle dynamics is a common topic of discussion around here. In the performance luxury, sport sedan category best exemplified by BMW since the 2002 of 1968, the new, second-generation Lexus IS must certainly focus on this aspect.

Thus, on the eve of a lengthy piece on the 2006 BMW 3 series which we hope to produce later this week, and noting the substantial airplay that our last Lexus article enjoyed, an involved look at the new 3-box sports sedan Lexus traveled all the way to Geneva to launch seems appropriate.

Besides, to hear Lexus tell it, 2005 is a turning point. Its first diesel, the IS220d, is launching in Europe this year. In the same spirit of efficiency, if with different execution, two hybrids will be fielded under the Lexus brand – the RX400h crossover and the GS midsize-luxury sedan – both of which are due at the New York International Auto Show later this month.

This summer, Lexus finally moves to establish its label at home. 150 Lexus dealerships across Japan will represent Toyota’s upscale brand, which until now has seen no reason to affix its Circle-L badge to domestically-sold, higher-end Toyotas.

We chastised Lexus last September for being so scarred by the rise of the yen in the mid-90s that it lost its former potential in a sea of rebadged Toyotas. The LX450 sport-utility-vehicle was perhaps the nadir. Whereas once upon a time Ichiro Suzuki believed that Toyota’s design ability and tooling were not good enough for Lexus, the upscale division now only peripherally differentiates itself. That might be enough for the American market, which is used to expediently-created SUVs such as Cadillac’s Escalade and Infiniti’s QX56, but this is not a strategy of which anyone but a bean-counter would be proud.

The bean-counters must be starting to show concern, however. Lexus now sells more trucks than it does cars. Meanwhile, the doomsayers chant about how gas prices will never again see the $20-$30/ barrel days of just recently; GM discounts its SUVs heavily, and the question on every analyst's lips is just how much more pressure the American SUV buyer might need to trade downward.

At the same time, Lexus sales in Europe – although up – have never been anything to shout about. Indeed, 2004 saw Lexus move almost fifteen times as many vehicles in the U.S. as in Europe. Lexus' European volume was 3% of Mercedes-Benz’s. As Toyota makes more of an effort on the Continent, its upscale division needs a more identifiable focus if it wishes to become a more respected brand (an aspect which has regularly been of concern to well-heeled European shoppers).

Newer cars, and more of them, would help too.

So, in Detroit this past January, Lexus launched its first new car since September 2001: the midsize-luxury 2006 GS. It is Lexus' first production car to feature its new design language, briefly referencing the quad-lamp, outgoing GS in its front fascia yet employing both more tension and more cohesion than we have seen in a Lexus vehicle since the LS400. Moreover, the cohesion (which is perhaps what Lexus means when it refers to seamless anticipation) is not derived from blandness – but, rather, what could justifiably be called a more sophisticated simplicity.

This past week, at the 2005 Geneva International Motor Show, Lexus launched the second-generation IS, its entry-level, rear-wheel-drive, near-luxury sports sedan. 3.5 inches longer, and almost 3 inches wider than its predecessor (with the wheelbase taking up 2.3 inches of that extra length), this is the second car to feature Lexus’ new design language.

That design language, developed in the public eye with the showing of the 2003 LF-S and LF-X; 2004 LF-C, and 2005 LF-A Concepts over the past two years, is dubbed L-Finesse. The move makes Lexus the first Japanese company we can remember to give its design strategy a name - and it is part of a trend we expect to see more of in the future. AutoSpies Editor Donald Buffamanti suggested to us in Detroit that BMW’s Chris Bangle has made designers "rock stars" and, certainly, the continued discussion of design has raised the visibility (and, as The Detroit News recently reported, salaries) of automobile designers.

Yet the Bangle-inspired discussion has also centered on controversy. To understand just how vitriolic the commentary has become, note this tidbit received by our colleagues over at AutoSpies this past weekend: "whoever is responsible for the (2006 BMW 3 series’) cut-lines from the headlights to the top of the wheel-wells should taken behind the barn and hit with a shovel."

This creates an opportunity for Lexus. As we suggested in September, the key here - as for any company in any segment - is to develop an identity that diverges from the generic branch (in this case, the luxury market). Think of Mercedes-Benz and BMW, for instance, which are rarely cross-shopped against each other (and more rarely still in Europe).

GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said at last year’s Paris Auto Show that the exterior was the primary point of appeal – the bait. Lexus appears to understand this concept, suggesting recently that it strived for "traditional Japanese hospitality wherein the anticipation of an event is fundamental to its ultimate enjoyment." The anticipation, in this case, is the look of the car - the aura.

So, in striving to diverge from the segment and develop a more distinctive identity, it would behoove Lexus to develop a design language that is unique - yet, at the same time, perhaps one that is less challenging than BMW's. Has this brief been filled?

Lexus speaks of L-Finesse as being more contemporary, and more dynamic, than its design efforts in the past. Dynamism, for Lexus, comes from the visual contrast between two factors:

Simplicity (or, as Lexus qualifies it, Incisive Simplicity);
Elegance (Intriguing Elegance).

What is simplicity, in design? It might be details - such as headlamps - whose outlines are visible. It could be an assortment of cues that each have their place, with clearly defined beginning and endpoints. It may describe details whose forms are geometrically simple - constant-radii circles and equilateral triangles - and, of course, these might vary from the perfect form to varying degrees while still being simple.

The 2006 Lexus IS features all of these, in some measure - yet goes some way to play this simplicity against more complex, if nuanced, surfacing. We find the hood particularly interesting: a clamshell affair that curbs at the grille and does not quite extend from the headlamps where you might expect. Beyond the hood, the flanks bulge outwardly, lending the car a muscular stance that, viewed from dead-on front, is attractively assertive. To reign this in, the grille's furthermost lines are canted inward from the headlamps, and the grille itself features vertical slats. Think of the 'fattening' effect, on a person, of wearing a horizontally-striped T-shirt. Here, the vertical slats do exactly the opposite, even as the body itself extends horizontally. The contrast is a pleasing one; indeed, Lexus is finding the sophistication inherent in subtly-contrasting design.

Yet there is a more traditional form of dynamism in the new IS, too. Note the low positioning of the grille, relative to the headlights. This serves to make the grille a reference point – a static point – from which the body lines emanate and 'move' as light plays across them. The entry-level, ES300’s grille is positioned lower, too – but note that the cut-lines above an ES300’s headlights are blandly parallel to the headlights themselves. In the new IS, the headlights diverge from the surfacing of the hood. There is more sophistication here than Lexus has tried before.

For the first time ever on a Lexus, the surfacing is a talking point. Look at the base of the windshield, where the corners converge over the hood (an L-shape, perhaps?) This car plays, convexly and concavely, with light. Only the vertical surfaces – bumpers and flanks - recall the low-effort surfacing of the past. Indeed, flank design has been an Achilles Heel of Japanese design since time immemorial; as we once suggested, cut the front and rear fascias from a slew of Japanese mainstreamers, and it would be impossible to tell the carcasses apart from each other. It must be said, however, that things are better here than they were. We find it intriguing that Lexus has taken its former weakness – flanks too bland to fit the rest of the car – and turned it into a feature (i.e: the flanks are now designed to be slab-sided).

The weakness of the surfacing on the vertical panels, however, makes the rear end the weakest part of the design. The relatively slim tail-lights and large bumper make for large expanses of metal – metal which has not been given the same intricate treatment as, say, the hood (or, indeed, the trunk, with its smoothly curvaceous integration with the C-pillar and flanks). The intriguing lower valence panel, which houses the two tail-pipes, indicates what could have been.

That our greatest problems with the IS lie with its door mirrors speaks volumes for the progress Lexus has made. Yet those mirrors are, quite simply, atrociously cumbersome. Surely, both in the interests of aesthetics and of wind noise (which is traditionally - today, at least - greatest between the mirror and the side glass), it is worth putting the car back in the wind tunnel and correcting this! It is unclear with which combine harvester the obviously ill-fitting mirrors are shared, but such an afterthought does not belong on a luxury car – or any car that aspires toward inherent design at every point of its product development process.

In form, the new IS is less easily-comprehensible than the old car was, but still reasonably unchallenging to take in at a glance, and recall. Rather than toy with the form of the car, as BMW’s Chris Bangle is fond of doing, Lexus toys with the details, and plays subtly with the surfacing. We suspect that, for some, the pleasantly lucid form will be more appealing than a visual challenge – yet one might expect enthusiasts to enjoy analyzing the details, too, for there is a good deal more intricacy here than might first meet the eye (rear fascia apart).

Indeed, the Lexus enthusiast crowd can be pleased, for although the new IS seems less iconic than the old one, it is not pulling elements from someone else’s icon, either. All the while, it is still identifiable as an IS (even as the outgoing IS itself endured some brickbats, for being something of an E36 3 series copy in its proportions and surfacing). This is a first-generation IS detailed under a razor, one whose proportions have been stretched; surfacing judged under a magnifying glass, and form refined in a wind tunnel. It is the attention-to-detail that Lexus has always promised us – but, this time, with the product, rather than merely the organization.

Attention-to-detail across the board (i.e: homogeneous design) requires greater effort from the outset and, if the strategy is to create a relatively unchallenging vehicle, the process of homogeneous design is still an involved one. For instance, the L badge is a relatively simple element – yet note that the interior door handles resemble an inverted L in form. The front fascia is choc-a-bloc with L forms, both obvious (to ensure instant identity) and subtle (to keep the car fresh for a longer period). This concept of deliberate, yet nuanced, touches which are based on a desire to make a single, all-of-a-piece automobile - rather than a car-by-committee - is new territory for Lexus fans.

Where did this pleasantly surprising understanding of the nuanced world of branding come from? After all, the commercial success of the Japanese has regularly tempered by derision from some enthusiast corners, with (often valid) accusations of being derivative. The Japanese have certainly had a relatively uninspired approach to branding, preferring to derive their brands almost exclusively from today's customer desires rather than to try their luck on the market with a new approach befitting tomorrow. Indeed, Lexus itself started by sending a group of Toyota designers and engineers to California to watch (and photograph!) luxury car owners using their cars, as Jonathan Mahler chronicles at length in The Lexus Story (Melcher Media, 2004).

So, what gives? Why have we been able to write so many words on a Lexus design?

As noted earlier, L-Finesse is the first-ever label for a design language from a Japanese company. The name is also suggestive of the initials of one Leonardo Fioravanti, something that may well be a coincidence (as Lexus tells us), but for a little tidbit - a quote from Fioravanti himself - published in Automotive News Europe recently:

"Like any freelance designer, by contract I cannot comment on a specific project. But I cannot deny I’ve been working for the Toyota Motor group in recent years."
- ‘Lexus steers in a new direction,’ The New Zealand Herald, February 9^th, 2005

Lexus and Fioravanti are open about the fact that Fioravanti’s hand penned the LF-A Concept shown in Detroit, although the remaining extent of his involvement is difficult to ascertain. For certain is that the triangular and trapezoidal shapes of the details in the IS' front and rear fascias are a clear mark of Fioravanti.

Interestingly, when Fioravanti Design set up shop in 1987 as an architectural practice, its work was largely based in Tokyo. The company emphasizes that it views "awareness of the past" as critical to future innovation.

Milan-born, 67-year-old Fioravanti has been linked with Toyota since 1999. Design circles has suggested the connection before L-Finesse became a talking point, noting the resemblance between his 1998 F100 Concept and the 2002 Toyota Celica. Fioravanti, now the CEO of Fioravanti Design (http://www.fioravanti.it), was Pininfarina’s chief designer for 24 years before joining Ferrari. Like Chris Bangle, he spent time at Fiat Auto.

Besides the contrasts and parallels of L-Finesse with Bangle and flame-surfacing, there is a further comparison which intrigues us. It also concerns the 3-box, sport sedan class, and is another tale of intriguing connection between a Japanese manufacturer and an Italian design house.

U.S. readers will surely remember the Datsun 510, the car which put Datsun on the map in America. How many, however, might know from whence that car came? Author Jonathan Mantle provides the answer in his excellent, industry-politics-minded book, Car Wars:

"Mimicking the engine, suspension layout, and chassis of the German BMW 1600, with a body designed by the Italian firm Pininfarina, assembled by Japanese workers, the Datsun 510 (Bluebird in Japan) was multinational in engineering and design."
- Car Wars, Jonathan Mantle (Arcade, 1995)

Mantle adds, ominously, that "Datsun’s contract with Pininfarina demanded that Pininfarina keep silent about designing the body of the 510." Compare and contrast this with Fioravanti's quote!

This entertaining parallel, spanning almost forty years, aside, it is not the first time that Toyota has been linked with an Italian design house. The first-generation GS300, one of our favorite Lexi, was penned by Giorgetto Giugiaro’s ItalDesign.

Shifting gears to the mechanical side, the IS is based on the platform underpinning the Lexus GS (and Toyota’s Crown and Mark X). It enjoys a double-wishbone front suspension, teamed with a multi-link rear suspension for the upward-sloping roll axis typical of a rear-wheel-drive car. We are a touch disappointed in the change from the inline-6 engine to a V6 but – although we're not sure what prompted the switch – a 50/50 static weight distribution is thus retained.

Lexus touts a new electric steering system. Hood, and front and rear suspensions, are aluminum, Lexus apparently taking a leaf out of BMW’s book in using aluminum only to affect weight distribution, rather than as an all-out effort to drop absolute curb weight. A full 10 airbags are expected, standard, including first-in-segment double knee airbags. Further emphasis on safety continues with the radar-controlled Pre-Crash Safety (PCS) system; Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC), and Intelligent Adaptive Front Lighting (I-AFS).

Two variants of the IS will be available, globally: a 201hp @ 6,400rpm, 184lb-ft @ 3,800rpm IS250 with a direct-injection 2.5-liter V6, and an IS350 with a 3.5-liter direct-injection V6. Details on the IS350 are sketchy, ahead of a North American launch at the New York International Auto Show on March 23^rd, and a more in-depth technical analysis will follow on these pages when more is known. The IS250, which weighs 1485kg (70kg heavier than an '06 BMW 325i) manages 0-60mph in 8 seconds and attains a 137mph top speed.

For Europe, the 2006 IS220d features the first diesel engine ever installed in a Lexus: a common-rail, 177hp, 295lb-ft 2.2-liter four-cylinder. The gasoline engines will be available with six-speed manual or six-speed sequential gearboxes; the diesel, with a manual only, reflecting its European bent (and, perhaps, a realistic attitude at Lexus about where to invest its money).

Back when Chris Bangle’s 7 series was launched in 2001, he pleaded with the media to give the company time to launch follow-ups. The rest of the range, he suggested, would give the 7er more context. Bangle was right in that the resolutely uppity lines of the 7 series do make more sense when parked next to a 5er. Yet the most interesting aspect of Bangle’s design strategy to us is that it has generated considerable concern over what the next BMW will look like. In 2002, it was the Z4; in 2003, the 5 and 6 series; in 2004, the 1 series, and this year, the 3er.

Conversely, we doubt that too many were worried about what the IS might look like. Certainly, now that the similarity with the midsize GS has been affirmed, one can predict with relative certainty how the next-generation LS flagship might present itself.

In its design strategy, Lexus has placed itself squarely between Audi and BMW; neither as focused on the peripheral as Audi, nor as willing as BMW to branch its design language to suit the bookends of different model sizes and types. We called Audi’s 2005 A6 an Oldsmobimmer last year (see article) for its peripherally large grille, and it was as much a comment on the media as on Audi; the focus on these grilles is disingenuous, given that little else about Audi’s design language has changed to match. Audi has gone from Aerodynamic to Bauhaus to Emotive in the space of two decades; meanwhile, Lexus has put at least as much thought into how its own brand fits in the more overt design trend of late.

This new IS is readily understandable, like previous Lexi – but it does reward second, third, and fourth glances. Lexus enthusiasts across the Internet (particularly on the excellent My.IS community, active since 1999 and formerly IS300.net) appear to be reveling in this. Intensively studying this Lexus is more rewarding than has previously been the case.

To answer the question we posed in the title, then, the new GS and IS offer more visual intricacy than any Lexi of the past. They are more unique, with respect to their competitors. They are not entirely in-house designs, but they may engender a better in-house understanding of design. In this regard, Lexus is on the road to developing better cars - more focused cars... cars that are the sign of one person's near-maniacal devotion (as the LS400 was of Ichiro Suzuki's), rather than merely fitting a particular market by benchmarking the leader. This is not quite the all-out focus on aerodynamics that we had hoped for, but it is certainly a start; a beginning toward a more focused, homogeneous, unique approach.

Lexus wants to double IS sales in Europe, in 2005, to 15,000 from 7,200 last year; the 2006 IS might do that, but it is not a car that will worry the 3er in its home market just yet. What the IS350 might do in the U.S. is another matter, and we're looking forward to seeing it in New York.