Ls350...?

[jainla]

In that price range people are paying for performance; and I think the perception (for whatever reason) is that if you can afford an $80,000 car you can afford the additional $1000 a year it costs to fuel it compared to a Camry.

The LS460 is already more efficient than many V6 sports sedans; and the V8 hybrid will be more efficient than some V6 AWD cars while giving almost V12 performance; so one could argue that Lexus has given us the best of both worlds.

The MB UK site lists the combined urban/extra urban for the S350 as 28 and the S550 as 24. If the S550 gets 16/24 in the EPA cycle than the S350 is probably like 19/28; almost exactly what the LS gets.

The S350 takes 7.2 seconds to get to 60 vs. 5.5 for the S550; most people will spend the extra money for the faster car. In almost every car in the luxury or prestige luxury class (Mercedes SL, BMW 7 series, Audi A8) where 2 engine options are offered the larger one always sells better; in some cases much better. Also the faster car will have better resale than the slower one; so it doesn't make sense to spend the R&D money to create a car for such a niche market.

Bear in mind that the Audi, MB and BMW cars come in several different trim levels in Europe--we only get the highest trim level here. So while an S Class here starts at 85k it may start in Europe at substantially less (with less features of course). Also in certain other markets larger engines are subjected to increased tax; so for cars that are spending most of their lives in livery or taxi service the increased tax benefits and FE offset the performance drop of the smaller engine.

With Lexus's focus on technical leadership, moving up market and being head to head with MB and BMW they won't move the LS downmarket by installing a smaller engine. The only way I think they could do that without 'cheapening' the image of the LS would be to drop the GS450h powertrain into the LS and create an entry LS450 or even *gasp* LS400 (assuming this was technically possible). It's unclear however how much fuel efficiency you'll really gain; and the increased cost of the hybrid powertrain means that any price difference would be minimal (it might be even more expensive).

"It's not designed for snow performance..."

Someone should then advise Acura's marketing group as they are clearly misfocussing their marketing. That C4 off to your left doesn't exhibit any special AWD handling tendancies except beyond the limit anyone would dare take an RL in the normal course of driving.

The RL is not marketed as a snowmobile. I think the SH-AWD is biased more to FWD, and with the funky rear wheel acceleration putting chains on the back tires probably won't get you any additional traction; also I bet the weight distribution is more biased towards the front.

Plus the wide high performance tires on all these cars will give them crap traction in the snow anyway.

[SW03ES]

In that price range people are paying for performance; and I think the perception (for whatever reason) is that if you can afford an $80,000 car you can afford the additional $1000 a year it costs to fuel it compared to a Camry.

Thats just the thing, it won't cost you $1000 a year more to fuel it than a Camry...