And land was cheaper in the 20 years prior than it was in 1989 when Lexus opened dealerships in the United States
Not sure what your point is.. is it to say that land and building costs have risen over the years and pretty much always have?
OK..I would agree with that
If Toyota had to subsidize Lexus dealerships, " reportedly" as you say...then that was a cost of doing business and building the brand..correct?
Maybe Toyota thought it was they had to do and off the cuff I would say it worked wouldn't you?
I would like to see the links to statements from reviewers , as you say, that see Genesis as a more premium brand
I can think of several features and categories that Lexus has that Genesis doesnt have in their vehicles or dont have an entry in the category at all...full size SUV being the very obvious one
I would say the buying public does not think so
But please do share links if you would
Point is that land and construction costs was prohibitively cheaper when the Japanese launched their lux brands during the 1980s, esp. around the major metro areas (try buying
just the land for an auto dealership, say, in the Bay area today).
There was a whole article on how Honda was able to launch
Acura on the cheap during that period - again, it costs considerably more to launch a new brand, much less have dealerships build out new stores today.
Furthermore, automakers today also have to deal with the high costs of developing a separate electric lineup (which is why even the giant VW Group is slashing costs wherever they can), and that's on top of other investments like building plants in new markets (Hyundai is building a new plant in Indonesia to get access to the SE Asia market).
Back when Toyota subsidized Lexus dealerships, Toyota didn't have all these other additional costs; back then, basically it was just the Japanese and US markets with the US market being seen as the main driver of profits); as I've stated, it was a very different landscape.
HMG is in the business of making $$ - what would be the point of spending millions to subsidize new dealerships before they are able to be self-sufficient?
That's a poor use of their resources (plus, they are spending a good bit of capital to build corporate owned showrooms and driving experience centers in Australia and certain European markets - which has been a somewhat slow process).
HMG's priority is to ensure that its Genesis franchisees are on solid footing financially when they go forward with the immense capital expense of building out a new auto dealership - otherwise, you'll have the same issue as Alfa Romeo did with many dealerships going under.
Believe that the very 1st standalone store (in Thousand Oaks) was one converted from a former Alfa Romeo dealership.
The fact that Genesis has a significantly higher ATP than Lexus despite not having a full size SUV pretty much proves my point.
According to Edmunds data for January, Genesis had an ATP of
$61,536 whereas Lexus had an ATP of
$53,725.
Genesis' ATP will just continue to climb with the new G90, the electrified GV70 and G80, along with the addition of the GV90.
Despite not having pricier PHEVs or performance variants, the ATP of the GV80 and GV70 are close to that of the RWD German CUVs.
Can't say the same for the RX and NX.
There's a reason why reviews of the Genesis CUVs always bring up the Germans, which isn't the case when talking about the Japanese lux CUVs.
Auto pubs like C&D rarely include the FWD Japanese in comparison tests against the Germans, and in the few times that they do, they include the larger model (like including the RX and not the new NX in a comparison with the GV70 and X3).
