FOR top luxury cars, there’s an old saw about prices: if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. Hyundai clearly feels there’s no harm in asking, especially in a shaky economy. How else to explain the Equus, its new priced-to-sell luxury sedan?
This $60,000 Lexus-baiting limo will look like an alien battleship at Hyundai dealerships, hovering over the Elantras and Tucsons. But to owners of the Lexus LS 460, the better sci-fi reference is “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”: from its design to its powertrain to its features, the Hyundai seems a virtual copy of the Lexus, such a crib that it might hail from Shanghai, not South Korea.
Of course, that’s how Lexus began its Trojan horse conquest of America in 1990, by imitating a Mercedes but selling the impostor for $35,000 — seemingly a lot at the time for a social-climbing Toyota, but some $27,000 less than a Benz 420SEL.
Today, cars in this league can top $100,000, but the idea is the same. Coming from the 21st-century discount king, the Equus looks to kick Lexus and the Germans in the shins while cutting their prices off at the knees.
