Well, I happen to remember very well when the Acura and Lexus brands arrived, Acura arrived first and had all of the Honda winds behind it's sail. The Legend was beautiful! Lexus showed up a year later, but used the Alpha numerical naming convention as did Mercedes, BMW, Audi, etc. The Lexus brand caught on and surpassed Acura, even though the LS400 didn't look nearly as good as the Legend! Everybody knows both Honda and Toyota were both tops in engineering and reliability, ...so why did the less attractive LS400 go around the more beautiful Legend? ... It's because they styled it to look like a Benz, and used a trick to stamp the Lexus brand in your mind!
It's because they used Alpha numericals! By using Alpha numerals instead of a name, it forces you to place attention on the "Brand" as opposed to the "Model". While the "Legend" model was hot, ... the "Lexus" brand, became hot! That circled "L"
emblem and the brand "Lexus" became chic! People knew the Legend model, but no so much the Acura brand. Conversely, EVERBODY knew the "Lexus" brand, but could care less about the Ls400, Sc300/400, etc model names. "Hey, you hear Bob just bought a new Lexus!!?" ... So, there is very good reason to use the numerical model names when you are trying to get traction for a new "brand", and I'm glad Hyundai/Genesis is not making the mistake out the box that Honda/Acura made. Nissan/
Infiniti avoided Honda's mistake as well .
).
, it wasn't until the 1998 ES that the best-selling Lexus outsold the best-selling Acura, a time when both brands had vehicles on the market for at least 9 years.
