LEXUS QUIETLY REACHES MILESTONE
Lexus will this year celebrate the 21st anniversary of its conception as a luxury marque.The genesis of Lexus came from a 1983 challenge to create a luxury vehicle to challenge the world's best.
The project took more than six years, 2300 technicians, 1400 engineers, 450 prototypes, 50 clay models, hundreds of patents pending, a new factory and over 4.3 million test kilometres across the world, including the Australian outback.
From its inception the Lexus culture became a relentless and exhaustive process of redefining luxury automobile ownership, according to John Roca, senior manager Lexus Australia.
He said this 'perfectionist' culture flowed from Lexus design and engineering where standards were constantly challenged, to its award-winning fit and finish, to the wider Lexus lifestyle emanating from the Encore program of exclusive Lexus owner benefits.
The result of the initial 1983 challenge was the Lexus LS400, which Mr Roca said achieved its objective of resetting the benchmark and changing expectations for luxury cars and customer care.
LS400 soon won the coveted Wheels Car of the Year award and 10 years later was named Wheels Car of the Decade for the 1990s.
It established new standards for interior noise levels which became a Lexus quality benchmark. The advanced application of those technologies has made today's LS430 arguably the quietest luxury car on the market.
"Lexus introduced the concept of eliminating noise at the source by seeking to reduce NVH (noise vibration and harshness) at the design stage," said John Roca.
"Examples included using an all-alloy V8 engine and paying special attention to the quality and assembly of the final drive gears.
"It meant developing laser alignment techniques for the vehicle's tail shaft and using X-ray equipment to check the final drive components," he said.
Lexus also developed weldable vibration damping steel. A layer of asphalt - sandwiched between two layers of steel extensively used in the LS400 and LS430 - further absorbs engine vibrations, giving the characteristic Lexus driving silence.
As well as initially building a test autobahn in Japan, Lexus has tested its vehicles in the Shinkasen wind tunnel (also used to test Japan's famed bullet trains) to maximise aerodynamic efficiency and hence minimise wind noise.