Apex motorblog

In the 1970s, there was no such thing as a Japanese luxury car. There were compacts and functional cars or trucks, but nothing elegant or even remotely as stylish as a German or Italian-made car. All this has changed when Japanese car makers decided to challenge themselves and come up with models that would aspire to be luxury cars.

Thus, Toyota came out with their Lexus, Honda has the Acura, and Nissan had its own version which is the Infiniti. It was a bit rough sailing introducing these luxury cars in the foreign markets. After all, Americans and Europeans always thought of Japanese cars as being fuel efficient, and nothing else. But the Japanese are known for being persistent and they just kept improving their luxury lines until we now have an almost equal footing between Japanese cars and other luxury cars from other countries.

The Acura was a result of a dead-end for young professionals who graduated from the Civic to the Accord, and nothing came after. Honda lost its market after consumers wanting more but had nothing to choose from.  The Acura is more spacious and has a V6 engine which was really one of the major come-ons for the car. The response was electric with sales higher than Mercedes Benz for the same period.

It was an almost identical situation with Nissan and Toyota, and it created quite a stir among European and Western brands. From turning down their noses at Japanese-made cars, they were now spinning a different hype. Suddenly the case was not whether Japan could produce luxury cars but whether consumers were patriotic enough to buy something home grown instead of foreign.

The idea of stepping out of its comfort zone was a genius move of Honda as well as other Japanese car companies. Today, no one doubts that Japanese has a distinct advantage with their luxury cars.