Lexus owners have always made me laugh…well just a little bit. If you break down the luxury market you get the following:

1. BMW
2. Audi
3. Lexus
4. Infiniti
5. Acura
6. Mercedes Benz
7. Jaguar
8. Cadillac
9. Saab
10. Volvo

When I say luxury I don’t mean Bentley That’s a whole different market. So let’s split the above into two categories:

1. Independant (not part of a car franchise or owned by a holding company)
2. Non-Independant (owned by a holding company)

If we do that you get this:

1. Independany: BMW, Mercedes Benz
2. Non-Independant: Audi (Volkswagen), Lexus (Toyota), Infiniti (Nissan), Acura (Honda), Jaguar (Ford), Cadillac (General Motors), Saab (General Motors), Volvo (Ford)

In the non-independant segment many of the luxury cars borrow from and/or built on similar platforms as their non-luxury brethren. In other words, many times the same guts of a car can be found in a cheaper make and model.

What I don’t understand is why anyone would pay more for the same car just to get the logo. So let’s pick on Lexus owners because they are really easy targets.

Specifically let’s look at the Lexus ES 350 and the Toyota Camry XLE. The following is a compariosn form CarsDirect.com that compares the 2008 model years.

On the high end of the pricing, you get to pay just over $11,000 for a Gold “L” and 4 extra horse-power. Yeah that makes a lot sense Yet, you ask a Lexus owner why they didn’t just get the Toyota version and you’ll hear a variety responses none of which make any sense. Look, if you want to drop a extra 11K because you have that money sitting around, cool! Good for you. But, don’t try and convince me or anyone else that you aren’t essentially driving a Toyota.

Well I guess we know the value of that gold “L” now…$11,000. And let me say, that’s $11,000 well spent.