The Supra-Engined Rear-Drive Toyota Sedan That Lexus’s Camry-Based ES 250 Made Redundant
When Toyota launched Lexus in 1989, it was gambling that American luxury buyers would be open to embracing a new and unfamiliar Japanese badge. In retrospect, the Lexus brand feels inevitable, but that was by no means the case. And in many ways, it had more of a running start than people remember.
Before Lexus, Toyota Already Had A Luxury Sedan
Toyota had spent much of the ‘70s and ‘80s building its reputation around practical, dependable transportation. In the United States, Corollas and Camrys weren’t necessarily dream cars, but they helped establish the brand as a legitimate contender in an industry long dominated by Detroit.
That doesn’t mean the company was content to chase the economy segment while leaving the upscale market to BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Cadillac, and it didn’t wait until the arrival of its luxury brand to start taking bites out of the competition. By the mid-’80s, Toyota was already bringing more and more refinement to increasingly sophisticated sedans for American buyers, with premium equipment, buttery-smooth six-cylinder engines, and the same attention to detail that had become its hallmark in the States.
The problem was that, no matter how well a luxury sedan was executed, it would still be wearing the same Toyota badges as the rest of the lineup. And so development continued on the company’s incoming flagship luxury sedan, which would eventually become the Lexus LS 400.
Toyota’s Luxury Ambitions Created An Unlikely Rivalry
The emerging Lexus division wasn’t just an exercise in building a more expensive Toyota. Lexus aimed to establish an entirely new identity that could go toe-to-toe with the established European luxury brands without the baggage of its economy-car reputation.
The economic argument was compelling, too. Toyota was contending with export restraints that had limited the number of Japanese cars entering the United States since 1981. If a company couldn’t sell more units, it would need to grow revenue by selling more expensive ones.
Lexus made its debut in the form of two sedans, the top-of-the-line LS 400 plus its smaller, more affordable sibling, the ES 250. Except Toyota didn’t end its Toyota-badged flagship luxury sedan, at least not yet. And so, for a brief window of time, two similarly positioned cars under the same ownership umbrella were competing for luxury buyers, with the older car having a few tricks left up its sleeve.
The Cressida Had Rear-Wheel Drive And A Supra Engine
The car that wasn’t quite ready to go quietly into the night was the 1989 Toyota Cressida. It would represent the fourth and, it would turn out, final North American generation of a sedan that had been quietly serving as Toyota’s most upscale offering since the late 1970s.
This new MX83 Cressida wasn’t necessarily much to look at, but it did have some remarkable performance credentials hiding under the unapologetically sedan-shaped body. It was rear-wheel drive and had the same 3.0-liter inline six from the Toyota Supra, putting out 190 hp and 185 lb-ft of torque. It also gained a new double-wishbone rear suspension derived from the Supra. With 34 more horsepower than its predecessor, the Cressida could reportedly reach 60 mph in 8.8 seconds, compared with more like 10.5 seconds for the previous generation. Not only had it not disappeared with the arrival of Lexus, it was still getting better.
The ES 250 Stole The Cressida’s Spotlight (But Not Its Thunder)
For the most part, it wasn’t the flagship LS 400 that was stepping on the Cressida’s toes; it was the ES 250. For roughly the same money, buyers could step up into an exciting new brand, complete with the prestige of shopping at a Lexus dealership.
This wasn’t just a matter of branding or perception, though. The Toyota and the Lexus were substantively different vehicles. The ES 250 was closely related to the Camry Prominent, a Japanese-market front-wheel-drive sedan with a 2.5-liter V6. The Cressida had the more sporting rear-drive setup and a bigger inline-six. The ES was nicely appointed, with wood trim and luxury goodies, but the Cressida was more powerful and had hardware more in line with traditional rear-drive European luxury sedans.
So while the LS quickly took its place as king of the hill, at least within the Toyota/Lexus family, if not more broadly than that, the ES was competing with what was ostensibly a very nice entry-level sedan with the same DNA but a different reason to be.
The Cressida Didn’t Survive Toyota’s Success
In 1989, when the world met Lexus for the first time, the Cressida was selling at a strong clip, with nearly 24,000 delivered that year. By 1992, annual sales were down to just over 3,600. Ultimately, the Cressida was squeezed from two directions at once: the hot new Lexus ES was wooing potential buyers from the higher end of the market, while the increasingly impressive Camry was picking up steam underneath. The value proposition for the Cressida just wasn’t there for most shoppers, even if the enthusiast-minded could appreciate the spirited engine and rear-drive dynamics.
Lexus was going to make it, and the rest of the Toyota lineup was full of promise. Toyota had spent so much time proving that it could build a proper luxury sedan, only to spin off an entirely new brand that would essentially put its prior proof of concept out of business. The Cressida hadn’t failed to make its case. Toyota had simply placed a bigger bet elsewhere, and won.
Sources: Toyota, Lexus
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