Toyota's Open Road blog has posted a short audio interview of Lexus General Manager Mark Templin & Toyota President Jim Lentz discussing the company's low sales in June and what it means for the car maker:

Here's an interesting excerpt from GM Templin on Lexus moving forward:

The good news is that we retained our position as the #1 selling luxury brand, so we feel like we're doing a pretty good job in a really tough market of doing the best we can do to take care of customers and make profits. We're also excited about the next couple of months, because all of a sudden, we're going to enhance our incentive programs a little bit, and we'll begin our summer sales event on July 25th, which always gives us a big boost during the month of August. And, I think we'll make it through some tough times in the luxury industry, and we're doing it in a way that's going to support the growth of Lexus in 2009 and beyond."

The #1 position in the US luxury car market is obviously a very important distinction, and one that Lexus is going to fight tooth and nail to maintain. As noted this weekend, Lexus currently has a 5,198 unit advantage over second-place BMW, so it's still anyone's guess just how 2008 is going to play out.

The Fonz is trading in his motorcycle for a Lexus RX 400h, as Henry Winkler is making his way across Britain on a children's book tour to support the government's 2008 National Year of Reading:

Winkler, world famous for his role as "The Fonz" in the hit television show Happy Days., is now the author of a best-selling series of children's novels about a boy called Hank Zipzer, the World's Greatest Underachiever. Winkler based Hank on his own experiences as a boy with dyslexia.

The tour kicked off on 30 June and will continue until 10 July. First News and Winkler are visiting 11 schools* during their tour and stopping off at branches of W.H. Smith in Kingston upon Thames, Birmingham and Manchester along the way, where Winkler will be signing copies of his books.

I'll be honest, I had no idea that Winkler was a successful children's author, but I do know that this is my second "Celebrity drives hybrid in Britain" story today, and that definitely counts for something.

[Source: Autoblog Green]

Considering the furor it created, I had fully expected the LS 600hL gift that Lexus airfreighted to Paul McCartney would never see the light of day. However, Sir Paul was recently spotted being chauffeured around London in the dark maple red hybrid. Also of note:

Such is vegetarian Sir Paul's passion for issues surrounding animal rights and the environment that he took out the leather interior and had it replaced with cloth.

The singer demanded that no animal products were used in his new car and it has been fitted with a hand-stitched green woven fabric.

Lexus said of the decision to send the vehicle by plane: 'To ensure the car's quality and security, as well as to meet marketing deadlines, it was airshipped on a regularly-scheduled commercial flight to the UK.'

Ok, enough of about that. I feel like a gossip columnist.

[Source: The Daily Mail]

So, the big news of the day concerns an LS 600h that was sent by Lexus to Paul McCartney as a gift for his work promoting the company's hybrids. Pretty uneventful so far, right? Well, turns out the car was sent by plane rather than by boat, creating a carbon footprint almost 100 times larger:

A source is reported to have said: "Paul was offered a Lexus as a gift and ordered the hybrid limo because it helps to reduce emissions.

"He'll be horrified after learning it was delivered by plane. Paul has always campaigned for green issues and he can’t understand why anyone would send an enormous car from Japan to Britain on a plane."

Carbon offsetting firm CO2balance.com said the plane journey would have caused a carbon footprint of 38,050kg, compared to 397kg for a three-week boat journey.

A carbon footprint is the measure of the impact that human activity has on the environment and is measured in units of carbon dioxide.

Co2balance.com Director Mike Rigby said: "That is the equivalent of driving the car around the world six times."

I'm certainly not about to defend the decision to air freight the car, but I have my doubts that Mr. McCartney is in the habit of waiting weeks for things to arrive, and I'm sure that played into the decision.

What are the chances that McCartney will refuse the LS 600h? I'm sure there's people more than willing to take it in his place, considering the six-month waiting list currently in place.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]

The IS Coupe is one step closer to reality, as a moderator over at my.IS discovered some trademark applications filed by Lexus in both the USA and Canada: IS 250C, IS 300C and IS 350C.

These digits lead to some interesting speculation, particularly in the case of the IS 300C. The 102-hp gap between the IS 250 and 350 has long been a bone of contention, especially because the IS 250 is available with a manual transmission. Now, with this new IS 300C designation, this gap could very well be plugged with something along the lines of the 3GR-FSE V6 (from the 2006-2007 GS 300). Very good news, if that's the case.

One glaring omission is the IS-FC, though it seems more likely that there would be no differentiation between the coupe and sedan models.

All in all, a very positive development.

(Note: The above image is not the production IS coupe, but rather a rendering by a still-to-be-determined source.)

[Source: my.IS]

BusinessWeek has a story in this week's magazine about the issues Lexus is having establishing the brand in Japan:

Although Lexus hit American showrooms 19 years ago and has been the top-selling luxury nameplate in the U.S. since 2000, it didn't arrive in Japan until 2005. By that time German brands dominated the high end, and Lexus has had a tough time getting a toehold, reaching only 60% of Toyota's initial sales projections. In 2007, Lexus moved 34,800 cars—about what it sold in December alone in the U.S.—and sales so far this year are down.

Worse, the buzz Toyota created for Lexus may have benefited the Germans..."The introduction of Lexus is energizing the luxury car market," says Ashvin Chotai, an independent auto consultant. But few customers have steered away from the German makes. Chotai says 80% of early Lexus buyers were former Toyota drivers; only 5% came from Mercedes or BMW.

Considering Lexus has only been in Japan since 2005, it doesn't seem all that surprising that it would struggle to establish a foothold, but I think the center of the issue is the fact that it's a Japanese company, and would be expected to do better in its home country.

The truth of the matter is, up until 2005, Lexus cars were sold in Japan under the Toyota nameplate, the GS was the Toyota Aristo, the SC was the Toyota Soarer, and so on. Then, after the switch, the same car saw a price increase of 20%, which had to be confusing for the Japanese customer, even a little off-putting. This will take a few years to fade, until Lexus stands on its own.