- In 1989, the Toyota group launched in the U.S. the Lexus brand to compete with the premium brands already on the U.S. market, such as Cadillac, Lincoln, BMW and Mercedes.

- Since the early 2000s, the sales level of the Lexus  in the USA is quite similar to BMW’s or Mercedes’s, two leaders of premium cars from Europe.

- Lexus has replaced  in the US the two American leaders of premium cars, Cadillac and Lincoln from the  beginning of 2000s onwards. In 2012, Lexus sold three times more vehicles than Lincoln and 1.7 times more vehicles than Cadillac.

- Into the four premium brands mentioned above, Lexus is the only brand  which does not produce vehicles on the U.S. soil. But this situation will end at the end of 2014. The Toyota management decided to produce Lexus vehicles on U.S. soil to support the high sales level of  the luxury brand in the U.S. (around 250 000 vehicles per year) .

- The first Lexus  model  produced in a US plant will be the ES, upscale and rebadged version of  the Toyota Camry. 50,000 Lexus ES should thus be produced annually from 2015 in the Toyota plant of Georgetown (Kentucky). Other models will be added to the production in the coming years.

- It is to be noted that in 2012, 70% of Lexus produced in Japan by Toyota are destined tor the USA market.