2012 Lexus Rx350 Base Sport Utility 4-door 3.5l Awd - Excellent Cond. 9k Miles on 2040-cars

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Lexus back in luxury sales race after three-year absence

Think the only challengers for the title of best-selling luxury brand hail from der Vaterland? Wrong. Lexus outsold the likes of Mercedes-Benz for the second time in 2014 last month. In fact, the Japanese luxury marque's total sales this year are a mere 12,000 units behind BMW.
Lexus was able to move 26,921 vehicles last month, a year-over-year increase of 21.1 percent, respectively. Mercedes, meanwhile, was just barely beaten, moving 26,617 units in April. The difference, though, is that Lexus has made far bigger year-over-year gains than Mercedes, which recorded a YOY increase of just 4.13 percent.
This is particularly troubling for the Germans, as it marks a return to form for Lexus that we haven't seen since before the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that decimated Japan. Prior to that natural disaster, Lexus enjoyed nearly a dozen years at the top of the luxury heap.

These are the top luxury cars bought by people entering the segment for the first time

Let's say you just got a big promotion at work or the kids are moving out of the house, and you finally have some extra money. You decide to blow it all at once and treat yourself by upgrading your ride. Naturally, you look to a luxury automaker. What do you choose?
Models like the Audi A3 and Mercedes-Benz CLA-Class may be tailor-made to introduce buyers to the premium segment, but a new study finds that they don't garner the highest rates of non-luxury customer conquests. It turns out that a Volvo leads among folks moving up to a premium brand, and it isn't even one that's made anymore, at that.
A recent study by Polk and IHS Automotive looked at what models had the highest rates of buyers upgrading from a non-luxury segment. The information comes from its new vehicle registration data through April 2014. All ten top models boasted conquest rates of over 50 percent, but the Volvo C70 led the field with 68.01 percent of its customers coming from non-premium brands.

This Lexus hybrid will paint your self-portrait while you drive

To encourage better driving habits, some hybrids use leaves or tree graphics to portray how efficient or inefficiently a driver is, but Lexus has come up with a more unique method of relaying this information. For its Art Is Motion campaign, Lexus has equipped a Lexus IS300h with special software that enables the car to paint a portrait of the driver by combining the skills of generative artist Sergio Albiac with specific inputs from the driver.
A regular photograph is uploaded into the system, but the portrait will vary depending on how the car is driven. Using vehicle speed, engine speed and how often the hybrid system is used, the driver "paints" a self-portrait via the software that has cloned Albaic's creative process, which then shows up on the car's center display screen. If the driver is more cautious and maximizes electric driving, the image will be clear (as shown above), but if the driver accelerates heavily, the picture becomes more abstract. Similarly, slower speeds result in "colder" colors while higher speeds use "virulent" colors - perhaps signifying this type of driving isn't healthy for the environment.
For now, Lexus has only created one Art Is Motion IS300h, and it plans to auction off this car in the future. Lexus released three videos, which are all posted below, to show off this car, but there is no additional information yet about the auction.