Bring This Story If You Shop For A Lexus This Holiday Season- Lexus RC and LC Sports Coupes Drop To Near Zero Sales
The Lexus RC sports coupe and LC luxury-performance coupe have both dropped in sales to nearly zero units per month. This despite the holiday shopping season being well underway. For the month of November, both coupes qualify as cars that are among the lowest selling in America.
Lexus LC Sales
The Lexus LC, which is a specialty car from Lexus, has seen sales drop by 50%. For November, Lexus sold just 139 units in the U.S. Sales have been dropping lately and for the year the LC has only found about 1,800 owners in America. With a starting price of nearly $100K, the LC luxury sports coupe was never intended to be a mainstream seller, but 139 units are barely worth the effort, even for a halo car. Some perspective in cars like the LC is needed. The Acura NSX, for example, with just 13 units sold, was outsold by ten to one by the Lexus LC in November. On the other hand, the Porsche 911 earned 1,056 sales in November.
Lexus RC Sales
The Lexus RC is much more of a mainstream vehicle for Lexus. It is intended to go head to head with the BMW 4 Series. For a while it did. However, for November the RC found just 239 buyers. That is down from 826 one year ago. Among the Lexus cars, the RC is now the weakest performer with sales only half of last year's number.
The RC didn't find much love among the BMW-centric automotive enthusiast press. It was labeled as "overweight" early on, despite being lighter than Audi's segment model and almost identical in weight to the Mercedes in the group. Since its introduction, Lexus has been adding weaker engines and all-wheel drive to both push down the price point of entry and to expand the marketability of the RC, all to no avail.
Those shopping for a new Lexus car may want to shop around and look for a dealer willing to heavily discount an RC or LC. With sales dropping to such amazing lows, it is likely there are dealers willing to make a deal.
As parent Toyota begins to focus on reducing its car model offerings and is concurrently introducing a new generation of the Supra Sports coupe (branded a Toyota), it is easy to see the writing on the wall for the Lexus coupes.
A Personal Note From The Author:
This story brings the author no joy to report. He is the prior owner of a Lexus coupe and the founder of two Lexus coupe fan clubs on Facebook.