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Lexus’s 2025 Scorecard Shows the Luxury Brand Is Winning Where It Matters Most

By any reasonable measure, 2025 was a banner year for Lexus. The Toyota luxury arm closed the books with 882,231 global deliveries, the best annual result in its history and a tidy 4-percent improvement over 2024. In a luxury market that’s still wobbling between EV uncertainty and SUV saturation, Lexus didn’t just survive—it quietly thrived.

And it did so the old-fashioned way: by selling a lot of vehicles people actually want.

North America Does the Heavy Lifting

If there’s a single takeaway from Lexus’s 2025 performance, it’s this: America (and Canada) still love their Lexus SUVs. North America accounted for a massive 408,070 sales, up nearly 8 percent year over year, and almost half of Lexus’s global volume.

The usual suspects did most of the work. The RX, NX, and TX—three flavors of plush, reliable, family-friendly crossovers—were the backbone of that growth. None of them are headline-grabbing supercars or radical EVs, but together they form one of the most commercially bulletproof lineups in the luxury space.

While Europe slipped slightly, dropping about 2.3 percent to 80,686 units, Lexus didn’t seem to mind. Its real momentum came from regions that matter for scale and stability.

Asia Holds Steady, China Stays Strong

Across Asia, Lexus sold 237,946 vehicles, essentially flat but impressively resilient in a market that’s becoming brutally competitive—especially in China. There, Lexus moved 182,458 units, edging up just enough to show that traditional premium brands can still coexist with fast-moving domestic EV startups.

Japan, meanwhile, ticked up to 87,418 sales, boosted by a combination of home-market loyalty and the brand’s 20th anniversary celebrations. It’s not explosive growth, but for a mature luxury marque, slow and steady is exactly what you want.

Elsewhere, Lexus quietly picked up momentum in Oceania (+6.7 percent), the Middle East (+1.4 percent), and even Africa (+18.8 percent)—small numbers, sure, but signs of a brand that’s expanding its footprint in every corner of the globe.

Tech, Electrification, and a New Lexus Attitude

Sales numbers alone don’t tell the full story of why Lexus is riding high. 2025 was also the year the brand began pivoting more decisively into its next-generation electrified era.

The fully redesigned ES, positioned as a cornerstone of Lexus’s future lineup, introduced a new design and tech philosophy aimed at blending comfort with electrified efficiency. Meanwhile, the new RZ debuted steer-by-wire, a bold move that suggests Lexus is finally ready to get experimental with its EVs.

At the Japan Mobility Show 2025, Lexus doubled down on that forward-looking attitude, showing off a slate of concept cars and unveiling a new brand message: “DISCOVER.” It’s corporate-speak, sure—but it also signals a shift from Lexus’s traditionally conservative image toward something more emotionally driven and experience-focused.

A Quietly Confident Luxury Powerhouse

Lexus didn’t top the headlines in 2025 with wild performance EVs or ultra-luxury flagships. Instead, it did something arguably harder: it grew in a complicated, transitional market by selling well-engineered, desirable vehicles across nearly every region on Earth.

With record global sales, a reinvigorated product plan, and a clearer vision for electrification, Lexus enters 2026 not as a legacy brand playing defense—but as one that’s increasingly confident about what comes next.

And if this is what Lexus looks like while playing it safe, its more adventurous future might be worth paying attention to.

Source: Lexus

NEW CARS

Maserati MCPURA Cielo Frozen Magma Is Proof That Italian Drama Can Still Burn on Ice

If there’s one thing Maserati has always understood better than most, it’s how to turn a car into a moment. Not just a machine, not just a product launch—but a cinematic event. So of course the company chose the frozen surface of Lake St. Moritz, surrounded by the kind of winter-glam crowd that treats Ferraris like wristwatches, to unveil something it insists is more art piece than automobile: the Maserati MCPURA Cielo – FROZEN MAGMA.

Yes, the name is a mouthful. But once you see it, you’ll understand why Maserati didn’t bother with restraint.

A Supercar Dipped in Ice and Fire

The MCPURA Cielo is already a dramatic thing—a mid-engine, carbon-tub, open-top Italian supercar powered by Maserati’s in-house Nettuno V-6. But in this one-off Fuoriserie specification, it looks like it was sculpted by the weather itself.

The star of the show is the Ai Aqua Rainbow paint, an iridescent finish that shifts between shades of icy blue and shimmering crystal depending on how the light hits it. Under the Alpine sun, it doesn’t just reflect—it glows, like frozen water lit from beneath.

Then Maserati does what Maserati does best: it adds a splash of drama. Glossy orange accents slash through the cool tones like molten lava breaking through a glacier. The dreamline livery, Trident logos, badges, and even the wheel hub details glow in orange, creating a visual tension that feels intentional, not decorative. Blacked-out lower bodywork and glossy black 20-inch Cyclonic wheels ground the whole thing, while orange brake calipers peek through like embers behind smoked glass.

It’s theatrical. It’s bold. And it’s exactly the sort of design move that reminds you this brand still has an Italian soul.

A Cockpit Built for a Supercar, Not a Showroom

Open the door and the Frozen Magma theme continues, but in a more controlled, motorsport-inspired way. The cabin is wrapped in black Alcantara, punctuated by orange stitching and accents that mirror the exterior’s hot-and-cold contrast. The laser-etched Chevron patterns and embroidered Tridents give the interior a bespoke feel without tipping into gaudy.

Carbon-fiber trim reinforces that this is still a serious driver’s car, not just a rolling art installation. And sitting quietly on the center console is a badge that makes the whole thing official:

“Maserati Fuoriserie – THE I.C.E. 2026 – ONE OF ONE.”

In other words, if you’re seeing this car in person, you’re looking at something you will never see again.

The Nettuno Engine: The Real Heat Source

Beneath all that frozen-lava theater sits Maserati’s best piece of engineering in decades: the 630-horsepower Nettuno V-6. This twin-turbo 3.0-liter uses Formula 1–inspired pre-chamber combustion, a trick that allows for more efficient and explosive ignition. The result is an engine that feels both razor-sharp and muscular—exactly what a mid-engine supercar should be.

Maserati didn’t skimp on hardware either. This one-off comes loaded with carbon-ceramic brakes, a suspension lift system for real-world usability, and a full suite of driver-assistance tech. There’s also a Sonus Faber premium audio system, because even a bespoke Italian supercar should be able to soundtrack its own drama properly.

Why This Car Matters

The MCPURA Cielo – FROZEN MAGMA isn’t just a flashy one-off for wealthy collectors in fur-lined ski chalets. It’s a statement. It says Maserati is serious about making cars that stir emotion again—not just with horsepower numbers or Nürburgring times, but with design, atmosphere, and occasion.

In a supercar world increasingly obsessed with lap times and battery tech, Maserati showed up on a frozen lake with something far more old-school: a machine built to make people feel something.

And honestly? That might be the hottest thing about it.

Source: Maserati

News

BMW’s Six-Pack of M5s Proves the Color Wheel Still Matters

Choosing a favorite among BMW UK’s latest M5 press cars is less a matter of performance than of pigment. Six brand-new M5s—two G90 sedans and four G99 Tourings—have landed in the fleet, and they look like they were picked by someone who actually cares about BMW’s back catalog instead of just ticking whatever shades sell best in leasing brochures. The brief was simple: mix retro soul with modern flash. The execution, thankfully, wasn’t.

Start with Le Mans Blue on one of the sedans, a hue that immediately calls back to the E39 M5, the high-water mark of BMW’s super-sedan era. BMW UK even keeps one of those old-school V8 icons in its historic fleet, alongside a V10-powered E60 and the F10-based M5 30 Jahre Edition. It’s not just nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake either—these cars are kept in near-perfect condition, reminding everyone what “M5” used to mean before hybridization became part of the job description.

The second G90 sedan goes in the opposite direction, finished in Chalk Grey, a color that feels more Silicon Valley than Nürburgring. That modern vibe continues into the Touring lineup, where a Fashion Grey wagon shares space with three far bolder choices: Malachite Green, Wildberry, and Anglesey Green. It’s a lineup that looks more like a curated art show than a corporate press fleet, which is exactly what BMW M should be doing with a car that costs this much and weighs this much.

And yes, weighs this much. The elephant in the cargo area is the absence of a carbon-fiber roof on the M5 Touring. Unlike the sedans, which do get the carbon panel, the wagons are stuck with steel up top. It’s not a philosophical decision—it’s a logistical one. Retooling the Dingolfing plant to assemble carbon roofs on Tourings would be expensive, and the weight savings would barely register on a car tipping the scales well north of two tons. In M3 Touring terms, it made sense to skip it, and it makes even more sense here.

All six cars roll on the same hardware spec, which means the good stuff. The two-tone 951 M wheels—20 inches up front, 21 at the rear—fill the arches with proper menace, while the carbon-ceramic brakes peek through like a subtle flex. BMW UK clearly didn’t cheap out, at least not on the things that matter when you’re hustling a 700-plus-horsepower hybrid missile down a wet B-road.

And while spy photographers are already snapping facelifted M5 prototypes wearing hints of BMW’s Neue Klasse design language, don’t expect these cars to look dated anytime soon. The current styling is locked in for roughly another year and a half, with the Life Cycle Impulse models rumored to start production in July 2027. The refresh will bring tweaks, not a revolution.

For now, these six M5s are a rolling reminder that even in the age of electrification and software-defined everything, details still matter. Paint matters. Wheels matter. And when you’re driving something as absurdly capable as the new M5—sedan or wagon—you might as well make sure it looks just as special as it feels.

Source: BMW

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