Unfortunately, Lexus seems to be in no mans land currently - They seem to have no idea which direction to head in. Akio says he wants performance cars, but they produce performance cars that are a decade out of date when they launch. The Development Strategy is too slow, and very slow to react to market shifts. The Hybrid system is terribly underdeveloped, and is being blown away by newer competitors.
While both Akio and Lentz publicly come off cocky how they have the final saying in product development it's obvious they don't. Toyota is not a one man show. I'm sure at this point Toyota is self sustainable so no matter who is at the front, it could be you or me, the show will go on and Toyota would remain successful for decades to come. What Toyota has is beyond business culture it's like damn thing is alive
Benefits of such thing are obvious to everyone, cons in my opinion are slow development, adjustment and putting all-in into new frontiers (playing it too safe: decades after Prius hybrid revolution era Toyota's line up is still not hybridized even though they talk about it all the time).
Toyota has the comfort now to play their own independent game however they want, but Lexus doesn't. Lexus is emotional product and needs to be one man show with passionate leadership that is brave enough to brake the cultural and development ties from Toyota if needed. Lentz at this point much like Akio is nothing more than a scale in Lexus development. Scale that has to balance between Demand on one plate and Reality on the other. His Demands consist of relevant and irrelevant numbers from past sales, market research, demand of customers translated into fancy wording and God knows what else. Reality consists of what they have in store and what they can do in certain development period. After they weight in and do the balance then they come up with the spec sheet to give to their designers and engineers.
It goes something like this:
DEMAND
I want new GS to be performance and driver oriented car with striking, emotional connection between the human being and the road.
REALITY
Here is 3.5 V6 engine for you to work with to get there. And no you can't design the new engine just yet cause it will break the product cycle and profitability of the old one.
or
DEMAND
I want new RX to feature contemporary cabin that oozes prime and premium when driver and passengers reside in it.
REALITY
Here is Toyota switchgear for you to work with. And no you can't redesign Remote touch yet, have to wait in line with other Toyota parts and portions that need redesign as well.
Of course this is oversimplified but you get the idea of what was going on in development cycle with current GS, IS, NX, RX. Now it seems like they finally ditched that approach with new LC and LS. LC seems like a car made solely by designers and engineers, all of it except drivetrain. LS was made without bean counting that put constrains on "unnecessary" luxury features. If they can trickle that down into lower end line up they will flourish in the long run but I don't expect it to happen. Lexus more than ever now needs to be developed with emotion of their designers and engineers instead of marketing data and constant needs to retain current customers. It needs a prompt restart across the board not just in the limited edition flagship tier but that flagship part is a proof they can do it. Their production spindle grill took 5 years to adopt the final intended shape like on LS, they don't have that kind of time for adopting new technologies and bells and whistles. No more gradual Toyota like approach if they want to salvage RWD lineup.
With emotional RWD products they can easily trickle down into Toyota territory, downscale and cannibalize. People want premium badge and they want it for cheap. They would rather drive hubcap Audi A4 than fully equipped Mazda 6 or Avensis. That's been proven again and again and even Lexus themselves proves that with their barebones IS200t across the world. That's the reason I believe non-american Toyota dealerships should sell first two trims of IS200t and introduce people to their premium badge. Nothing wrong in downscaling.
OK I'm all over the place now