Lexus LS Receives Minor Update for 2016 Model Year

[CIF]

The LC will go on sale before the LS does, so that theory does compute. Something tells me that 5LS development could've been affected by the recession in 2008, LFA programme, and also halted until work on the XF40 Mk.3 was advanced enough.

Or, it's possible that early on or in the middle of development, Akio Toyoda may not have been satisfied, and may have rebooted or revamped the entire redesign. It's now well-known that Akio Toyoda pushed development teams harder and further on a few of the most recent Lexus models. Namely we know this to be the case for the new RX, and before that, the NX and GS. I'm sure this applies to the RC F and GS F too. For example, with the 4RX, we now know that when Akio Toyoda was presented with a production-ready body of the 4RX, he thought it didn't look good enough, and told the team he wanted the production body to fully match the original concept sketch. So that took extra time, and some ingenuity to come up with new production methods for the radical body.

Akio Toyoda has previously mentioned he is personally involved with the Lexus brand right now, and if I recall correctly, he mentioned somewhere that he is personally overseeing the new LS development. Knowing that, I imagine he has kept pushing the entire development team further than they imagined or envisioned, as that's what great leaders do. So I think all this time they've continued to perfect and push the new LS as far as they can, before debuting the production model.