On a very unrelated note, at a tire shop the advisor was telling me about how he used to own Lexus GS's and switched to BMW after Lexus stopped updating it and eventually discontinued it, and told me the ES is not a worthy replacement and is "just a Camry" yeah I know it's more of an Avalon but it still has that stigma.
At the Audi dealer I work at, I had a customer replace a 10 year old 100k mile GS350 with a Audi A6 because Lexus didn't have a worthy replacement for it.
I think the GS had a lot more "Lexus enthusiast" owners that were loyal to the brand, as opposed to the ES. That said, the ES sells like hot cakes so I guess it doesn't really matter, but the discontinuation of GS did lose Lexus a lot of loyal customers I think.