ORLANDO: During a media event preceding the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona sports car endurance race near here, the VP of Lexus product planning and strategy revealed that the company is considering bringing the high-performance F-badge to crossovers and SUVs.
Lexus executive Cooper Ericksen was quoted by Motor1 on Monday as saying that the company has been toying with the idea of bringing a crossover or SUV into the F-performance world.
In fact, executive VP and chief engineer of Lexus UX Chika Kako went as far as to say that "the brand's smallest crossover ‘has potential' to join the F family as a high-horsepower gasoline electric hybrid," but they're still weighing whether or not on-road performance is more valuable than off-road performance.
Considering that this new genre of model would compete against the likes of the BMW X2 M35i or Mercedes GLA45, there's a great deal of power that Lexus would have to bring to the table, considering that the most recent UX luxury crossover has a horsepower of 160 while the BMW and Mercedes iterations measure up to 306hp and 375hp, respectively.
Then again, Ericksen simply stated that this potentially F-branded SUV or crossover is just the subject of "active conversation;" the F nomenclature may be reserved for Lexus coupes and sedans.
