Just looking for the first
The striking ‘Spindle Grille’ from Lexus has been with us for over ten years now. We like to look back on that with the Japanese, because the fencing that continues to widen towards the bottom is still where a Lexus is easiest to recognize.
Creating a recognizable design language from scratch is not that easy, especially not in premium land. Of course, Lexus was already an established name ten years ago, but unlike its direct competitors, it could not fall back on many decades of (design) history. In the meantime there was an own style, which combined curved lines with sharp corners, but there was no real recognisability yet.
The harbinger of change in that area came in 2011. The Lexus LF-Gh concept presented that year looked a lot more confident and bold than most production Lexuses of the time and was especially notable for its immense grille. Exactly: the apparently somewhat ‘constricted’ fencing at the height of the headlights that adorns the front of Lexus models to this day. The production version of the LF-Gh was the (for now) last version of the Lexus GS. In fact, that car also had this front, although Lexus did not yet dare to completely fill in the well-known contours with gauze. That’s why it was still split up by a body-coloured bar, but the tone was set. Later, in 2016, a facelift followed, after which the Spindle Grille manifested itself much more emphatically.
The GS in question is put forward by Lexus as the car that started it all, but secretly this model already appeared in 2011. Moreover, the slightly earlier launched, compact CT also had it, also in split form. In the context of 10 years of Lexus grille, we would therefore like to bring up another car, namely the LS of 2012. In that year the top model of Lexus was facelifted and it got a Spindle Grille, which in this case is framed entirely with chrome and was filled in in anthracite. As far as we’re concerned, that’s the first real production version of the ‘Spindle Grille’, with which those ten years are still correct.
Incidentally, the Spindle Grille is still evolving nicely. We have tried to capture this evolution in the photo gallery. For example, we find this ‘fence’ on the new Lexus RX in a new, more closed form. The all-electric Lexus RZ doesn’t need a large grille at all, but continues the family face with a panel of the same shape.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl