Luxury vehicle growing interest in luxury vehicles from emerging markets such as China and Russia. The entry-level luxury segment has been very competitive, and there has been price-overlapping with well-equipped non-luxury cars. For example, in Canada, several luxury manufacturers set sales records in August 2009, due mostly to aggressive incentives on entry-level luxury vehicles. In September 2009, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus and Audi all saw their Canadian sales increase by more than 10 per cent compared to a year earlier, despite overall Canadian auto sales being down 3.5 per cent compared to September 2008. The head of Mercedes-Benz Canada suggested that the brand
Toyota FJ Cruiser in 1984, Toyota had shifted towards increasing the size and luxury of the Land Cruiser line. The idea of a new FJ with rugged capabilities of the FJ40 originated in the mid 1990s with Toyota's product planner Dave Danzer and vice-president of sales and operations Yoshi Inaba. Danzer worked secretly with Akio Toyoda to set up a special shop at the NUMMI plant to test the feasibility of a new FJ40 by combining Tacoma underpinnings with the bodies of Toyota Bandeirantes, an FJ40-based vehicle still in production in Brazil (as a diesel model only) at the time. Toyoda returned to