YORK ON ADS / No 10: TOYOTA LEXUS

In America the Lexus, Toyota's luxury car, is bought by people who buy BMWs, Jaguars and Mercedes. Now the same people know it here. Lexus has made it smart, not substitute, to buy cheaper with the extras built in.

Toyota can afford not to hammer the basic proposition - the brand name and the value - as it's well known already. So the advertising concentrates on a little oblique reassurance instead.

The one worry with a 'value' package, particularly in the luxury car market, is the depreciation rate. How much more worrying when the brand is a new Japanese one and has no pre-war racetrack-and-walnut-dash tradition attached. Will the price hold?

So the Lexus LS400 ad goes for reassurance with a capital R. Holy choral music introduces the leaning Tower of Pisa. The voiceover - a mature Haut- Thesp type - goes on about Galileo 'hypothesising' in 1590 that all objects fall at the same rate. Posh people at the top of the Tower drop their car keys and watch in disbelief as the Lexus key falls slowest. What they're hearing is a straight-out lowest-depreciation claim. Euro-classical setting, Euro-classical music, long words and fruity voiceover underscore the message: you won't lose face buying this one. Peter York

Tapes supplied by Tellex Commercials.