Lexus is sending 35,000 cars that were built for other parts of the world to its American dealers, a stopgap meant to fill lots that supply shortages have left thin. The cars come from China and the Middle East, where Lexus sales are slowing, and they arrive at the tail end of 2026, when the brand’s U.S. sales have softened. Automotive News first reported the shift, and Lexus’s top North American executive has framed it as part of a longer push to refresh the showroom.
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China and the Middle East as sources of the 35,000 cars
Autoblog’s News Editor Pablo Salapantan, summarizing the Automotive News report, wrote that 35,000 cars destined for global markets have been redirected instead to the U.S. dealer network. The cars were originally allocated to China and the Middle East, markets where demand has cooled, while North America remains the brand’s biggest region and dealers there have been asking for more inventory. The original Automotive News dealer preview is the underlying source, though that page could not be opened for this article, so details here follow Autoblog’s account of it.
Autoblog’s account does not say which models are in the 35,000, which is the question buyers will care about most. It gives no breakdown by nameplate, trim or color, and nothing in it says whether the cars will be spread evenly across the 246 U.S. dealers or weighted toward the stores that have run shortest. Those details will matter, because a brand selling roughly 882,000 cars a year worldwide cannot treat a batch this size as a rounding error, and the mix of crossovers and sedans will decide how quickly the cars sell.
A year of record volume, then a soft fall
The redirect follows a strong stretch. Lexus sold about 882,000 cars worldwide in 2025, a 4 percent increase over 2024 and the best year in its history, according to the Autoblog summary. Momentum faded this year, especially in the third and fourth quarters. Lexus sales fell 2.9 percent in September, a decline the report attributes mainly to supply constraints rather than a lack of buyers, which is why the extra cars are meant to land on lots quickly.
The comparison with BMW shows how tight the race is. Autoblog’s third-quarter tally puts Lexus at 93,056 U.S. sales for the quarter, up 1.6 percent, and 262,768 for the year to date, while BMW has 287,154 for the year. The gap of 24,386 units has grown from fewer than 3,300 after the first quarter, and Autoblog says catching BMW would take a remarkable fourth quarter. Thirty-five thousand extra cars equal about 13 percent of Lexus’s year-to-date total, a meaningful cushion if they sell.
What dealers are being promised
DeJuan Ross, group vice president and general manager of the Lexus Division at Toyota Motor North America, told Automotive News that the strategy suits dealers. In his words, “Reinvesting in the core and refreshing those core products at a more regular cadence will be well received by the dealers.” The core, in this telling, is the volume lineup, and the report says about 90 percent of what the 246 U.S. dealers sell over the next 18 months will be all-new or refreshed.
The refresh list is specific. Dealers will get an early look at the replacement for the aging, slow-selling UX crossover. The NX and the ES sedan have been updated recently, upgrades are planned for the RX and the TX, and a new three-row electric crossover, the TZ, is expected next year. The TX already shows what a model-year change looks like, since every 2027 trim costs $400 more and the plug-in version is missing.
At the top of the range, the plan is smaller and rarer. Select dealers will begin selling the GR GT and GT3 toward the end of 2027, with roughly 100 stores designated as retail hubs and their staff trained overseas. Toyota has described the road car’s twin-turbo V8 and electric motor as preliminary 641 horsepower, shaped by lessons from its GT3 race car. The ultra-luxury Century brand is set to arrive in the U.S. sometime in 2028 with a much shorter dealer list, and Autoblog has separately reported that Toyota is testing the waters in America with a Century SUV priced from about 27 million yen in Japan.
Extra inventory on U.S. lots
More cars on lots generally gives buyers more choice of color and trim, and a brand that has missed sales to shortages has a reason to move them. The coverage does not mention pricing or discounts on the redirected cars, so any leverage would come from simple availability rather than a stated promotion. Dealers who have been asking for inventory now get it, and shoppers who were told to wait for an allocation may find the wait shorter than expected, though that depends on which of the 35,000 cars match what they want.
The open question is timing. The cars are described as arriving at the end of 2026, so the first effects should show up in the October through December sales reports, when Lexus will find out whether 35,000 additional cars lift it past a 2.9 percent September decline or merely replace what shortages took away.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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