Acura, Infiniti, and Lexus are household names in 2025, but, once upon a time, the idea of a prestige luxury sub-brand for fuel-efficient Japanese imports would have sounded like a joke. The segment didn’t really exist until these automakers carved their own niche in the mid-1980s, and Acura was the first to market, launching the Legend and the Integra for the 1986 model year, three years before Infiniti launched the Q45, and Lexus hit the market with the LS.
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