Lexus Logo: Meaning, History and Evolution

The Lexus logo and symbol: what it looks like

The Lexus logo is a stylized capital L inside an oval, usually paired with the name LEXUS in custom capital letters. On the road, the Lexus symbol you notice first is the Lexus emblem alone: a chrome L-in-oval badge on the front grille.

The full mark has four parts:

• The oval. A beveled ring, wider than it is tall.
• The L. A forward-leaning, angled capital. Its ends break through the ring, so the oval has gaps where the L meets it.
• The LEXUS logotype. A typeface drawn for the brand, not an off-the-shelf font.
• The arrow. The negative space between the E and the X forms a small arrow pointing forward. It is a design detail, not an official meaning.

The Lexus car symbol is chrome or silver-gray on the vehicle. In print, the Lexus logo appears in black or white.

Who designed the Lexus logo

Two firms share the credit for the Lexus logo. Hunter/Korobkin, Inc. drew the L in the oval, and Saatchi & Saatchi DFS designed the LEXUS typeface. Toyota combined the two, then refined the result for easier manufacturing, defining the shape with a mathematical formula.

Toyota announced its new luxury division in August 1987. For the logo, Toyota invited three firms to compete. The work took about six months, and each firm sent one final design to Toyota Motor Corporation in Japan.

Firm	What it contributed	Note
Hunter/Korobkin, Inc.	The L inside a beveled oval	Renamed Hunter Communications in 1992
Saatchi & Saatchi DFS	The LEXUS logotype	Its Team One unit handled Lexus marketing
Molly Designs	Third finalist	Design not used

The brief came from Dave Illingworth, corporate manager of the Lexus Division. The logo needed “a high-quality, rich look” and had to be “very readable.”

The finished logo was first shown to the public on December 31, 1987, on Lexus’s first auto show stand, at the Los Angeles Auto Show. Lexus files it under the 1988 show season. Either way, the logo came about 21 months before the cars went on sale in September 1989, not with them.

What the Lexus logo means

Officially, the Lexus symbol means nothing. Matt Hunter, whose firm drew the L, says the logo has no hidden meaning.

The oval had a practical reason. It is wider and flatter than a circle, so it fit the rear deck of the cars better.

The oval was not borrowed from Toyota either. The Lexus oval came almost two years before Toyota introduced its three-ellipse emblem in October 1989, so the resemblance between the Toyota and Lexus logos is not a case of Lexus copying its parent.

What people read into it. The forward-leaning L is often compared to the curve of a road, and the oval to the earth or a route, both hinting at motion. These readings, like the claim that the oval stands for “harmony and perfection,” are popular takes on the Lexus logo meaning, not statements from Lexus or its designers.

Lexus logo history and evolution

1. 1987–Present
2. 2007–Present
3. 2021–Present

Lexus has used a single emblem since 1987, so the old and new Lexus emblem are the same L in an oval, changed only in detail. What changed are the badges around it: a separate F badge for performance models from 2007, and spelled-out lettering on the back of the cars from 2021.

December 1987 to today: the L-in-oval emblem

The original Lexus car logo is still the current one. It reached the road on the LS 400 and ES 250, which were shown in January 1989 and went on sale that September at 81 US dealers. The emblem sits either left of the wordmark or stacked above it.

By 2007, the emblem was well known enough to stand alone. For the “December to Remember” sales event, Team One ran billboards showing only the logo with a bow on it.

2007: the F marque badge

The F badge marks Lexus’s performance models. Lexus announced the F marque in January 2007. The F stands for Flagship and for Fuji, and the outline of the letter follows the first corner of Fuji Speedway, known as 27R.

The badge is used alongside the Lexus logo, not in its place. The first F models were the IS F of 2007 and the LFA supercar, which debuted in 2009 and is no longer made. The RC F coupe also carried the F name until RC production ended in November 2025.

December 2021 to today: spaced L E X U S rear lettering

The new Lexus logo people ask about is not a new emblem but block lettering that spells L E X U S across the back of the car, in place of the L badge that had been on Lexus rears since 1989.

It debuted on the all-new 2022 NX, announced in a Lexus press release on December 16, 2021. The 2022 LX came next, and the rest of the lineup followed. The letters are thin, geometric capitals with very wide spacing, in chrome or dark chrome.

The L-in-oval stays on the front grille and on most steering wheels, so the lettering adds to the emblem rather than replacing it.

Some sites date this Lexus logo change to 2023, possibly because the official “Lexus Logo 3D” image in the Lexus USA Newsroom was published on July 5, 2023. That file is a download asset, not a redesign.

What does Lexus stand for? The story of the name

Lexus does not stand for anything. According to Team One, the Saatchi & Saatchi unit that marketed the brand, the name has no specific meaning. It was meant to evoke luxury and technology.

New York image consultancy Lippincott & Margulies drew up a list of 219 possible names. The top candidates were Vectre, Verone, Chaparel, Calibre and Alexis, and Alexis was the front runner. It was dropped because it sounded like a person’s name, namely Alexis Carrington of the TV series Dynasty. Removing the A and changing the i to a u produced Lexus.

The popular Lexus meaning is a blend of “luxury” and “elegance,” or of “lexicon” and the Latin “luxus.” Lexus’s own agency says it was chosen for its sound, not for a meaning.

Before launch, LexisNexis won a temporary injunction against the Lexus name. A US appeals court later lifted it.

Model names follow a simple code: two letters plus three digits. The first letter shows the model’s rank and the second its body style (LS means luxury sedan). The digits roughly give engine size times 100, and an h marks a hybrid.

Three myths worth dropping:

• “Lexus stands for Luxury EXports to the US.” It is a discredited acronym story.
• “The name was first Lexis.” The front runner was Alexis, and Lexus was derived from it.
• “Lexus was created in 1983.” In 1983 Toyota chairman Eiji Toyoda started project F1 (“Flagship One”) to build the world’s best car. The division was announced in 1987, and the cars went on sale in 1989.

Lexus and Toyota

Lexus is the luxury vehicle division of Toyota Motor Corporation, not a separate carmaker. Toyota set it up at about the same time as two Japanese rivals: Honda launched Acura in 1986, and Nissan announced Infiniti in 1987 and started selling its Q45 in 1990.

Lexus is now marketed in more than 90 countries and territories. The US is its largest market, and in Japan it is the best-selling premium make. See how it compares with other Japanese car brands.

Lexus slogans over the years

Lexus has used four main slogans, some of them overlapping. The current Lexus slogan is the last one on this list:

• From 1989 to 2011: “The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection”
• From 2010 to 2016: “The Pursuit of Perfection”
• From 2013 to 2016: “Amazing in Motion”
• Since 2017: “Experience Amazing”