"The character lines in the sheet metal come from inside, as though they were pushed out by muscle," cited Hiruta. "The look is trained, not over trained. It's a look that says performance rather than show; a very Japanese way of expressing strength and beauty."

"We're a Japanese company so we thought we should find a unique approach related to Japanese culture and history," said Hiruta. "The Japanese way is to be elegant, understated, simple, interesting. Dynamic visual contrast creates excitement, but avoids exaggeration, which is critical to the Lexus character."

To help crystallize their design thinking, Hiruta and his team worked on an interplay between three Japanese characters arranged in a triangle. The characters represented artistry, intelligence and perfection. They were the reference points of the LS' design.

"Artistic, distinct, unique - that's the right side of the brain," explained Hiruta. "Intelligent, calculated, things made perfect - that's the left brain. We use both sides of the brain to make a flawless, perfect product. If it's too left-brain, it's boring. If it's too right-brain, it's too chaotic. We wanted a balance -striking, unparalleled elegance."

"Whether the observer is a right-brained person or a left-brained person, the L-finesse design philosophy has culminated in the LS' uniqueness and its distinctiveness from the other luxury brands," said Hiruta.

The result of the work done by Hiruta and his team presents a gratifying unity of style that derives as much from its careful details as it does from those muscular character lines.

One of the most important design details found on the all-new LS, and the other L-finesse-styled sedans, is what Hiruta and his fellow designers call the arrowhead shape. This involves repeated use of an unequal-sided triangle, or arrowhead, at the grille ends, the fore and aft sections of the window trim, and elsewhere in the vehicle. It is a subtle and unique visual effect that is easy to take for granted until one begins to recognize how the lines flow from the arrowhead shape, fluidly tying the design together.

"The arrowhead shape is a good example of L-finesse," added Humphries. "It's not something we pulled out of a hat and said, 'Yeah, this is going to be a Lexus design cue.' It was something it was born from the process. This is very important, if it's not born from the process then it really has no meaning. The arrowhead within the window graphic detail gave us an advantage in creating simplicity - two very sharp borderlines. On the other hand, the elegance is represented by a very soft inner line, and this symbolizes the contrast in the design language. So we see the arrowhead cue as not something that's been decided, but something that's evolving over time."

"The angularity of the arrowhead shape is contrasted against the LS' continuous flowing lines, and in the contrast between larger surfaces and smaller, compressed surfaces - indeed, looking at the surface of the LS is similar to looking at the contrasting surfaces of the human body," said Hiruta.

"It's like the inside of your wrist, where smooth skin is interrupted by the contours of bone and tendon," continued Hiruta. "What's important is that the lines feel different from each viewing angle. When you change the viewing angle, you get a different impression of the shape. The character is very three-dimensional."

Another example of the intense detail that went into the design of the LS is the side-window molding.

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