NY Auto Show Puzzler: ‘Darker Side of Green’ = New Lexus Hybrid ??NY Auto Show Puzzler: ‘Darker Side of Green’ = New Lexus Hybrid ??

Hmmmmmm. First Sarah Silverman, now “The Darker Side of Green.” What exactly is going on with Lexus these days?
The ominous message is the tagline for an interactive web video called, logically enough, Lexus Dark Ride. It’ll be released May 13.

“Young, energetic, tech-savvy”
It’s meant to attract some new and different buyers–members of Gen X (born 1964-1979) and Gen Y (born 1980-1995)–to a new and different model: the 2011 Lexus CT 200h, its first compact five-door hybrid hatchback.
A perky note from Lime PR Promotions defines the target for this latest Lexus as the “young, progressive, energetic and tech-savvy buyer.”
A “whole new place” for hybrids
According to Liron Reznik, who is co-chief creative officer at the interactive agency (named, ummmm, Skinny) that created the video, and its trailer below, these putative new Lexus buyers want green cars, but also insist that their cars are “fun to drive.”
We hope that the 2011 CT 200h is more fun to drive than the internally conflicted 2010 Lexus HS 250h, the luxury brand’s last hybrid. We found that car to be an uneasy marriage of Lexus lines and luxury with Toyota Prius-like dedicated hybrid shape and powertrain.
An article by our esteemed colleague and friend Stuart Elliott, advertising columnist for The New York Times, quotes Lexus marketing VP David Nordstrom  saying the carmaker’s intent was to take “hybrid vehicles to a whole new place.”
Dark side = style + handling + MPGs ??
What exactly is that place? Well, it’s “darker” because the 2011 Lexus CT 200h will offer “great styling and responsive handling” along with the presumably higher gas mileage that hybrids have come to represent.
Now, our lexicon defines the “darker side” as something that tends to include less exalted goals, the baser human instincts, perhaps even anti-social behavior.
So stylish lines, good roadholding, and high gas mileage are … the “darker side” ?? Color us confused.
2011 Lexus CT 200h
Twin vigilante killer
The trailer is below. The PR agency also points out, by the way, that it stars actor Norman Reedus, who plays one of two Catholic Irish American fraternal-twin vigilante killers in the indie cult classic film, The Boondock Saints.
We’ll let you decide what you think: Would this film make you want to buy a new Lexus hybrid hatchback?
Tell us your thoughts in the Comments section, below.
[The New York Times]

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