To say Lexus is a Toyota is completly false. Toyota is the parent company but Lexus is a different division with there own designers and engineers meaning a different animal than the Toyota. That's is like comparing a regular Sony plasma/LCD lines (which are good) to the Sony Qualia line of Plasmas/LCD (which are the best) , Sony is the parent company but the high end Qualia lines are in a different league than the regular Sony line. If nobody knows what I'm talking about, Qualia is the very high end shiat from Sony in the screen department, different division and different engineers totally apart from the regular Sony line.
Both BMW and Lexus are great cars but for the money hands down Lexus wins plus the German are behind from Lexus in the interior and Navigation sysyem, I read in many reports that the BMW navigation system is horrible and hard to operate.