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The Far Eastern makes seem to do better in the continental US with their 'premium' brands than in Europe - as you say, only Lexus has mad any sort of impact, and really only in the UK. One of the problems outside of American (and to a lesser extent in Canada) is that the European luxury car buyer doesn't just want cars with 'all the goodies' and lashings of leather upholstery - they want that and a good amount of style/cache and decent handling/performance as well, something thus far that these makes haven't been able to deliver.
I personally find both the exteriors and interiors of their cars to be 'fussy' and haphazard, with very little 'aesthetic flow' and simplicity to the designs, as you would more likely see on a European premium car. The same goes for handling and performance - most Far Eastern 'premium' cars aren't what you'd call good in that department, more average. If a wealthy person is considering parting with more than £50k of their cash for a car, they want one that looks stylish inside and out, not something that was an exercise to see if the designer could use all their tools of the trade in one car, and one that performs and handles reasonably well.
I'm not sure if that says more about the quality of car stylists/designers in that part of the world or the level of taste of their mainly American clientelle.
Current I think only Mazda could even remotely pull it off from the styling POV (the only Far Eastern make worth its salt on the design front at the moment), though as they are a smaller outfit compared to Honda, Toyota, Nissan and perhaps Hyundai-Kia, they wouldn't do so give the high cost-to-profit risk of doing so, especially as the German, Italian and British premiuim brands practically have the market sown up outside of the US/Canada. Too much risk for little gain - if I were Hyundai-Kia, I would leave well alone and concentrate on continuing to take sales away from the likes of Ford, Vauxhall, PSA, Renault and FIAT until they've properly established they can better them on all fronts (other than value and perhaps [now? soon?] reliability).
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