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By Bloomberg

Toyota Motor Corp. will introduce a new Lexus model in China for the second year in a row, showing a redesigned ES sedan in Shanghai this month.

The world’s largest automaker released a teaser image of the new ES on its website, showing the L-shaped daytime running light and spindle-shaped front grille that are hallmarks of the luxury brand’s styling. Toyota will release more details when the car is unveiled April 20 at the Shanghai auto show.

Choosing China for back-to-back global debuts after introducing the NX compact crossover last year in Beijing underscores Toyota’s increasingly global ambitions for its luxury brand, which still gets the bulk of its sales from the U.S. market. Lexus sold about 76,000 vehicles in China last year, equivalent to less than one-fourth of U.S. deliveries.

By updating the ES, Lexus is revamping two of its best- selling models in short succession. The fourth generation of the RX sport-utility vehicle, its top seller, debuted earlier this month at the New York International Auto Show and goes on sale in the fall. ES is the brand’s best-selling sedan in the U.S.

Lexus has failed to keep pace in China with German competitors Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, Daimler AG and Volkswagen AG’s Audi. A barrier to growth has been Toyota’s reluctance to build Lexus vehicles locally, meaning the brand’s made-in-Japan models are subject to a 25 percent import tariff.

Lexus is likely to soon fall behind General Motors Co.’s Cadillac to No. 7 among premium foreign brands in the China market, Max Warburton, a Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. analyst in Singapore, wrote in a March 17 report. GM plans to open a Cadillac factory in Shanghai this year and already builds the XTS and ATS-L sedans locally.