Toyota Motor Corp. expects U.S. luxury sales to increase 24 percent to 1.9 million vehicles by 2005 as more baby boomers enter their peak earning years, said Denny Clements, the head of the Japanese carmaker's Lexus brand, according to Bloomberg News. Clements said April 14 that baby boomers, the 82 million Americans born between the mid-1940s and the early 1960s, have been turning 50 and becoming more financially capable of buying expensive cars such as the Lexus RX330, with a starting price of $35,600, Bloomberg News repoerted. Automakers sold 1.69 million luxury cars and trucks last year in the United States. "A baby boomer turns 50 every eight seconds," Clements said. Lexus, the second best-selling luxury brand in the United States this year, will maintain or gain market share with models such as the new RX330 sport-utility vehicle, said Clements, Lexus group vice president, in a speech to reporters at an Automotive Press Association meeting in Detroit. Toyota and other car companies, including General Motors Corp. and its Cadillac brand and Ford Motor Co. with Lincoln, are introducing new vehicles to increase their share of the higher-profit luxury market, according to Bloomberg News.