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All the different brands started from GM's separation of their marques, and look where that ended up. With branding comes exclusivity, and with exclusivity comes cost. I'm all for performance cars, but I don't think it's necessary to treat them differently. It could even work in that company's favor to do away with performance branding.
Right now Lexus has their F line to compete (I guess) with BMW's M line. If it were the same car, but let's just call it IS 500, you could then say that a vanilla Lexus was able to compete with the holy grail M line. I think that would raise the perceived reputation of their entire lineup and lower cost. The downside being that you lose all exclusivity and the type of customer that only cares about his car as a status symbol would no longer find value in your product.
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