Lexus LS 500: The alternative luxury car

By Martin Pretorius

There are a multitude of different definitions of what a luxury car should be. For many people, it’s all about gadgets and technology, while others point towards exquisite styling and a nicely-trimmed cabin. One thing everyone could agree upon is that a luxury car should be supremely comfortable, quiet and refined. But the main criterion is that a luxury car should make its occupants feel special. Coddled. Soothed.

Make no mistake, the new, fifth-generation Lexus LS works very hard to combine all these attributes into a single-minded luxury conveyance. It’s loaded with contemporary technology, has a unique style, and as always, ultimate refinement is a given. But in an arena where it has to compete with such stellar alternatives as the Audi A8, BMW 7-Series, Mercedes S-Class, and Jaguar XJ, does the Lexus LS really have what it takes to steal the limelight from these formidable opponents?

The face takes some getting used to

As is common with all Lexus offerings for the better of the past decade, the LS’s styling is dominated by the “Spindle Grille”. In fact, that grille takes up most of the big Lexus’s front end, completely dwarfing the LED headlamps to the sides, and setting the tone for a really distinctive-looking car. You’d be hard-pressed to call it beautiful (although some onlookers might), but the craftsmanship involved in fitting together the 5000-plus individual surfaces certainly points towards the attention to detail lavished upon this range-topping Lexus.

Things are rather more conventional when you look down its flanks or take in the rear end, although elaborate creases and curves are evident all over the LS’s exterior. It has classic rear-drive proportions, with a long bonnet, a swooping roofline which appears to be pushed towards the rear of the car, and a sloping rear end terminating in a discreetly upturned boot lid.

It’s also the first LS to feature three side windows on each side, which also moves the visual balance towards the rear, and introduces extra light into the rear of the cabin. Riding on an all-new platform, this LS is longer and wider than ever, and rides on a longer wheelbase, but the roof is just a tad lower than before. While some elements of the LS’s styling are undoubtedly polarizing, it cuts a distinctive dash, and will be spot-on for those who prefer their cars to look unusual and imposing at the same time.

The cabin is just as unique

Yes, the usual complement of leather, wood and glossy metal is evident, and it’s all very nicely trimmed indeed, but the details are again highly unconventional. The dashboard has a wavy design theme, which brings the climate control and audio controls closer to the front occupants, and it expands on this theme by way of fixed horizontal metal fins inside which the air vents are hidden. There’s also a piece of illuminated graphic design in front of the front passenger, which unfortunately calls to mind the décor in an avant-garde hotel’s lobby. Some onlookers loved it, while others thought it a bit much.

Atop those air-vent-hiding fins is the instrument binnacle and the large (12.3-inch) multimedia screen. It won’t take first-time drivers very long to notice the two horn-like protrusions on either side of that instrument display – the left-hand one selects the drive mode (Sport/Sport+, Normal/Custom, and Comfort/Eco), while the one on the right controls the traction control. We haven’t seen this kind of “satellite controls” for years, and they sure look somewhat at odds with the flowing lines employed everywhere else. At least the dash top is covered in beautifully stitched leather, as are most of the touch surfaces.

Instruments and controls

The gauge cluster contained within the binnacle is no less unusual: it’s a fully-digital display screen, and it actually recalls the first-generation IS’s “Chronograph” instrument cluster. Fortunately, it’s a lot more legible than that car’s analog gauges, but it’s still rather busy to look at, thanks to the masses of information relayed through its smallish high-definition screen. Analog temperature and fuel gauges flank this digital screen, but their location leads to them being somewhat obscured by the steering wheel spokes and aluminium gearshift paddles.

The centre console is a lot simpler, with only a few buttons to control secondary functions (such as the rear window blind, loading height, and a shortcut to the seat adjustment menu) sharing space with the gear selector and infotainment touchpad. Of course, it’s all framed in beautiful wood veneer with metal accents for a suitably plush ambience.

Luxury ride

In South African specification, the LS500 comes with just about a full house of equipment, including height-adjustable adaptive air suspension. The air suspension works very well in most situations, and largely succeeds in isolating the occupants from road shocks. It’s also pretty accomplished at containing body roll, and helps reduce pitch and squat under hard applications of the brakes and accelerator.

What the air suspension cannot do is to eradicate the brittle quality of the low-speed, secondary ride, brought about by those low-profile tyres wrapped around 20-inch wheels, which sometimes lets sharp corrugations find their way past the suspension. And, in comfort mode, there’s an occasional floaty sensation over large-amplitude road disturbances, indicating that the damping could have been just that touch firmer.

Firmer damping would also make the LS feel even better to drive, although that particular gain wouldn’t really be necessary. As it is, the handling completely belies its substantial dimensions and weight, and it feels more like a top-level German on the road than a big, soft, Japanese luxo-barge.

It turns eagerly into corners, generates massive road grip, and exhibits impeccable behavior at the grip limits. There’s even some road feel coming through the steering wheel – something the Germans in particular struggle with, these days. Dynamically, the new LS500 is just about as good as you’ll find anywhere, and in some respects, it’s better than most.

Six in the place of eight

Underbonnet, the new LS500 marks a significant departure from this model’s history of V8 motivation, with a brand-new, twin-turbo V6 which delivers a useful boost in both power and torque. 310 kW and 600 Nm will certainly provide any car with useful urge, and so it proved to be with our LS500 test car as well. In true Lexus fashion, the turbo engine doesn’t feel as obviously potent as you’d find in the German opposition, largely due to programming which prioritizes smoothness over immediate response, but it still shows an impressive turn of speed and genuinely lively acceleration in spite of its softer responses.

Lexus projects a 0 – 100 km/h sprint in 5 seconds, and on-road performance certainly supports this claim. It has to be noted that the potent engine can overpower the rear tyres’s traction from a standstill, but once the speed has passed 40 km/h, not even a boot full of accelerator elicits as much as a squirm from the rear end. In-gear acceleration is very impressive indeed, and the LS seems to accelerate ever harder in the higher speed ranges. The new turbo-V6 is indeed a major step forward from the old V8, by every metric except engine sound – the piped-in roar from the speakers just can’t emulate a V8 with any conviction...

The new engine is significantly more frugal than the old V8 was, helped along by a new 10-speed automatic transmission which locks up the torque converter in all gears except first. As a result, there’s always more than enough overtaking power available, while gentle cruising sees the gearbox shuffle through its many ratios in a completely unobtrusive fashion, keeping the revs low, vibrations at a minimum, and noise levels extremely muted.

Driver aids galore

In keeping with its market positioning, the Lexus LS boasts a full array of modern driver and safety aids. The usual suspects are all present: lane-keeping assistance, blind-spot monitoring, automatic emergency braking, adaptive cruise control... the list just goes on and on, and offers many features you’d only see on the rivals’ option sheets.

Adaptive multi-beam LED headlamps are standard as well, as is a brace of cameras all around the car to provide for easy parking. The adaptive cruise control has one vice, however: it disengages when the car’s road speed drops below 40 km/h. It warns the driver to resume full control through a beep and a flashing icon in the (very impressive) head-up display and instrument cluster, but it really shouldn’t disengage at all. Because the adaptive cruise doesn’t work at low speeds, traffic jam assistance is conspicuous by its absence – a strange omission, indeed!

That infotainment system, though...

While other manufacturers have sort of standardized on some version of a rotary control knob or a touchscreen interface (or a combination of both), Lexus still tries to go their own way. Previous models used a mouse-like device to operate the central display screen, but the current-generation of Lexus’s control system uses a sort of touch-pad (as on a laptop computer) with haptic feedback.

What this means is that you navigate a cursor (displayed on the central screen) through a combination of finger swipes and clicks on the touch-pad, much like you would on a laptop. It sounds intuitive enough, but in reality, the system just doesn’t work the way you’d expect. It’s almost impossible to operate on the move, and infuriating at a standstill. The sat-nav input sequence is likewise overly-complex, and its command “tabs” have unusual labels – making something as simple as turning off the route guidance an unnecessarily complex operation.

Making matters worse, the display screen’s menu system is convoluted and counter-intuitive, with many layers to scroll through to access things such as the massaging seats. In fact, it took me three days to even realize that the seats have this function... Now remember, I’m fairly tech-savvy – there’s an iPad on my coffee table and I speak fluent iOS, Android, iDrive, COMAND and MMI. So if it took me so long to figure out the system’s intricacies, imagine what a struggle it would be for the (typically middle-aged) plutocrat who would buy such a vehicle.

Please, engineers at Lexus: Take a good look at the way almost everyone does this, and just do something similar. We’ll forgive you if it’s less than imaginative, because the imaginative system you currently offer is overly complex and not user-friendly at all.

Sounds amazing, with great displays

More’s the pity, because the audio system attached to this infernal infotainment interface is simply magnificent. Supplied by Mark Levinson, the 23-speaker system delivers crystal-clear sound, with fantastic definition and sound staging, thumping bass and beautifully-rounded treble. This is easily one of the best audio systems available in any car, and could teach most of the other premium systems out there a thing or two.

Rear-seat passengers get treated to no fewer than 3 individual display screens. The middle one is located on the fold-down armrest, and controls things such as the rear seat adjustments (with their own massage functions, heating and ventilation, three pre-set positions and a myriad of fine-tuning options), while the other two are mounted on the backs of the front seats for individual DVD- and entertainment playback.

The three screens in the rear of the cabin have beautifully clear and intuitive graphics and fluid touchscreen inputs, by the way – which makes the front screen’s clunky interface all the more frustrating. Let’s hope some of the rear-seat excellence spills over to the front end, and soon!

The Individualist’s choice

By any measure, the new Lexus LS500 is a tour de force. It’s loaded with technology, as spacious as anything else in its class, extremely refined, and propelled by a massively accomplished new driveline. It’s also very quiet and comfortable, with great seats and a magnificent audio system.

It really ticks all the boxes.... except for some bugbears. That infotainment interface is a nightmare, and is guaranteed to kill any appeal this handsome car might have had for typical customers, and some of the other technology isn’t as well-resolved as it should be, either (the self-disengaging adaptive cruise, for instance). The styling is somewhat challenging as well, there are some concerns about the low-speed ride quality, and it is very expensive for the power on offer (though the standard kit does compensate for that).

But, with all these factors being equal, the LS is still a hugely accomplished large luxury car – it’s just not luxury of the same variety as you’d get from the Germans. Idiosyncratic and individual, the Lexus LS is a car for someone who wants the best, but also wants to stand out in a crowd. It really is a great alternative luxury car.

Lexus LS 500 Price, Specification and Performance

Engine:	3.5-litre twin-turbo petrol V6
Transmission:	10-speed torque converter automatic
Outputs:	310 kW @ 6000 r/min, 600 Nm @ 1600 – 4800 r/min
Performance (claimed)	0 – 100 km/h in 5.0 seconds, Max speed 250 km/h
Consumption (average)	9.5 liter/100 km (manufacturer’s claim)
Price	R 2 128 500 (current as at 30/07/2018)