Given enough time, I’m sure I could have located it: There has to be a kitchen sink somewhere in the 2008 Lexus LS600h L. Certainly everything else is there — practically everything you can cram into a vehicle, Lexus has crammed into what Lexus General Manager Mark Templin calls “the flagship of the Lexus brand.”
If this is the flagship for Lexus, which is the flagship marque for Toyota, you can be assured that one of the world’s richest auto manufacturers cut no corners with this car.
So what we have is a huge, heavy luxury sedan that has a gasoline-electric hybrid powertrain, not unlike Toyota’s Prius. Well, sort of unlike the Prius — the LS600h L gets 438 horsepower from its gasoline V-8 engine and electric motors combined, allowing it to sprint from 0 to 60 mph in 5.5 seconds. Car and Driver magazine tested this Lexus, and got a quarter-mile time of 13.8 seconds at 106 mph, faster than a Pontiac G8 GT. Top speed is limited at 130 mph.
Not bad for a car that weighs 2 1/2 tons and still showed up with an HOV sticker from South Florida, meaning that as a hybrid, it can travel in the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes on the expressway without having high passenger occupancy. And this particular model won’t: It had the optional “Executive Class Seating Package,” which eliminated one of the three rear seats, making this a 202.2-inch-long four-passenger car.
But, man, is it pleasant for those four passengers, especially the two in back: They get the “multi-function massage feature,” a rear-seat entertainment system, and a wood-trimmed table on which to conduct whatever sort of business people who can afford cars like this conduct in the rear seat.
Notice I haven’t mentioned mileage: The Lexus LS600h L — the “h” is for hybrid, the “L” is for the extra length, offering nearly 5 more inches of legroom — is EPA-rated at 20 mpg city, 22 mpg highway. Should you want a car that looks and feels a lot like this one, there’s the Lexus LS460 L, which isn’t a hybrid, and is rear-wheel-drive (the 600h L is all-wheel-drive): It lists for $78,030 trimmed out like the test Lexus — that includes the Executive Seating — and it’s rated at 16 mpg city, 24 mpg highway. But you don’t get an HOV sticker.
The LS600h L starts at $104,765, and with that seating package, the test car lists for $117,335.
So we have a hybrid that costs more than $100,000 and still averages just 21 mpg? Given today’s economy and gas prices, is anyone buying it?
Why, yes, they are. In fact, Kelley Blue Book (kbb.com), the online pricing service, says the base LS600h L, which starts at the aforementioned $104,765, actually has a “transaction price” of $110,003, meaning that customers are paying more than $5,000 over list price to get one.
We’ll let you guess who those customers are, but colleagues on the West Coast say that the car is quite popular with wealthy folks who lead a relatively high-profile life, where appearances — and the perception of being “green” — are important. “Limousine liberals,” one writer in San Francisco calls them.
He said it; I didn’t. I just drive the cars.
And this is, as you would expect, a pretty amazing car to drive. It can travel up to 25 mpg on electricity alone, and already being an astoundingly quiet car, this makes it seem downright eerie. Fortunately, you have a 19-speaker Mark Levinson sound system to make noise when needed.
On the highway, this Lexus feels like the heavy car it is, with a superb ride oblivious to potholes and bumps. It is not exactly nimble on winding roads — the steering is profoundly numb — but it’s never ponderous.
The list of safety features is just too long to include: If it has been invented, it’s probably there, including up to 11 air bags depending on the options packages. One of the more esoteric items: the “Driver Monitor System,” which uses a camera “mounted on the steering column to monitor the orientation of the driver’s face,” Lexus explains. “If the camera detects that it appears the driver is not looking directly ahead for a few seconds or more, and if an obstacle is detected ahead, it alerts the driver with a warning chime and flashing light.” If the driver doesn’t respond, the car begins applying the brakes on its own. Then, “to assist the driver in maneuvering around the obstacle, the system reprograms the steering ratio, amplifying the intensity and quickness of the steering response.”
Certainly the most complex and sophisticated vehicle offered to the driving public, the Lexus LS600h L serves as a rolling statement from Lexus. That statement: “Look what we can do!”
I’m still not sure what statement the owner of an LS600h L is making. But any statement is likely to come from the reclining rear seat, massager on full.
