PALM SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA Like a glacier gaining momentum, Lexus spent a decade selling its first million cars. The second million took four years. Even without any new cars for the past three years, by the end of last year, Lexus had trimmed another six months off the time required to move a million vehicles. To keep the snowball growing, four new Lexus sedans are arriving in the next eighteen months. First in line is the GS sport sedan we recently hustled through Southern California's entertaining San Jacinto Mountains. Taking a bead on class leaders BMW and Mercedes-Benz, Lexus general manager Denny Clements hopes to quadruple GS volume, boosting its market share from 5 to 14 percent.
Such bold aspirations would be ludicrous for any other maker. But when push turns to dog fight, Lexus shows mean teeth. To shift the GS from serene softie into snarling 5-series and E-class threat, chief engineer Shigetoshi Miyoshi increased unibody stiffness 10 percent, teamed a new 3.0-liter V-6 with the existing 4.3-liter V-8, added a sixth gear to three automatic transmissions, and stretched the product matrix by adding all-wheel drive. Then he spent a leisurely forty months polishing his list of dream features.
The radar-based cruise control has the authority to apply the brakes when a collision is imminent. The variable-ratio, electrically assisted steering automatically corrects for wind gusts and stability lapses. To keep all-wheel-drive GSs trudging ahead, they're fortified with brake-based traction control and a computer-controlled limited-slip center differential.... Read full article