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The Lexus LS has gotten a bunch of flack from us journalists, mostly because it's so distant and removed that its driver's relationship with the road is no closer than its passengers'. As much as I love drivers' cars (and, oh do I ever), Lexus never pretended that the LS was to appeal to enthusiasts. The LS is supposed to appeal to their antitheses - people who don't want to be bothered with the task of driving at all. I mean, why else would this thing park itself? Lexus launched the hybrid LS600hL as a competitor to the V-12-powered monsters from BMW and Mercedes. Again, journalists complained, saying that the LS doesn't even come close to matching those cars' performance. And it doesn't - the twin-turbo V-12 Mercedes S600 could probably dust the Lexus with half its cylinders deactivated. At half throttle. Or not - but the point is: I'm convinced that's not what Lexus meant when they compared the LS600hL's performance to the V-12 cars. They meant that, in that oh-so-smooth Lexus way, the LS would glide around town in the quiet, relaxed way that only twelve-cylinder luxosedans can. And that is a talent the LS possesses in spades. My first trip in the LS was a thirty-mile drive at rush hour north of San Francisco. Traffic was moving between a crawl and 50 mph, up and down big Marin County hills, and yet not once did the tachometer bother to indicate anything more than 1600 rpm. In normal driving, the combination of electric assist and the V-8's prodigious low-end grunt makes excess engine speed superfluous. Off the line, the Lexus's powerful electric motor sets the car into movement the way a jet engine does (though without the noise) and then slowly spins the V-8 up to operating speed (just over idle) without so much as a shudder.... Read full article
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