Toronto Star

Bringing the style factor

Powerful, luxurious crossovers deliver on look and feel with a new extra row, to boot

- Stephen Elmer AutoGuide.com

Family becomes a driving factor for just about everything we do in life.

Before having our own children, we live to please our elders and siblings, and when we do grow older and have kids of our own, the weight of that responsibi­lity becomes the most important burden you’ll ever carry.

It’s family that drove Lexus to introduce a third row into the RX crossover, as dealers have been hearing from customers for years that they have more kids and family than their RXs can handle.

Enter the 2018 Lexus RX 350L, with just enough space added to fit your kids or a lot more stuff. But not quite both. The storage story A total of 109 millimetre­s was added to the rear overhang of the L model to accommodat­e the new third row, offering a tight 596.9 mm of legroom that is enough for only the smallest of children to fit comfortabl­y. A steeper angle on the rear window helps those third-row passengers with headroom, but it’s still not nearly enough to accommodat­e an adult.

With the third row in use, 210.9 litres of storage room is available in the back, not enough to fit a big stroller and a couple of bags.

Folding the new third row down is as easy as holding a button on the inside wall of the RX, accessible from the lifted rear hatch, which can now be opened by placing your hand over the Lexus emblem on the back of the RX. We’d prefer the kick-to-open feature that the smaller NX uses for hands-free hatch operation, but the RXs hand-over-emblem setup did work well when we tested it.

LEXUS continued on W12

 ?? STEPHEN ELMER/AUTOGUIDE.COM ?? There’s enough space added to fit your kids or your stuff.
STEPHEN ELMER/AUTOGUIDE.COM There’s enough space added to fit your kids or your stuff.
 ??  ??

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