Quiet elegance, but with a new boldness
The Lexus ES 350 breaks down barriers, bringing luxury to new levels for those with more discriminating tastes
PROGRESSIVE luxury. This isn’t a term you hear all that often, yet it explains a lot, most especially when tied to something that kind of nails the concept right on the head.
Toshio Asahi, chief engineer of the new ES, was given just those words in his marching orders for the 2016 Lexus ES. With a model that has already become known for breaking down barriers of value, luxury, and indeed brand bias, the team was told to “take it to the next level of elegance and pro- gressive luxury.”
That, however, wasn’t all that easy to do with something that is already pretty successful, and which accounts for a large part of your sales success. You don’t really want to mess too much with what works.
The new car brings additional boldness and aggressiveness to a segment of the market that is generally rather conservative.
The big Lexus look is the spindle grille, which is a very visually arresting design point that can really make or break a buying decision.
The grille made an appearance in the ES previously, but after the look had gained much acceptance (and such statement) in cars like the sporty RC 350 coupe, it has been brought in stronger for this four-door.
Still, this market segment tends to lean toward relative quiet calm—and both Lexus and Toyota have historically had much success in it.
So while the grille comes on strong, the rest of the car keeps the elegant and conservative lines while adding certain touches that support the overall image and feel.
The headlights that flank the spindle, for example, are newly designed, and now—with LED projector technology and daytime running lights—extend to make sure your arrival is heralded correctly whether day or night.
The new visuals extend toward the tail but more subtly. Basically, the ES takes the energy of cars like the flickable IS sedan and the more grand-touring RC coupe, and uses it in a more mature manner—quite appropriate for a car that is well known for isolating its occupants from the outside world better than brands that initially looked at it askance.
The cabin that keeps you in that cone of silence is more subdued than the exterior, so while you will make a more aggressive statement pulling up, you are still in comfort to which you have become accustomed.
The interior has clearly been paid attention to, but again with a subtle brush that manages to combine a bit more character, and yes, elegance without going too far towards “sporty.” So the end result is still well within the mature conservativeness of this model line.
New color combinations for the interior are available as well as new styles of trim and the seats have now an embossed leather pattern that shows off the sumptuousness of the material rather well with a “quilting” treatment.
For the hands-on equipment, there is a new steering wheel designed to improve feel as well as the view of the instrument panel. The multi-information display screen is now larger and has incorporated certain touches that make controls on the Remote Touch Interface more accessible from either front seat.
Trumping Euro stalwarts
Lexus has been on a good run lately on a global level in that some of the cars they are producing have begun to truly trump the European stalwarts.
The IS 350 in F Sport configuration has been openly touted as the car that gives you what you used to get elsewhere, and this new strength may be what Lexus sees as vindication and proof that they can really be the best of both worlds.
The smaller IS may get away with a tautness and handling skew that the larger more conservative ES may not, but with modern technologies and onthe-fly adaptability this may all become moot.
New structural reinforcements allow the Lexus chassis tuners to enhance ride quality while also improving handling, something they trace directly to what they learned from the IS 350.
Still, they make sure by adding details like a sound-reducing layer between dashboard and engine compartment.
The ES has been a continuously strong past the Lexus team, not just in terms of sales numbers and percentages (which it is), but also because it is the model that should be able to give what the normally Eurocentric buyers are looking for.
Interestingly enough, it is the more sprightly IS that has made the most recent strong headway into that battleground.
And so now, the ES has the unusual ability to improve on its historic strengths of quiet luxury and add a touch, just a touch but an appropriately mature one, of youthful exuberance—which is, as they have already stated, just what the parents are looking for.