A hybrid of appalling crossed with awful
IN the latter stages of my grandmother’s mental illness she would drive into Doncaster and spend the afternoon in the poshest dress shop, laughing derisively at everyone who came out of the changing rooms. “No,” she’d howl, pointing at the frock the customer had just tried on. “Nooo, noooo, noooo. Silly. Horrid. Nasty.”
I wish I had the courage to do the same, because some of the retail choices people make leave me perplexed. For example, in recent months I’ve been a bit surprised by the sheer number of examples of the Lexus CT 200h I’ve seen on the road.
As far as I know, it has not been the subject of an advertising blitz, so that’s not what’s causing people to say: “Yes, I would like to spend 25 000 of my pounds on a smallish Lexus.”
Nor is it the concept. It’s not a hatchback in the traditional sense. And neither is it a sporty coupé estate like, say, the Lancia HPE. It’s a sort of unholy blend of the two, much like the Vauxhall Signum. And from memory, Vauxhall sold only about none of those.
Styling? Nope. Oh, the designers have done all the right things, but then they’ve dropped the CT’s body onto what look like four casters from a sofa. The result is a car that resembles an aircraft carrier sitting on a pram.
Plainly, to unravel the mystery of this vehicle’s undoubted popularity I had to do some digging. So I did. And now I know the answer. Today we live in a part of the world where fuel consumption has surpassed performance as “the thing that matters”. And this car is a hybrid, which means it can do nigh-on 4.0l/100km.
I can see exactly why people would be interested in that. And I can see why their interest would be maintained all the way through the buying process. Lexuses are well made. They come with beautifully appointed cabins. The after-sales care is second to none.
And best of all, you get the Toyota Prius’s running gear without coming across as a sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, weirdbeard eco-loony. This, then, is a car for people who aren’t very interested in saving the planet but would quite like to save a few quid on the way to work. That’s good common sense. Unfortunately, there is a bit of a drawback with this car. It is absolutely dreadful. Worse than anything I’ve driven in a very, very long time.
Apparently Lexus decided the CT should appeal to a younger set. Which is almost certainly why it has given it a suspension that’s so hard, it could be used to smash ice. The result is a ride that’s beyond unbearable. It’s up there with waterboarding. Then there’s the engine, which is worse, and the gearbox, which is easily the nastiest bit of the car. Apart from the boot, which is the size of an old lady’s purse.
I wasn’t expecting it to be fast. But neither was I expecting something that barely accelerates at all. Because of the stupid stepless gearbox, you just get a lot of noise every time you put your foot down but no actual increase in speed. Lexus says it goes from 0 to 100km in 10.3 seconds. Autocar magazine recorded 11.1 seconds, and I don’t know how it managed that, because I got bored of waiting for 100km/h to arrive and gave up.
The marketing for the CT says: “The further you go, the more interesting it gets.” But this simply isn’t true. It gets more annoying the further you go. Mainly because no matter how hard you try it won’t go very far at all. Not in the lifespan of a normal human being.
There are some good things about the CT, though I can’t think what they are at the moment. Er . . . yes. It is capable of sipping fuel as a vicar sips tea. But let me put it this way. A few years ago we drove a Prius hybrid flat-out round the Top Gear test track for 10 laps. And it used more fuel than a BMW M3 that had been following in its tyre tracks . . . at the same speed.
Which brings me to the only conclusion possible for the CT: don’t buy it. If you want good economy, buy a normal car and drive it carefully.