2007 Lexus LS 460L Review

Introduction

Lexus LS 460L – 2007 Review: Lexus shifted the luxury car paradigm when the original LS debuted 17 years ago, turning the pooh-pooh’s of American and European automaker executives into exclamations of “Holy crap!” Since then, Lincoln has dropped off the radar, Cadillac has struggled to compete, Jaguar has battled its electronic demons, and the heavy-hitters from Germany – Audi, BMW, and Mercedes – have been forced to engineer excellence on a budget. For 2007, there’s a new Lexus LS chock-full of technology, but after a week spent in an $81,000 extended-wheelbase LS 460L model, it’s unclear whether Japan’s premier luxury brand is heading in the right direction.

Why We Drove It

Honestly, when someone is serious about spending this kind of cash for a car, what we have to say isn’t likely to sway a vote. We drove this Lexus because we needed to learn what the Japanese luxury maker considers state-of-the-art, and we wanted to try the self-parking feature that is so heavily touted in advertising. Unfortunately, because our test vehicle was a pre-production unit, its equipment spec didn’t exactly match what people are likely to find at the dealership. We still don’t know how the slick self-parking feature works, but we know that brake-by-wire technology is still a dynamic buzz-killer.