Lexus ES
The New Lexus ES Earns Its Badge Everywhere But Underneath
The bamboo glows, the ottoman reclines, the price undercuts Stuttgart — and then you look at what holds it off the road.
A morning with the eighth-generation ES makes it easy to see why three reviewers came away smitten. The bamboo is real and lit from within; the rear ottoman reclines like a first-class seat; the price undercuts the Germans by five figures. Redline Reviews enjoyed all of it — and then, almost in the same breath, listed everything the car goes without. The gap between those two halves is the most interesting thing here.
Cheaper Than the Germans
TFLnow gives the bargain its fullest voice, and he is not wrong to. The hybrid makes 244 horsepower, returns a real 46 MPG, and lands at $53,190 — "well over $10,000 less expensive" than the Mercedes it shadows, when the average new car now costs nearly fifty grand. That is genuine value, wrapped in the fit and finish nobody has faulted Lexus for. The only thing the number hides is what it leaves out.
What's Missing Underneath
Here is where it gets fun for anyone who reads a spec sheet for pleasure. Redline Reviews walked the underbody and found fixed-rate steel springs holding up a car that has swelled to the footprint of a 2007 long-wheelbase LS — no air suspension, no adaptive dampers, and "there's currently no F-S Sport model available," a trim the last ES offered. He calls the loaded EV "a screaming deal" and means it. He simply notices, the way a good reviewer can't help noticing, that the body promises a car the chassis underneath was never built to be. It is the most telling detail of the day, and he lets it slip by almost without comment.
Everything But the Question
Car Confections plays it straight, and there is service in that — reliability rankings, resale figures, the executive ottoman, "one of the most comfortable sedan rear seats" the reviewer has sat in. His one quibble is the steering wheel's finish: a touchpoint, not a chassis. It is a generous tour of everything the ES is, by a reviewer happy to take the car on its own terms. Whether those terms include the way it drives is left for another day — and the embargo, fairly, gave him little choice.
Luxury for less. That is my theme for the all-new eighth generation Lexus ES.
I was really surprised to see that there's no massaging seat option considering the LS is gone.
This feels a little bit cheap with the overall steering wheel execution.
The reviewers, side by side
3 reviewers. 2 questions. Where the arguments overlap and where they diverge.
A Badge, Quietly Redrawn
It would be easy to call this a flagship that forgot its chassis. The truer reading is warmer: Lexus has quietly stopped pretending the dynamic flagship was the point. With the LS gone, the ES takes its size and price but not its mission — and for the buyer who measures luxury in quiet, leather, and legroom rather than damper travel, it is the right car. The catch is reserved for those who wanted the other thing: the LS refugee, and the loyalist who used to tick F-Sport. A new line is drawn; Lexus just won't say so aloud.
The cheapest expensive Lexus in years — and, for the right buyer, the most honest one.