2007 Lexus LS 460

Asian Invasion

The new, top-of-the-line Lexus sedan brings added sophistication and technology to its heady class, but is it enough to dethrone Mercedes-Benz's S-Class?

Interior

To criticize an automobile of the quality and near-perfection of a Lexus LS 460 is akin to griping about a fine symphony orchestra because a third violinist flubs a note. Having said that, this new Japanese super-sedan challenges the widely accepted notion that the Germans are wrong in pursuing their attempts to concentrate as many control functions as possible onto a central computer joystick or controller. BMW’s system is called iDrive, Mercedes-Benz has Comand and Audi’s is called MMI (Multi-Media Interface).

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Lexus, instead, has a riot of buttons and switches, some of them half-hidden, with sometimes-incomprehensible acronyms. Air-suspension settings, an electric parking brake, brake hold, radar cruise control with distance-setting control, four-zone climate control, 16-way power driver’s seat, 12-way front passenger seat, a complex 19-speaker audio system, an embedded 30-gigabyte hard drive for both music and navigation-data storage, navigation system, Bluetooth telephone integration, parking assist plus a totally automatic parallel-parking system, rain-sensing wipers, heated steering wheel, heated and cooled seats, power mirrors, pivoting headlights … these and other features, some standard and some optional, all require switches, buttons, knobs and a touch-sensitive screen. And that’s just for the driver; in the long-wheelbase L version, various upgrade options can litter the huge between-the-seats rear console with controls as well.

This being a large luxury car, all four seats are, not surprisingly, hugely comfortable and roomy. The right rear seat in the 460 L, if it’s equipped with the Executive Seating Package, is a throne for the boss. It’s assumed that only a chauffeur is up front, because the front passenger seat is then not only run full forward with a control on the massive rear console, but its backrest automatically folded forward as well, to provide room for what Lexus terms “an ottoman” — what any business-class airline traveler would call a leg rest — to motor out and up.

A caveat: Even with the front passenger seat fully forward, the ottoman feature won’t allow longer-legged rear-seaters to stretch out.

All side and rear backseat windows have black-mesh, motor-driven sun filters that also act as privacy shades (standard on the 460 L, optional on the 460). The trunk is enormous, and it’ll easily hold four full-size golf bags.