News & Reviews- Make: Lexus

Well into its second season the new Lexus NX continues to strike a fashionable pose, pulling eyeballs from its key competitors onto its large, gaping, spindle grille and sharply chiseled bodywork, a dramatic styling statement if there ever was one.

Lexus is no longer a wallflower brand, the NX proof positive that things have changed in Nagoya. It seems with each new model the Japanese luxury brand grows braver, this Nobuyuki Tomatsu-penned design bolder than the IS sport sedan that came before and RC sport coupe that arrived alongside, or maybe it just seems that way due to the normally conservative compact luxury SUV segment it sells into. Still, the experiment is working, the NX only arriving in November of 2014 yet already rising to the top three in its class after its first full year.

The NX found 6,127 Canadian buyers in calendar year 2015, only upstaged by Acura's RDX at 7,380 units and the perennial bestselling Audi Q5 at 8,203. On its way upward it passed by Read Full Story

Cars don't come much more aggressive looking then this, except the recently revealed Lexus LC 500 that visually expands on all of the RC F's best design cues, plus its performance and no doubt price. That future model, just introduced at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, will hopefully be another car for a not too distant review, however the model we currently have available in the here and now is one of the most exciting new sport coupes to hit the premium performance sector for a very long time.

The RC F arrived last year as a powerful complement to Lexus' equally new compact coupe lineup, the RC 300 and RC 350. The Japanese brand just added the RC 200t as the model's new entry-level trim, a car now capable of going head-to-head with its turbocharged four-cylinder German rivals. The "F" targets premium competitors' AMG, M, RS and V performance lines, and does a credible job of both visually wowing with eyeball-yanking contours and viscerally delighting Read Full Story

If you hadn't heard, the Lexus NX is a runaway sales success. You may have noticed the edgy compact crossover cruising through better neighbourhoods lately; I've certainly seen my fair share. It's an eye-catching addition to its ever-expanding market segment, but this said the response it's had with premium consumers is especially impressive for a newcomer because it's hardly without both fresh and longstanding competition.

The luxury compact crossover SUV segment is one of the fastest growing in the entire automotive sector, both in overall sales as well as models being added. It's now up to nine individual entries, or 10 if you include the new Mercedes' GLC that's temporarily selling alongside the soon to be discontinued GLK. That last model is one the NX passed right on by in year-to-date sales, along with BMW's X3 and every other compact luxury SUV other than the Audi Q5 and Acura RDX, now sitting pretty in third place in both Canada and the U.S. I'd say it's been an important Read Full Story

Long, lean and now endowed with a much more committed take on Lexus' brand-wide spindle-shaped grille and accompanying front fascia, the refreshed 2016 ES 350 is an altogether more stylish and attractive mid-size sedan, or at least that's this journo's opinion. Lexus has given its once conservative mid-size front-driver the RC treatment, and I'm not talking Royal Commission or remote control but rather the Japanese brand's gorgeous new two-door sports coupe.

I don't know about you, but I find it difficult to turn away from the ES' broader, deeper, polished nickel-rimmed and glossy black multi-angled front latticework, and not only because of this most noticeable upgrade, but also due to needle-sharp scalloped LED headlamp clusters with LED DRLs, similarly pointy chrome-bezeled LED fog lamps at each lower corner, beautiful multi-spoke 18-inch alloys rounding out a sleek profile highlighted by polished nickel brightwork surrounding the side windows, elegantly elongated and reshaped Read Full Story

I remember the first IS I drove almost exactly 15 years ago. That was way back in December of 2000, the car a first-year, first-generation 2001 IS 300 that I was particularly taken by. It wasn't the optional brownish orange, or bright yellow that was all the rage back then, electric blue, or any other notice-me hue, but rather a mild shade of metallic silver, yet it was brilliantly fun to drive, had one of the coolest chronograph watch-style primary gauge packages I'd seen to date, and was a bold new step for what was at that time a staid and conservative Lexus brand.

I've reviewed six IS sedans since, including the then-new second-generation 2006 model at its national press launch held slightly more than 10 years ago in November of 2005, the absolutely brilliant 416 horsepower 2008 IS F with its then state-of-the-art eight-speed automatic, a superb looking 2010 IS F Sport, a then-new third-generation 2013 Lexus IS 250 AWD Special Edition, a 2014 Lexus IS 350 AWD F Sport, and Read Full Story