Anyone – alright, any car nut – who’s travelled to Germany likely remembers their first time being greeted outside the airport or train station by a gleaming row of custard-colored Mercedes E-klasse. Nearly every one of them probably had a diesel engine ticking away, an interior outfitted with cloth seats and perhaps even plastic wheel covers, of all things. It’s a memorable image because for those who were raised in the US, Mercedes-Benz has a long-held image as being a builder solely of luxury cars. And luxury cars certainly don’t sit outside train stations with fare meters on the dash and surly cab drivers behind the wheel. Jarring and amusing in a single instant, it crystallizes the understanding for the travelling auto enthusiast that in Germany, Mercedes-Benz is simply a full-line car maker – churning out everything from vans to cabs to front-wheel drive economy cars.
Tag - Lexus

2019 NAIAS – 2020 Lexus RC-F Track Edition
Lexus introduced the 2020 RC F Track Edition today at the 2019 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Lexus says that...
Read More
Rental Review: 2016 BMW 328i
Friends, let me tell you about the promised land, because I’ve been there. The rental car promised land, that is. Imagine...
Read More
Driven: 2015 Toyota Avalon Hybrid
The Toyota Avalon has always occupied a sort of tenuous middle ground between the Camry and its Lexus platform mate, the ES, in...
Read MoreThough the recently announced, more sporting V iteration of the compact Cadillac ATS has stolen most of the headlines recently, we’ve been eager to get our hands on the standard version of the littlest Caddy for some time now – especially in svelte coupe form pictured here.
Introduced as a 2010 model, the hardtop convertible version of the Lexus IS isn’t yet “old” by industry standards. Still, a replacement looms on the horizon in the form of the upcoming RC coupe and likely convertible spin-off. Its main competitor from the land of the rising sun, the Infiniti Q60 (nee G37), is also nearing replacement, though neither of these cars could be called dated from an aesthetic perspective. I drove the IS 350 and Q60 convertibles back to back to find out what makes these two hardtops tick.
You could be forgiven for thinking it’s a bit late in the Lexus RX’s model life cycle for us to review it; after all, these pages are usually devoted to freshly restyled or all-new metal. But in fact, though this platform’s basic bones stretch back to the 2010 model year, the RX received a heavy refresh for 2013 that brought it right up to date against others in the entry-level luxury crossover segment. We’ve covered the normal RX350 before on these pages, but never the full-zoot RX450h hybrid version. What makes this CUV a perennial class sales leader? Read on for a look. Read More
Toyota’s midsize sedans recall the old German automaker mantra of “one sausage – three lengths” – in that the platform that underpins the Camry, Avalon and Lexus ES350 makes them all essentially the same underneath, but they wear vastly different sheetmetal and appeal to different buyers. You might think I’m stretching the metaphor a bit, but hear me out: all of these cars are remarkably similar under the skin, and yet they drive, feel and look completely different. So maybe it’s not a take on the German mantra, but a Japanese one – one sushi roll, three lengths.
It’s not often I find myself daydreaming of rising to political prominence in a third-world banana republic somewhere; in fact, that’s never run through my mind. But after a few days of rolling around in a Lexus LX570 (aka the “Lexus Land Cruiser”), mindsets tend to change.