2008 Lexus LS 600h L - Review

The cockpit of the LS600hL is comfortable but unremarkable, despite the high-tech readouts

Enlarge PhotoAbsent on the car Lexus provided us was the rear-seat package that makes the LS line into a true executive limo. With this $12,500 special-order-only package, the car adds such impressive features as rear-seat infrared temperature sensors tied into the four-zone climate control system, a power-reclining right-rear seat with built-in massager and leg rest and a full rear-seat entertainment system with power 9in screens and wireless headphones.

Leg room in the rear is fantastic with or without the executive package, and though the leather doesn’t feel as high-class as some German or Italian cars, and the carpet is several leagues below the fabulous wool in the Jaguar XJ, it’s a tidy, spacious, and efficient office on wheels for those that need exactly that.

In the trunk, however, space is severely limited. The hybrid battery pack takes up so much space here that getting in a full-size suitcase or a week’s worth of luggage might be impossible. And that simply won’t do when heading to the airport for that last-minute trip Nice.

Technical
With a hybrid drive train, you might expect the LS600hL to be more about efficiency than power or performance, but you’d be wrong. Lexus’ hybrids aren’t about efficiency per se, but about efficiently adding power without increasing displacement. It’s a high-tech way of turning a V8 into a V12-rival, or so the company argues.

In reality, there is a great deal of torque down low, and the 438hp 5.0L V8 engine arguably feels even more well-suited to the task of hauling the big sedan around than it does doing high-performance duty in the non-hybrid IS-F. And at the end of the day, the combination of a small hybrid system and a big V8 is probably a bit more fuel-efficient than a 6.0L V12 would be.

But that’s not to say it’s objectively efficient. The EPA rating for the car is 20mpg city/22mpg highway. With some judicious and traffic-maddening hyper-miling techniques, you can even get that up to about 28mpg city and 30mpg highway. But drive the car like it’s meant to be driven, or like any normal person would, and you’ll quickly be back down to the figures provided by the EPA, or worse.

The three-mode air suspension system works quite well, absorbing the bumps with aplomb and transmitting almost no vibration into the cabin, but it does leave the car feeling a bit over-engineered and numb in the driver’s seat. Not that this car is in any way about the driver.

Mating the big V8 with the hybrid power train and delivering power to all four wheels is an E-CVT transmission with ‘Sequential Shiftmatic’ - doublespeak for a very smooth but essentially computerized and characterless gearbox. Getting anything other than pleasingly brisk acceleration and buttery smooth shifts from the device is impossible, and even trying to do otherwise gives the prickly feeling of a normally stolid Japanese engineer looking on with a very disapproving facial expression.

On the Road
The one really useful and pleasing function of the hybrid drive system isn’t it’s power-adding or its (in)efficiency. It’s the low-speed electric-only cruising you can do in parking lots, in your driveway or in crowded downtown areas. The silence, the smoothness, and the generally futuristic feeling of driving such a large vehicle under electric power alone is actually enticing.