Shirt's sleeve needs to be out by a few millimeters.
Three millimeters, to be precise. I am, of course, being so particular with the finest fabrics that I have.
One which I wore to Glen's marriage because of the very question that i allow myself to ask today .
A preposterous question. Is Lexus really luxurious? and I brought you along to answer just that.
Meet then ladies and gentlemen the most befitting car for our kind of question and you'll see a lot of people like me around because
this very car has been launched in India, today for close to 2 crore rupees. The crème de la crème
The flagship of the Lexus range. The car that launched the brand in 1989.
The Lexus
LS
500 h
Let's forget the luxury question for a while and ask ourselves a new question.
Does the LS
500h look beautiful? Well take a look at it.
The styling looks as complex, as beautiful and as busy as a saturday night on Shibuya square in downtown Tokyo.
But one is not to judge a
book by its cover, said the wise men. So that's not dwell too long on the looks and instead find out what's inside this lexicon.
Now the comparison of this car
with Mercedes S-class is going to be inevitable but then through one glance on the inside and you would know
that the differences between the two cars
get lost in translation. I say that because the interiors overall seem to look
like a Japanese adaptation of a German screenplay, for example, there are no doortrims instead you get the Kiriko hand-cut
glass and then there is this origami derived pleat folding technique, which seems to be put together
by thin skillful fingers. I say that because it can only be put together
by human hand. No machine can
do it and if that's not enough it's time to get introduced to a word called Omotenashi.
You're gonna forget the word if I don't say it again. So I'll say it again. Omotenashi,
which is the Japanese concept of selfless hospitality based on anticipating your needs. So before I get in the car,
the car is gonna raise itself up by 40 millimetres to match the seat height to my hip, allowing
me to get into the grace of a Geisha.
What you didn't see is an extension of the Omotenashi
philosophy. For the seat bolstering when i got onto it, opened up for me to take rest and later
envelopes you like a celestial lopes.
Then there is the soft glow ambient lighting everywhere.
Reminiscent of traditional Japanese Andon lanterns. It's finally time then
now to strap on but when you are about to do that you'll notice an instrument cluster which is an ode to the Lexus supercar.
LFA and then of course, you have world's largest hud display. Time to start the car
and get driving. But in the car like this, you wouldn't do that. You would, instead, sit in the rear seat.
Now, we all know that the rear seat in the Mercedes S-class does give you a great
massage. But the rear seat experience in the LS 500 seems to be the equivalent of spending a million
Yen at a Japanese relaxation center.
Of course you can stretch your legs out in a very Ottoman fashion. The seat is reclinable
but to class leading 48 degrees and the seat itself comes with 22
adjustability options and then there are these spot heaters so that you can have your left butt
cheek a couple of degrees warmer than your right butt cheek.
If you wished so.
All of this
while the high-end 23 speakers soothe you with serene gods from the Tokyo metropolitan symphony orchestra.
And yes the car also gets two gearboxes and 10 virtual gears.
Amidst all this luxury, we can't call luxury yet because we haven't answered that question but
amidst all this jazz, if you notice
we haven't spoken of the engine at all. And that's because the car doesn't get an engine. It gets two electric motors
coupled with an engine which is a 3.5 liter V6
petrol one churning enough horses and torque to catapult this huge car,
from zero to hundred in just about five seconds.
Time for the question now. Is Lexus really luxurious?
I can't tell that yet. Because not while the car is standing still like this and Lexus says that I can't drive one.
I think, because, I'm not dressed luxurious enough.
All I can tell you today though, is what I've learned. That, Lexus is a rolling exemplar of Japanese craftsmanship, technology and hospitality.
Thank you for joining me, ladies and gentlemen, in my incomplete inadequate quest. I'm sorry. See you next time.
Yeah...PD Army, PD Army....All right three two one action run out.