First Drive: 2013 Lexus GS 450h [w/video]
Lexus’ Best Compromise Yet
Ever since the unexpectedly became the Xerox of hybrids and a greenie icon, has been trying to figure out how to apply the technology to its other models. Its results have been decidedly mixed, nowhere more so than with its luxury lineup. But with the 450h, Toyota thinks it has finally figured out what a hybrid luxury car should be.
From a sales perspective, the first-generation GS 450h was a disappointment. While a couple years ago, Lexus just hasn’t been able to move the metal. Introduced to much fanfare in 2006 as a 2007 model, the GS was Lexus’ second hybrid and the first rear-wheel-drive hybrid on the market. Lexus touted it as a performance sedan, even as Toyota was heavily marketing its hybrids as fuel sippers. Whether or not, they never took to the hybrid GS. Sales peaked at just below 1,800 in that first year and have gone down in each successive year. In 2010, Lexus sold barely 300 GS hybrids, roughly four percent of total GS sales, which were about 7,000.
The cognitive dissonance presented by Lexus hybrids has been an issue since the brand launched its first, the 2006 SUV. Only marginally more powerful than the standard RX, its improvement in fuel economy was similarly slight at launch. The – the brand’s halo car before the sports car came along – is a six-figure, 20-mile-per-gallon hybrid marketed as having V12 performance with V8 fuel economy, the rough equivalent of ordering a Diet Coke with your Super Size Big Mac Extra Value Meal. The “Lexus Prius” , with neither particularly good fuel economy (35 mpg combined) nor any sporting aspirations, has been a critical and sales disaster and is . While Toyota’s simple, “better mileage” definition of its hybrids is clear, Lexus has combined green machine and muscle car in varying doses, such that you never quite know what you’ll be getting with a gas-electric Lexus.
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