RX300 has such vital statistics

A 3-litre V6, auto trans, and a big body. Vital statistics all, and giving any car a fair chance of meeting this writer’s approval. Easy driving is my thing, and comfort too. That makes me a safer driver, and puts my fellow motorists in a safer position.

A Lexus logo doesn’t do any harm either. Except maybe to the pocket. But if you can look to a Lexus in the first place, the pocket is probably deep enough.

The RX300 is aiming at serious competition in the luxury SUV stakes. Jeep Grand Cherokee, Ford Explorer, Range Rover. In this market anyway, because while the US vehicles there might be considered less than pure luxury in their home place, over here they’re definitely on the upper side of the hill.

Anyway, the RX300 comes with a couple of proven pedigrees. The badge, of course, a luxury brand which only took five of the last ten years to build from scratch. That alone was some feat, and it was done on quality, not hype.

Then there’s the 3-litre engine, well proven in the mid-ranger GS300 saloon as a smooth, tractable, and eminently civilised motor which can be gunned to fun if one feels like it.

The auto trans in the RX300 is without frills, except for some software which smoothens the shifts even under gunning. I like that. Sometimes all the extra bits like manual-option or ‘J’ gates negate the essential reason for auto ... that it IS auto.

I couldn’t try out the off-road ability of the RX300 because I didn’t want to bring it into the mud during the foot and mouth scare. So what I had to work with for the duration was essentially a road cruiser.

It looks the part. The shovel-angled nose is distinctive. There are no sharp corners. All the windows aft of the B-pillar are mirrored like the cool military shades of the sixties. And the rear is nicely different from most of the competition.

Inside is NOT Starship Enterprise, which might have been a temptation to Lexus stylists if it hadn’t been that the car was aimed mainly for the US market. Americans like their SUVs butch more than screaming sci-fi.

For the same reason, it is quite practical. Lots of places to take cans, cups, bottles and bits. All big. Strangely though, nowhere to tidily stow a mobile without having it rattle around .

But there’s plenty of room for occupants to rattle about or do whatever else they like. The review car had leather seats which were very well shaped. Those in the back split 60/40 and also move forward individually by a significant distance, in case extra space is needed in the boot area. Easily one-handed moving, too.

The same boot area is on the high side as far as the floor is concerned, but this is to be expected in a 4WD. Even in a Lexus 4WD.

Before going the road, a word about the information display. It is a decently big screen in the centre of the dash, and it can show trip info such as mpg and average speed, audio info for the radio and inbuilt CD changer, and aircon system details. When it becomes available later this year, the £5,500 extra-cost navigation/information system is also operated through the screen.

More to the point, it’s a touch-screen system which works very well, and saves an awful lot of buttons on the dash. Everything will be done this way in the near future, mark my words. If for no other reason than it is cheaper than mechanical-electro switches to provide in this computerised and multiplexed age.

(Maybe there IS a little Starship Enterprise about it after all ...?)

Enough static detail. Cars are nothing if not driven. So switch on.

Silence of the Lexus. (They are, aren’t they?)

The parking brake is one of these foot-operated efforts from pre-war American cars. I never use them with an auto ... just leave the gearshift in P.

The V6 pulls us smoothly away. Head for the far west. (I wish. The Bluebell-Red Cow Challenge was actually what we got. But at least we had that auto.)

Anyway, over a little time later there was opportunity to put the RX300 through its paces across a pretty varied range of roads in County Kildare. A county which has some of the best and some of the worst. I didn’t notice much of either, because this car doesn’t bother much about what it’s running on.

Sure, it’s no sports car. It is not meant to be. There’s another Lexus for that, and coming here in the summer. But the RX300, driven without passion because that is not its thing, absorbs the hard parts of the Irish motoring world and levels them with the better parts. Because that IS what is its thing.

It attracts attention too. The Big L has established itself in Ireland. Parking in front of a funeral parlour distracted some of those inside through a window. The undertaking crew, measuring it up for conversion as a hearse, maybe?

(I have been, and sometimes I still am, a funeral undertaker. I understand these things.)

Vital statistics again. About 21mpg. The 0-100kph doesn’t matter, but it can be respectable if you want. The depreciation I don’t know. Though the undertaker cares.

At £50,000-plus I’d have liked cruise control. And a left-side rear-view mirror that dipped a little so I could see the kerb. And a rear-end sensor to make close parking easier.

Still, I got to feel very comfortable with this one. More so than even with other cars which had those mentioned RX300 omissions. And I got to like it quickly.

So did Trish, who drove it for a couple of days before me. If she hadn’t had to go away, sans car, for a while, I might not have had a chance to learn to love it.

It’s on our planned fleet. The Lotto win one.

Addendum: I just told Judith behind the bar that I’d written an article about a £50,000-plus car at her counter.

“It must be a Lexus,” she said.

Not a Mercedes-Benz? Not a BMW? Why?

“Does anybody get excited about a Mercedes-Benz?” she asked.

Such are vital statistics.