Gadgetory

this little Lexus has a lot on its shoulders in fact nothing less than recruiting the next generation of Lexus fires that will sustain the company for like the next 20 years and this particular model is their longest ball toward that goal let's drive the 2012 CT 200h premium with the F Sport package and check the deck now as I've told you before we review the previous Lexus CT we had I love the ergonomics in this guy this lay down console is kind of mid sixties thunderbird and it's exactly where your hand wants to go for climate your media controls but here's where the ergonomics start to fall apart this hole right here is for this thing the Lexus electronics holder pretty clever huh you stick it in there and it kind of sits in the hold you turn that around you can stick your phone in there and a little Universal kind of a clamp holds it but it's got issues first of all when you're driving it rattles in creaks that is not in the Lexus playbook of quality then there's this deal it's always crooked that makes me crazy it gets in the way of reaching other knobs how do I get to the drive knob how do I get to the tuning knob without kind of contorting myself and worst of all if the steam heater buttons are up and your passenger turns this thing they share that button off right there okay enough of that the ergonomic nightmares continue small as they may be here's your USB aux port right here where a door wants to close on it but can't because anything you plug in there is going to keep the door from closing and even if it didn't where's the little port for the cable to trail out so I can leave that closed the little Lexus details are missing right here made me nuts now more substantial stuff we've got the head unit here with a generally excellent Lexus interface and it's a little pop up kind of a deal you can set different angles of tilt and we've shown you this many times on Lexus cars I like everything on it I like the way they lay things out it's clear it's easy to use and I have actually fallen in love with this the remote touch controller which has this little upside down little jog puck right here you move around things by moving a cursor it has haptic free back which locks you or makes those things sticky really great for using this with minimal distraction and in these days when the federal government's talking about killing Hall distraction this is a leader once you get to where you're going you use enter menu map or this scroll rocker here to make things happen this big knob here does not control the interface it just controls the drive mode counterclockwise for eco push to be normal all the way over for sport sport puts this guy in a mode where it's going to have a revised throttle curve more aggressive acceleration it ups the voltage from the battery to the electric motor to get more oomph out of it and it tightens up the electric power steering over here is easy mode if you press that the car will do whatever it can to run up to one mile add up to 25 miles an hour on battery only direct link to the electric motor and things on the dash change as you change the drive controller when you're in normal mode you get a charge or discharge gauge turn the sport and that dynamically turns into a tach very trick and notice it all turns red to the media options are pretty excellent you got am/fm satellite radio a single slot CD and you've got aux and USB as I showed you Bluetooth hands-free and bluetooth streaming a general note about all these options I'm only going to Ballpark where all this tech cost somewhere between fifty one hundred and sixty five hundred dollars to get this car CNET style i'm ballparking it because this car has the most complicated configuration i've ever seen in any car in all the years we've been reviewing tech in cars it's bewildering on their website you're going to need the dealer to help you through it or just buy what's on a lot under hood of CT 200 is basically prius stuff 1.8 liter inline-4 atkinson cycle which is a lean-burn motor and then coupled to that's an electric motor the numbers are kind of funky 98 horsepower on the engine 80 horsepower electric motor but it sums to 134 horse it's not totally additive 105 foot-pounds of torque but that doesn't include the electric motors various contributions depending on drive mode and throttle profile gets this 30 150 pound car 260 in the mid to high nine second range and delivers 43 40 mpg one choice only on the drivetrain it's an electronic CVT gearbox with that little funky upside down putter shifter front wheel drive only and of course the drive mode selector is the key tech feature it's the thing I want to find out mostly on this little quick drive is how does the sport mode compared to the standard mode or the eco mode so when I go to sport here I get my tach I get my read gauges now and we'll try a little acceleration so I've been driving the car around mostly in normal mode I think I'll detect if it's significantly different in a one two three sort of a launch here yeah definitely a little more spine in it when you get to the sport mode the steering does tighten up a little the ratio seems to change or the weighting changes at least as electric power steering in this car at no point does it make a very interesting sound it's the hybrid it's meant to be more refined than it is growling and that EC VT keeps the RPMs largely in one range all the time but I think what Lexus has done here is they put together a car that has that Lexus quality with the exception of that damn phone holder and a lighter footprint it doesn't have some of the bum bass that you associate with Alexis being this sort of Mercedes fighter but I could definitely learn to light this car an awful lot again the ergonomics in the cabin are one of my favorite things second favorite thing is the integration of the powertrain it's very elegant and third thing is the practicality of the body style it's a small car but you can get enough in here to make it an everyday sort of a hauler for small runs for things okay the CT doesn't seem that style is going to run you in a 37 38 grand giving one of those complicated option arrays you're gonna pick that's not bad for a Lexus but a lot of folks look at this and say that's not what I have in mind as a Lexus it's a compact car that's one challenge they've got to figure out the bigger issue though is Americans have yet to find a place in their head for the concept of a premium compact it's gonna have to be a matter of time before this car and others like it make a slot for itself you