Gadgetory

if Lexus wants to get them young this is their best bet may be their only bet let's drive the new 2014 is a 350 all wheel drive in F Sport trim and check the tech art spotting the new is is pretty darn easy big deep spindle grille Lexus style and look down at the rear quarter and seen this incredible swoop that comes up off the sill and meets the outside brow of the taillight that's very different it is a little bit longer check out that front seat legroom I can actually put the driver's seat so far back I can't even drive the car which for me is saying something now ordering and I ass is like ordering hashbrowns at the Waffle House a thousand combinations 250 or 350 all-wheel drive rear wheel drive f-sport available on any combination of the above so what's an F Sport it's basically better brakes cooler wheels adaptive suspension and variable steering no engine changes okay inside this new is cabin it's a real handsome thing they've gotten rid of some of the needless curved organic stuff and gotten a more angular look that I think fits a sporty car the materials have been brought up as well nice faux aluminum nice whatever this machine turn finishes and all the pleather is really good quality too now in the concept version of this car they promised us two 12-inch LCDs well you know concept cars we ended up with considerably less there is a seven inch main LCD right there navigation doesn't look a whole lot different than it has before slightly childish in this very kind of cool interior they've revised a lot of the cursor work on this car and notice when you go on top of a button it gets this big doughy glowing thing as well so that's a nice simple improvement here's the top menu you also see we have the Lexus app suite a lot of things live inside there that we have seen before no major changes and on Lexus cars the connection to the Internet is also through your phone it's not built in the way BMW Audi and soon General Motors are all gonna do it some of those apps show up as media sources as well as they should in one place thank you here's our iPod right here and bluetooth streaming as well let's take a look at how metadata forms from our iPod for example this is one of the better uses of the real estate to spell things instead of rotate scrolling them which I hate in a car now these guys are known for Mark Levinson audio that is optional as well and notice you've got sound profiles per source which I think might be new in this car so I'm setting up my iPod sound curve now that'd be separate from my FM radio for example notice in all of this I would absolutely kill I mean kill for a back button that isn't on the screen only I need a button right here under my thumb which brings us to this haptic feedback touch thing they called it remote touch I think it's like an upside down puck debut to the RX a few years ago and it's just not precise or positive enough I think it needs to go I'd kill for a knob with a click right now 2 3 5 2nd Street San Francisco California two three five second Street San Francisco California is this correct yes yes okay the key two tests were passed I can enter the address in one long phrase not bucket by bucket by bucket and it got it on the first try it was kind of slow though doing its processing but that doesn't distract you from driving as much as those other failings would have now this laid-back console I think is genius it's the only one I can think of in the car biz that's exactly at the angle of your fingertips when you pivot your elbow no one else does that it's so simple unfortunately too much of it is squandered on climate control these are your temperature thingies they're a sensor strip I don't need that that's really just tech filigree what I really want is it the dam not which still works better than anything else here's a huge great what do you use more than anything except the gas pedal and steering wheel when you drive the volume knob this one you can never get to looks easy right well think about it to go this way bang your head hits the gear shifter wherever it is ouch if you try and go this way it's this kind of tortured little twist of your wrist if you go this way you can't quite reach it around the gearshift there's no easy way to get to that thing that's a huge screw-up I'm pleased how they've done the seat heaters though and remember little things add up on a car when you live with it for years lots of these electronic switches reset every time you restart the car what's also clever is when you get back in the car when it's cold it automatically goes to 3 which will throw you for a minute what it's doing it's fast heating and then it gradually stops itself down to the one that I had before well thought out very Lexus now drive controls one choice only automatic gearbox not a dual clutch we'll talk about how many gears when we get to the engine bay but it's right here with a shiftable gate here to go up and down shift also you can get on the paddles of course they're wheel mounted and blessedly simple personality control over here you go counterclockwise to put it in Eco mode which you might do once in a while push the thing to go back to normal turn it once to go to sport which is going to sharpen up transmission and accelerator behavior turn it again for Sport Plus which will add sharper suspension and steering behavior now the real crowd-pleaser let's go to the instrument panel which they borrowed some of the technology are from the LFA supercar and I hate to break their hearts but it should have stayed there here's the trick you push the Menu button here on the wheel and we there we go that gauge in the middle which is a video gauge moves to the right on a little motor then exposing a whole bunch of additional menus you've got to the left of it when don't I want to see all those menus on the left when do I want to see less in my interface it's not often and I don't want my wallet within a mile of that dealership when the little motor that does this breaks and they got to I assume dig all this out to get to it no thanks now here in the bow we've got a three and a half liter v6 because this is a 350 to get a 250 you can fill in the blanks this v6 is sitting longitudinally drives the rear wheel standard drive the front wheels and the rear all-wheel drive in our optional configuration here your transmission is interesting if you get rear-wheel drive you get an 8-speed automatic if you get all-wheel drive you get a six-speed Automatic that's what we're going to be driving today you've got multi port as well as direct injection on the intake side here the logic goes that multi port is better for cruising or idle performance but direct injection is better when you're on the throttle so I'm seeing a combination here which adds some complexity but seems to pay off mpg nineteen city twenty six highway 28 highway if you get rear-wheel drive 306 horsepower 277 foot-pounds of torque gets this 3700 pound car up to 60 and 5.7 it's a tenth slower than the rear-wheel drive you don't give up much okay under way the biggest complaint I have about this car that I share with a lot of others is a kind of sleepy soft gearbox the shifts are kind of slow and this guy gets caught in its top two gears way too often way too much they've got the great engine note in this car as well you can hear that and you can even set the tact go red when you hit a preset rpm limit that's a lot of nice theater but it helps to inject a certain DNA you don't think of in a Lexus the ride is tuned towards softness not the same precision I would expect out of let's say a 335 is but it's got a certain lack of precision at the really sharp edge here's the bottom line for a buyer's tip this car among athletic sport sedans I think is the most comfortable riding not sloppy but comfortable and that sets it apart I think from a lot of the German and even American and Asian competition that tend to punish you from underneath this car you will feel refreshed in after a long drive if not quite as exhilarated from after a short twisty Drive okay let's price this guy a fourteen if' 350 s going out at about forty thousand three twenty two hundred bucks or so more for all-wheel-drive note that there are some sacrifices there you lose variable steering you get a 14-inch bigger turning circle and you get a six-speed not an eight-speed right go rear now the big pact is it takes you totally see that style is seventy seven hundred bucks to throw everything on this car including a few tech I didn't even show you on here this brings the car up to fifty thousand three seen that style it's a fair amount of change but this car is a nice blend of performance to the degree that you can actually use it and comfort to the degree that you will always appreciate