Toyota recently set up a tuner arm in Europe. The purpose of Toyota Motorsports GmbH, or TMG as they’ve been dubbed, is a bit vague at the moment. But they’ve launched they’re first project, and it’s based on the Lexus LS 460.
Truth be told, we weren’t fans of the Lexus GS 350 we drove earlier this year. It’s a solid luxury car and all, but it lacked a certain yaarrrrgghhh in its character, which made it look as dull as the BMWs and Mercs it’s trying to compete with. But then we got this one, a Lexus GS 450h, the hybrid version of that same car. Only this time, it has the F-Sport kit.
Car prices are hard to come by in the UAE, especially as they quietly keep changing every few weeks and salespeople can’t be bothered to answer phones. However, one thing Al Futtaim Motors did right was posting their prices on the internet, saving us a lot of hassle while we update our buyer guide. But when we were updating prices for Lexus, we noticed something very “off” about the prices. Many of the 2013 prices seemed to be much lower than 2012 prices.
As I’m flying over Dubai and Sharjah towards Ras Al Khaimah in a Bell 412 crammed in with 13 other people, I am thinking that helicopter travel isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. The flight is noisy, tight and industrial, completely at odds with the “luxury” experience we were supposed to be having. But damn is it quick. We reached our destination in only 20 minutes, landing at the Banyan Tree resort at the northern tip of the Emirates, having enjoyed a great view and not feeling fatigued at all for the 2013 Lexus LS launch event.
So if you thought that the crazy automobile recall saga had ended, you were wrong. Since our last post on the recalls earlier this year, there were an insane amount of recalls that followed, from almost every car manufacturer in the world you can ever think of, almost all of them being issued following instructions from the U.S.-based NHTSA agency. And we could not bother to post each recall issue as a separate story, the task being as equally tedious as the reader-response to these. Here are all the recalls that could potentially be relevant to our region since April 2012.
We kind of weren’t interested in testing this one. We’ve driven the Lexus RX 350 several times before, and while it’s a great car, it isn’t the kind of car you look forward to, especially since we’re trying to take a break from testing cars at the moment. Ah, but this is the RX 450h, the hybrid version of the luxury mommy-mobile. For some reason, we had visions of the slowpoke CT 200h in our minds when this RX was home-delivered to us, but we assumed wrong.
The Lexus LF-CC will be making its World Premiere at the 2012 Paris Motor Show. First introduced as a concept at this year’s Detroit Motor Show and Geneva Motor Show, this rear-wheel drive mid-sized coupe will feature a 4-cylinder hybrid engine.
This is the latest version of the Lexus ES 350. This isn’t really a car we give a damn about. It’s based on a stretched Toyota Camry, it’s got wrong-wheel-drive in a RWD segment, and it’s become the car of choice for private taxi services, so you can expect to be cut off by one of these on the highway. But when we drove the car, it’s purpose became clear in the first minute itself, and we really started liking it for that.
The Lexus ES range, essentially the luxury version of the Toyota Camry, but you’d never know it just by looking at it, has been revamped for the 2013 model year, and it is now available in the GCC, with the UAE launch taking place today.
Photos of the revamped 2013 Lexus LS 460 have been revealed early, depicting a car that is largely the same as the old one, but with a heavy all-round facelift and apparently an all-new interior. An LS 460 F-Sport model is also available for the first time.