2008 Lexus Ls460 L Sedan 4-door 4.6l on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Lexus gives Jay Leno a shot at driving its 2014 IS

After we drove a prototype of the 2014 Lexus IS, we were told that Lexus was shipping it back to Japan. As it turns out, late-night funnyman Jay Leno was already in the motherland with the coming sport sedan, and he lapped it around Fuji Motor Speedway with Chief Engineer Junichi Furuyama.
This was probably during his LFA drive two months ago, actually, when Furuyama-san was even more tight-lipped about the IS than he was a week ago, so Leno has to make the best guesses he can. Leno goes over the whole car, then takes it out for a casual spin, so at least you get to see it in action. As for Jay's take, you'll just have to watch the video below to find out.

Toyota and Lexus show off advanced safety research vehicle [w/video]

While Google and Audi explore the possibilities of autonomous vehicles, Toyota and its Lexus division are studying the intermediate step of vehicles equipped with a deep suite of technology that help drivers make the best decisions. Introduced at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the Lexus advanced safety research vehicle is an LS sedan fitted with three high-def color cameras to detect objects up to almost 500 feet away, 360-degree Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) lasers that can detect objects up to 220 feet away, three radar units to keep track of other vehicles at intersections, a precision odometer on the rear wheel, GPS that estimates orientation and an accelerometer.
Currently testing at a purpose-built 8.6 acre urban testing ground at the Higashi-Fuji Technical Center in Susono, Japan the Toyota research vehicle is being used to study how to make better drivers, as well as figuring out how to reduce crashes as the industry's journey through passive and active safety systems progresses. In the event of a crash, new rescue systems are also being tested.
Further investment is being put into the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) that would use shortwave signals to harness information from the car and from other vehicles on the road, as well as roadside infrastructure and even pedestrians. Toyota reasons it could then build a picture of interactions and, for instance, alert the driver to a potential collision at a blind intersection.

Lexus still planning seven-seat crossover

In case you're thinking, "But Lexus already has a seven-seat crossover in the GX 460," that's actually a proper SUV - the body-on-frame kind with the massive footprint and floaty handling. A report in Automotive News says that Lexus is trying to figure out how to produce a true crossover with space for seven humans, with the options narrowed down to growing the RX (pictured) or sorting out a brand new model.
How badly does the brand want it? Its chief told AN that another row is first on the list of dealer requests, that the offering could be worth 35,000 more sales per year and they don't care if it eats into five-seater RX sales - "We want it." But hey, when 40 percent of monthly sales are made up of the RX, and Lexus moved more than 103,000 of them in 2013, it's understandable that the company wouldn't mind risking a small hit for the chance to increase sales by a third of their current levels.
Toyota applied to trademark the name TX and that's already been mooted in reports as a replacement for the GX, said to end its life in 2016. The latest report, however, suggests that the GX might not go away since it's "highly profitable for the automaker, even at low volumes," and that "TX coding could merely be for a seven-seat variant of the RX 350." AN also wonders if this larger hauler would stay on the recently lengthened Toyota Highlander platform, which offers meager third-row seating, or switch to the rear-wheel-drive platform used by the IS and GS for tauter responsiveness. With Lexus saying it will be at least two years before it could be brought to market, we have a while to wait yet to find out.