We didn’t see it coming because, on any other type of road, the IS clearly exhibits Lexus’s traditional top priority: serenity. On typical highway surfaces, minute twitches in the steering wheel and nearly imperceptible shifts of the body offer only the slightest hint of what lurks within. But charge into a series of quick bends and the IS completely changes its character. Turn-in is crisper in the Lexus than in either the BMW or the Cadillac, a fact borne out by its first-place slalom finish in spite of a mediocre skidpad performance. More important, the Lexus is utterly imperturbable. Bumps that send other cars skittering off-line or scrambling to maintain their course are absorbed and dispatched, but not kept completely hidden from the driver.

It used to be that, in this class, there was a clear divide in terms of refinement between the BMW inline-six and the engines offered by competitors. That gap is rapidly shrinking. Both the Cadillac’s and the Lexus’s Vs are surprisingly close to the BMW straight-six, but the IS’s is smoother than the ATS’s. And its eight-speed automatic is quicker and more seamless than the Caddy’s six-speed though basically on par with BMW’s transmission.

Press the start button, spin the drive-mode selector to Sport Plus, and commit; the Lexus will let you drive the LCDs right off it. All those techy sporting hints in the cockpit are backed up and then some. The IS has, as another editor observed, the feel and responses of a less heavily styled car. The Infiniti has gadgets to "help" you, the BMW has motor and hereditary manners, and the Caddy is a milled ingot of doubly refined handling. But the Lexus puts it all together better and lets you enjoy it more, for less money—even optioned to the gills—than anything else here.