2025 Lexus GX 550 20K Mile Review: Not Perfect, but Pretty Close
After racking up 20k miles on this 2025 Lexus GX 550 in less than a year, a couple of issues have emerged, but the owner still loves it.
The all-new Lexus GX 550 debuted for the 2024 model year, meaning that it’s still a pretty fresh product by anyone’s standards. The new GX debuted to tremendous fanfare, and rightfully so, as the rugged SUV is quite an attractive vehicle with loads of power and off-road capability baked right in. Thus, the Lexus GX 550 has proven to be popular not only with mall crawlers and soccer moms, but also, overlanders keen to modify it and push the SUV to its literal limits.
One key question revolving around any new vehicle like the GX 550, however, is how well it will hold up over the miles and years, but we’re getting an early hint in this new video from the YouTube channel Wimya. Our host has now owned his 2025 Lexus GX 550 for 11 months, but has used it quite a lot – driving the SUV 20,000 miles thus far, in fact, which makes now the perfect time to review how well it has performed in terms of reliability, comfort, performance, off-road capability, fuel economy, and maintenance costs.
In this case, we are talking about a slightly modified GX that has been treated to a lift kit with 22-inch Vossen wheels and 35-inch Nitto tires, but it hasn’t been driven off-road – rather, our host calls it a “pavement princess,” as it’s his wife’s daily driver. Regardless, in terms of the overall ownership experience, both he and his wife love the new GX, and highly recommend it to anyone. Having said that, their time with the GX hasn’t exactly been flawless, either.
Rather, their GX is experiencing a transmission issue where harsh downshifts occur from second to first gear when coming to a complete stop. It’s a common problem that thus far doesn’t have a repair or fix, despite the fact that quite a few owners have experienced it, apparently. Another common issue this GX is experiencing is “hood flutter,” where the outer skin of the hood becomes detached from the internal skeleton framing, causing it to literally “flap” in the wind. There is a fix involving adding adhesive, but our host notes that if this isn’t done properly, it can cause ripples and dimples to form in the hood.
Another negative is fuel economy, which isn’t exactly great, as our host is getting less than 300 miles on a tank – though at least some of that can be attributed to the larger wheels and tires. Oil changes aren’t cheap at around $200 each, but otherwise, this Lexus GX 550 has held up quite well over 20k miles – in fact, the interior still looks like new.
Despite some minor quibbles, our host and his wife love their GX, and haven’t had any other issues aside from what’s been noted here, giving it a solid vote of confidence for anyone that might be on the fence in regard to adding a new SUV to their own garage.
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