Originally Posted by lesz

At first, I would have doubted the rumors about the GS going away because I would have thought that Lexus would not have wanted to leave itself without a model that competes with cars like the BMW 5-series, but, as I look at the facts, I don't think that it is out of question that Lexus would drop the GS.

Sales numbers for the GS are very low, and they have been getting worse over time. The last time I checked year-to-year sales numbers, Lexus had sold only about half as many GS in 2016 as they did in 2015. Demand for the GS is so low that, if you wanted to buy a new GS, discounting from MSRP is significantly greater than it is, say, for the ES. And used values for the GS seem to drop much faster than they do for other Lexus models. I checked the used car inventories at a few of dealers in the area, and I found two dealers that had had both a 2014 GS CPO and a 2014 ES CPO in their inventories. The 2014 CPO GS, in both cases, was fully loaded, and the 2014 ES was nicely-equipped but not fully loaded, but at the two dealerships, the CPO ES had an asking price that was, in one case, higher than that of the CPO GS and, in the other case, about the same as the CPO ES even though the two GS vehicles would have had an initial MSRP that was $10,000 or more higher than the initial MSRP of the ES. That represents a huge difference in the depreciation of the GS compared to that of the ES. If you look at the 4th Generation GS board here, you will regularly find threads with people talking about how steep the depreciation is on the GS because there just isn't much demand for them, new or used.

I wonder if the introduction of the RC coupe might have taken potential buyers away from the GS, but, in any case, considering the low demand for the GS, it would not shock me if Lexus decided to discontinue the GS, and, yes, that would open the door for an AWD ES.

That said, if there is an AWD version of the ES in the future, I would not expect that to happen until there is 7th Generation ES, which most likely would be in 2019, but it could be as early as 2018 or as late as 2020. To give the current 6th Generation ES an AWD option, it would take too many design changes to make sense on both the interior and exterior of the vehicle to get power to the rear wheels.

In answer to the question posed in the OP, while I think that it would be nice for Lexus to add an AWD version of the ES, such a car would not be one that I'd have any interest in. Since I will always have a different AWD SUV to drive on slick roads, I have no need for a more sure-footed AWD ES, and, for my driving style at this point in my life, a FWD ES fits my needs perfectly. Further, I'm not interested in paying the premium for an AWD ES or in accepting the penalty of lower mpg that would come with an AWD ES.