fiddler1

hope this is not a too dumb ques, what are the major differences in a es350 and a gs350? one is a rwd but what else. ride, fuel economy etc

Ratchey

More HP, 8 speed tranny, paddle shifters, sportier handling, less leg room, and a hell of a lot more fun to drive.

pab12

They are completely different cars. The ES uses the same platform as the Avalon, which is based on the Camry, while the platform for the GS is unique.

The ES also has a transverse engine while the engine in the GS is longitudinal.

Other than using variations of the same engine the ES is no more closely related to the GS than it is to the LS.
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Angle parked in a parallel universe

JDR76

I'll take a stab at it.

The ES is aimed more towards luxury. You'll get a quiet ride, it'll be softer/smoother and quieter than a GS. The ES will have slightly less power, and is FWD. ES has a little less front seat room (pretty negligible, actually), but a much bigger rear seat.

The GS is about sport. Ride will be much more firm, has an optional adaptive/adjustable suspension, very high quality interior materials, more power, and comes standard with RWD, while AWD is optional.

It's all about what your preferences are. If you favor a soft ride, you'll never be happy with a GS. Likewise, if you prefer to toss your car around corners, I don't believe you'll ever be happy with an ES.

Both are great cars, just two different flavors of mid size Lexus sedan here.

Brent1944

AND not to mention more expensive

SW17LS

I wouldn't automatically say that. I prefer a soft ride, and I was very happy with my luxury package GS. In fact I was surprised by how much I liked the ride. It's firmer than the ES, but at speed it's much more solid "vaultlike" than the ES, which makes it feel flatter and more composed at speed.

lesz

I think that sums things up pretty well.

The one thing that I would qualify, though, is that, while the GS does have a bit of extra front seat leg room, with the larger hump needed to get power to the rear wheels, when I sit in a GS, I actually feel like there is less lateral room and, to me, the front seat room feels tighter than it does on the ES.

The ES and GS are each best suited for buyers with very different driving priorities. There are a few who post on this board for whom buying a GS would likely have been a better choice, and there are a few who post on the GS board for whom buying an ES likely would have been a more appropriate choice.

Putting aside that the fact that the GS has some nice interior upgrades and that it is more expensive (although deeper discounting available on the GS can significantly reduce the difference in the actual selling prices of the two cars), I don't think of the GS as being as much of an upgrade over the ES as I think of moving from an ES to GS or of moving from a GS to an ES as moving from one type of car to a different type of car.