Them wheels look stunning.

 

No one said that but it's one of the first and easiest metrics any customer can immediately grasp "wow this is roomy." Interior room is very deliberate anyway and not by chance. This is why cars keep growing and growing. Competitor is X size and cars in that class have to follow or eat the dust.

 

I finally saw one Crown on the road. it looked pretty cool.

 

I was interested at first but became disappointed with it the more I learned. Missing lots of features like HUD. I don't like the huge wheel well gap. And the head room looks quite lacking. Big miss by Toyota.

 

This is spreadsheet car reviewing. The ES has some shortcomings, but legroom in either row is not one of them. It's unimaginable to me that Lexus is losing sales over a legroom shortage.

Now, rear seat thigh support and headroom both are only middling, but that's not what you called it out for.

 

Yep.

People buy cars mostly because of how they look and how they make them feel owning and driving them. LOL at anyone deciding between an Accord vs an ES in the first place, let alone legroom being the deciding factor.

My wife recently was shopping for a new SUV. She ended up with an IS350 F Sport. That’s about as far away from a spreadsheet decision as there is.

This forum would work a lot better if there was a block list function.

 

You can ignore (hide) an individual user's posts. I had to do that to one especially annoying idiot in the LS sub-forum.

 

Might be in the minority, but this car does nothing for me. Nada. Can’t even think of one thing I like about it.

 

I am sure that legroom is not a big factor for people not picking an ES, but my 16 year old son likes the extra inch or so legroom in our Accord over the ES. Both our teenagers were also not happy that the ES didn’t have heated rear seats (whereas our Avalon that the ES replaced as well as the Accord have heated rear seats).

I agree with the Crown being designed for empty nesters and don’t agree that there is any younger or family demographic. I think the older people who bought Avalons and the old Venzas are the who they are targeting. My parents have been driving Avalons since 2002 and are really interested in the Crown because it is a little higher - it’s getting harder to get into the Avalon, the ES is no higher and maybe a bit lower than an their Avalon, and something like a Sienna is a little higher than they want). Price wise they’ll be practically the same - a Crown limited trim is about the same price and options as the ES300h with premium package.

One final thought, I’ve said this before, a base ES is not a huge step up from a fully equipped Accord. While we are really happy with our ES and it has many nice things over an Accord or Camry, we don’t live in our cars so saving 10k getting an Accord was a consideration when we got our ES. Getting my family comfortably, with good mileage, safely and reliably from point A to point B are the most important requirements for us. LOL if you want, I certainly understand others will have different requirements, desires, needs and motivations.

 

I have to agree about the base ES not being a huge step up. Indeed, I think Lexus has cheapened the car a bit too much in base trim, and there isn’t that much to make it worthwhile. It’s interesting to go back and look at ES brochures from previous generations (available online) to see how they stressed that this was a luxury car, and by and large it was. Now you almost have to get at least the luxury trim to get that feel, and really it takes the UL to make it feel fully like a luxury car in my opinion, where the price becomes more justifiable.

 

The only thing that’s exclusive to a UL is the rear side sunshades, for the 2023 models in USA at least.

 

The only exclusive feature of a UL is indeed the rear side manual sunshades, at least for the last few model years; however, it should not be assumed that the Luxury trim will be equipped with all of the features similar to those of the Ultra Lux trim. If that were the case, there would be no need for the Luxury trim in the first place. In my experience, the vehicle template used for the Lux. trim usually has most of the UL options and features but not always.

 

Per the Lexus website, the UL model comes standard with the following which are optional on lower trims: in addition to the window shades, 18" noise reducing wheels (not available on base model), power open/close trunk with kick sensor, Lexus interface with 12.3" screen, intuitive parking assist with auto braking, rear pedestrian detection and panoramic view monitor (not available at all on base model). You might have missed all of these because you have to expand the categories as you move down the page.

 

UL's also have the Lateral Performance Dampers and the leather key FOB gloves included.

 

As does the Luxury Trim as of the last couple of MYs.