Took a trip up country today... 2 hours there, 2 hours back, some 300kms all up. Here's some random observations:

- The sat-nav gave me destination times which proved to be accurate to within 5 minutes. That's no mean task when the road covered both urban and motorway.

- With the COMFORT setting on all the way, the ride was buttery smooth. Any bumps I had observed and complained about in past posts at slow speed were absolutely ironed out at motorway cruising speed.

- I used the radar cruise control for most of the trip, over all speeds. It was the easiest way to reduce stress and driving workload, and it didn't let me down once. Only complaint was that sometimes while following a car that sped up, the system would take a long time to increase speed to follow it. I would have to nudge the accelerator for a while to get close again, then let the cruise control do its work.

- Loved the flat cornering. Sometimes I could feel the outside wheels 'pumping' themselves up to keep the body level.

- "Effortless" was the main ride and driving factor.

- Quiet. All the time. Even gunning it to pass at speed (and wow, what acceleration!) produced very little extra noise from engine.

- 10.3 litres/100km overall was an amazing economy. I had previously got 12 litres/100km in round town driving, so to get this further reduction close to the 9.3 that Lexus tout was great. It included many quick accelerations at highway speeds too, with headlights and aircon on for most of the trip.

- Wireless headsets are a boon. My granddaughter stayed enthralled at "The Bee Movie" for the best part of an hour and a quarter, and I didn't hear a sound from her or the audio. With the roof screen down, I wondered what part the tailgating motorists behind were watching! Only problem with the screen was that it blocked out the center mirror, and driving was awkward using the side mirrors.

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2007 LS600hL, 5 seat
2000 LX470 (traded)

Mercedes SL500 AMG (sun)
Mercedes SLK 230 (wife)
Suzuki Grand Vitara (rain & runaround)

 

Thanks for your impressions!!! So you 'chauffeured' your grandkid while she watched a film en route...she is quite lucky to have such a grandparent! Quiet, comfortable, and relatively efficient highway cruising...what the LS was built for. The LS 600h L in the US also can get the RSES with the 5-seater version too...I'd love to try the wireless headphones, just wondering since the DVD changer used for that is the front dash one, that means you can listen to the radio while the rear listens to the movie? Or just enjoy the peace and quiet?

 

That's the only drawback - using the headsets in the back means that I can't listen to radio. But then I rarely listen to CD's or radio anyway, so it's really a non-issue.

When I first tested out a DVD in the back (Bug's Life, my bench-test) a couple weeks back, I got the shock of my life. The audio quality was 10 times better than my sophisticated 5.1 home theater, and that has massive dual woofers and THX amp.

In the car I got better clarity and heard sounds on the track that were non-existent on my theater setup. While I realize a lot of that improvement came from the enclosed space and great absorbency from the cabin, the improvement was mind blowing.

Now to find someone I can trust to drive me round so I can use the back seat fulltime

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2007 LS600hL, 5 seat
2000 LX470 (traded)

Mercedes SL500 AMG (sun)
Mercedes SLK 230 (wife)
Suzuki Grand Vitara (rain & runaround)

 

Hi, nice car
We should really get a LS600 registry started

BTW here is a hint
You can add your car list and what not in your USER CP to your signature
That way you don't have to type it by hand or copy paste it from wordpad or whatever