You definitely could have ordered one or find one in another dealer's inventory. You experienced a case of salesman telling you anything to make a sale.

 

Well...... to me for not looking into it.

 

I can't speak for the 2015 or 2016 model years, but, for 2017, Lexus has been shipping virtually no NX to dealers with the Safety System, including the adaptive cruise control, auto braking, LDA, etc.

I've been looking for an NX to replace my GX since about the first of the year. After having had a vehicle with the full suite of safety features, I won't ever buy another vehicle without those features. During those several months, I've regularly been searching the inventories of all of the Lexus dealers within several hundred miles of my location, and NXs with the safety package (and luxury package) are virtually non-existent. About 3 months ago, I found 1 NX with the safety package, but it was in a color not acceptable to me. From my last check a couple of days ago, I found only 1 NX with the safety package, but it was an NX 300h, and its color was also not acceptable to me.

While I likely could custom order an NX equipped the way that I want it to be equipped, I am reluctant to buy a vehicle that I can't see, test drive, etc. first, and, also, the level of discounting available on special order vehicles is significantly lower than what it would be for a vehicle bought from the dealer's inventory.

I suspect that, for the targeted market for the NX, Lexus has determined that they need to be keeping the NX MSRP in the mid $40,000 range, and, thus, they are not building many NX with the safety package and luxury package, which drives the MSRP up into the high $40,000 range. However, for the 2018 model year, all NX supposedly will come with the safety package standard. For me, that may be too late because, after looking for a 2017 NX equipped the way I want it for several months, I've started to turn my attention to other small SUV options.

 

I have a 2017 NX F-sport with the Adaptive Cruise Control. When searching for the car, we noticed that out in California, if the car had AWD, there was a high chance it had the adaptive cruise control too. I was able to figure out that if the car was $48,000+ MSRP, it was "fully loaded", minus the LDA. We couldn't find one car with LDA.

 

I find it super annoying that the button needs to be pressed every time. My startup sequence is now this:

1. Sport mode
2. EV mode
3. Cruise control on
4. Set cruise to minimum distance
5. Disable cruise
6. Activate lane keeping