German Car Zone

I am trying to look at this Lexus from the perspective of a traditional Lexus buyer...and in that way, it does seems to make sense. The interior is not threatening and does not require any retraining by the overwhelmingly +50 LS crowd.

But again, Lexus has missed an opportunity to do something remarkable. The new GS has a good interior, which looks greta and works even better. But the LS simply seems to be a hodgepodge without style.

But still, I will reserve judgement until I actually sit inside the car and see perhaps a different wood combination. Apparently, the car's ride is perfect: the S class MB is at times caught out by some very bad roads and it's suspension simply gets confused, maybe the Lexus does not suffer from that. It will be an interesting comparison though.

DOS was a great operating system, very stable and easy to use.

I disagree Bozzor. I drive a new GS300 to work everday, and there are MAJOR ergonomic flaws in the interior. While the touch screen is great, the arrangement and placement of various other controls is very poor. Our E-class is much much better in this regard and the interior looks vastly more elegant than the GS.

I think Lexus has got it a bit wrong with the LS's interior also. Theres a huge plethora of buttons and it all looks a bit too overwhelming. I don't think Lexus has grasped the psychology of interior design yet, an area MB has mastered to a T. The S interior relaxes whereas the LS seems to overwhelm.

Still, it depends if it's easy to use. Maybe, with their own reasoning, they decided to stay away from the "looks good but doesn't work so well" integrated controller school of thought that's all the rage these days in Germany.

It might appeal well to the Lexus clientele, who may not be as interested in working to know the car, instead just settling in and being comfortable. Speculation, but you get the idea.

Either way, I'd have to own and drive one to find out for sure. That's not likely to happen.

Just seen some photos of the LS460 interior with different color schemes and well, does not look that bad. Not as good as BMW/Audi/MB ones, but still pretty acceptable. The road tests so far seem to bear out the Lexus philosophy as working in the real world. But the car rolls a lot: clearly it is not trying to challenge the Germans on their own turf, but offers something different to appeal to different buyers.