Lexus 550GX Road Test

Lexus GX 550 Overtrail

For those who want the punch line without having to read for it:

Lexus have come up with a winner.

The GX 550 is a large sized SUV that is more than merely off road capable. It is a 5 seater and being a Lexus is squarely aimed at the well heeled. It is an executive vehicle and yes, you do feel like a boss when in it.

I said large and I meant it. At 5,015mm long, 2,000mm wide and 1,870mm tall (it feels taller than even that) this is a brute of a machine and to cement that further it weighs in at 2.5 tons. It is the kind of elephant in a room that you will not be able to ignore. It is also better looking than an elephant blending chunky straight lines with folded metal accentuating the blockiness of the look that it manages to carry off without offense.

It looks like it was built to go anywhere and over anything, and yet it still does so without looking ridiculous. It’s classic SUV in its lines but without winning any beauty contests it will command attention. It certainly did everywhere it stopped on my extended road trip experience with it! I didn’t think people paid attention to big SUV Lexii but I was wrong. There was a lot of interest and approving commentary.

But what makes the GX 550 so much fun is of course the meaty munchy motor that doesn’t sip petrol but gargle it with gusto before slurping it down and punching out 260kW and 650 torques that propel this behemoth forward at an alarmingly addictive rate of acceleration that feels faster than the claimed 7.0 seconds.

7 seconds? For 2.5 tons?

It’s nuts…

But hold your horses.

Before we get ahead of ourselves there is the issue of the price. At R1.8M there is a surprising amount of competition. Top of the range Prado for example is R300k less, albeit with the workhorse 2.8D engine. But within spitting distance the Lexus finds itself amongst no less august company than the Land Cruiser 300, Land Rover Defender (or Discovery but why?) Mercs, Beemers, Volvos and Jeeps. To round it off there are a few Ineosii in there too…

So this is heady territory indeed and none of the competition is exactly easy to eliminate in a game of top trumps. If you have this kind of ammo to let loose it means that your ultimate selection is going to be intimately personal.

The Overtrail I suspect has been named this specifically for reasons hinted at in the name. Fitted as it is with big knobbly offroad tyres, industrial look tubing for running boards and 5 seats to maximise boot space the GX 550 is purpose built to take you places that Defenders go. And maybe then some.

It’s fitted with a tow hitch that looks like it would tow a small moon and with 4 optional extra switches to accommodate things like winches and flood lights and other overlanding kit. It has ALL the 4x4 obligatory switching including locking diffs on the fly and modes to deal with differing terrains. I didn’t discover the wading depth but in Rolls Royce speak it can be described as ‘sufficient, sir’.

What I did discover is a camera system that is useful in showing you what’s happening in front of and under the car. It won’t eliminate the walk ahead in really tricky situations but it is most useful when in them and trying to remember what you need to do and when. It also invisibilises (a free new word for you) the car so that you can see exactly what your tyres are doing.

As it happens we did a few more kms in the car than planned on our weekend away at which I was fined for bringing a vehicle that everyone wanted but couldn’t afford. The extra came about as a result of a detour – we did the Long Tom pass from Sabie to Lydenburg which is far better accomplished in a two seat sports car than in an off road beast.

That said however you’d be fooled if you thought the Lexus was absolute rubbish at tight twisty fast stuff. It was far better than I could have credited it with even with those tyres. The handling whilst set for comfort was confident and even if you did overcook it (easy to do with that weight and power) forgiveness was on offer with little drama.

Ride as you might expect is supreme comfort. We did many hours on day one and climbing out of the Lexus I was as fresh as a daisy – the seats are stunning. They are also auto heated and cooled and it was surprising to note how effective this auto system was. I barely noticed it until such time as I did because it was working so well. In the cold mornings I was at just the right temperature and as the day warmed up into a scorcher I was at just the right temperature. The climate control system on the Lexus has to be one of the easiest I have used – set it to 22 or 23 and then forget about it forever.

At speed on the highway you will notice a little interference from those tyres. To be honest the test car was fitted with bloody awful wind visors on the doors and if it has been up to me I’d have dumped them in the nearest rubbish bin because they added to wind noise in the car.

I say added to – but you need to understand that there is not a lot of road noise to begin with. Even at this level of vehicle the Lexus is quiet inside evidenced by the massive doors that weigh two tons each but are effortless to open and shut. On noise alone the the GX 550 will get you into speed trouble all too easily but the accurate speedo and heads up display means it’s your own fault if you do. You can have both adaptive or ordinary cruise control and lane assist that also works in traffic to a limited extent. What I love about the Lexus is that it doesn’t bong for much, other than open doors and seat belts and that the ADAS is operating behind the scenes and not throwing a hissy fit every thirty five seconds to remind you that it’s there and it’s “working for you”.

The Lexus treats you like an adult, and it lives to serve you. It has the correct attitude and doesn’t make assumptions about how you need to drive it. Rather, if you are a burk, it will save you from yourself when it needs to.

Post the Long Tom pass the idea was to go back to Waterval Onder directly. But in one of my very few regrets in life I neglected to take a picture let alone a video of That Road that we faced. In any lesser vehicle I wouldn’t even have attempted it. In the GX 550 a national road became a stern test of off roading under conditions that would make overlanding look tame. The road is destroyed by dual linkage haulers that steam up and down it constantly but it is testament to the road builders of old how well they did their jobs. Bits are still standing and it is these that create the problem because you have peaks of tarmac standing in valleys of sand, with treacherous side wall ripping holes in between. It is undriveable.

We drove it anyway.

To say the Lexus was dismissive of the conditions is not an over statement. It simply got on with it and whilst the body roll in the car was spectacular the clearance and work the suspension was having to do was doubly so. We had truck drivers waving us down to check our mental sanity as we passed the ruins of lesser cars pushed to the side of the road and left to rust as metal corpses of lesser machines killed by this road from a Mad Max dystopian nightmare.

After 5kms mathematics that rules the world dictated that we would be still on this road at night around 2am and so, very bravely, I turned around and we took the alternate route back.

Many kms later, now in full night fall we got to see the Lexus’ other party trick. Hands down and by some margin the headlights on the Lexus are worth R500k on their own. They are better than excellent – I can’t honestly recall experiencing light quite like this. On bright beam they’re almost too much with road signs searing themselves into the back of your retina. On top of it I was fully expecting to be flashed by annoyed oncoming traffic but if it happened I didn’t notice. Whatever Lexus does and how it does it doesn’t matter because these are the gold standard against which all others shall be judged.

This is a car that is extremely hard to fault. The cabin is as you would expect from an R1.8m car that carries a Lexus badge. It is quality everywhere. If Lexus has included it, it is top quality. And it will last forever. The fridge in the centre console is superb. If I had to list everything I liked I’d be here all day. There isn’t a single feature that I felt was missing from the GX 550.

I had to scrape for some niggles. The wireless charging point is niggly for my sized phone. The remote powered boot lid is possessed by a demon I have yet to exorcise because it worked according to some patterns not associated with common sense. The ‘talk to the car’ function is stupid and slow. I couldn’t connect Android Auto (which I really don’t mind not having).

The sound system is ludicrously good. I’d do a MAX score on it any day of the week. But Lexus would need to make it available for that. The take away is that it is that good for an OEM fitted system.

Back to niggles. There are so few...

What is the point of the drive mode selection system? There is an Eco (cough cough) Mode, through to Normal to Sports to Sports+ and probably something in between. And it’s rubbish.

In Eco mode the Lexus feels like it’s being polite with an ‘ahem are you sure, sir?’ exhaust note and then the ‘Okey Dokey you asked for it, sir’ brutal acceleration and Speed with a capital S when you go near that gloriously wonderfully tempting throttle pedal.

There is then precisely zero change through any of the settings (that I could pick up) until the exhaust note changes from subdued rumble to a subdued thunder somewhere from Sports mode onwards. Here the Lexus feels as polite but then ‘Okey Dokey you asked for it sir’ brutal acceleration and Speed with a capital S when you go near that gloriously wonderfully tempting throttle pedal. Just now it comes with with added exhaust note gloriousness. Not boy racer “look at me loud” – just “get out of my way you miserable peasant” loud.

Ditch the knob. It's unnecessary. You’re welcome Lexus – mail me a cheque.

You’ve read this far so I may as well...

As an avid EV convert I couldn’t help but think that a similar specced EV motor in the Lexus would not be a bad thing…

Can you see the ‘but’ coming?

But…

Floor the right fun pedal to the floor in the GX and as the 10 speed box drops a cog, and then another whilst the turbo spools up the bloody thing takes off like a scalded cat. Sure. An EV would already be in the distance as a rapidly vanishing spec but somehow that just wasn’t important to me in this particular Lexus. It has so much torque that as soon as you’re in the power band (which with 10 cogs in the gear box you almost always are) it shoves you along with smile inducing non stop force. I’d stop short of calling it brutal blunt force trauma because the mass of the vehicle is so enormous but it is nonetheless deeply satisfying to be piloting momentum like this with effortless ease.

It comes at a cost. 14.1 l/100km is what I achieved in the car – and despite my relatively deserved ‘leadfoot’ nickname the GX did a lot of the nearly 1,200… ermm 1,300kms that I did in it on the open road. It was a slightly more expensive road test than usual, but in a machine like this... my wife was happy to pay.

At this level of the market however the cost of fuel is secondary to one’s concerns in the upper echelons of society and if truth be told I have driven less powerful vehicles with far worse fuel consumption…(!)

I’d be interested to hear from other GX550 owners what figures they are returning given Lexus’ claimed figure of 12.8. They’re not typically too far off, so perhaps it was just me.

I have to conclude now because my editor told me to.

This is what I came up with.

The Lexus GX550 is a honey badger. Honey badgers don’t give a flying toss about conditions or obstacles or dangers. They go and do whatever they want.

The important distinction is that this Lexus is your own personal honey badger. Tuned for you. It is a deeply impressive SUV. It will go anywhere and it will do so rapidly. It is competent in the best sense of the word at everything it does and there are very few, if any flaws in the package that I could unearth.

If it was electric it’d be damn near perfect, but having said that what I will add is that the Lexus brings out a little part of me that’s quite happy that it isn’t.