GRR Garage: Goodbye Lexus UX

We’ve spent just over a month with ‘our’ blue Lexus UX, experiencing its marvellous capability for fuel efficiency, its quite phenomenal seats and its at times reasonably janky infotainment system (although the SatNav system never failed me as some can).

If you’re looking for an efficient, comfortable car for travel around cities and family transportation, the UX is a proper proposition. If you’re looking for an off roader or something to lug tonnes and tonnes of kit around, maybe look elsewhere.

The UX shows how far Lexus have come in many ways. The CT, its other small car, has its detractors, and is slightly out of its depth in amongst the plethora of hybrid-powered hatchbacks that now litter the market. The UX however stands strongly against its competitors, filled with bags of tech and able to achieve the mpg it lists. This is a Lexus that gets toward its promise, and we hope a sign of things to come in future.

If the new CT can learn lessons from the successes of the UX it’ll be a massive step forward, and the oncoming introduction of Apple CarPlay and Android Auto to the Lexus range will solve most of the issues that the UX suffers. But we motoring journalists are paid to nitpick at the end of the day, and actually the UX will do everything its target market demands in comfort.

New things beckon for GRR, but the Lexus has been a delightfully comfortable rest point for the last month or so. We’ll miss the comfort, the excellent cooling seats during those slightly warm July days, but perhaps not that touchpad for the infotainment system. Now, who at Lexus do we ask for some of those seats as office chairs..?

MPG this week: 51.1.

Photography by Joe Harding.