by David Finlay (13 May 04)

A passenger who accepted a lift in the RX300 halfway through this test gave a brief but accurate appraisal of its styling, as follows: "It's a bit ugly, isn't it?"

Even bearing in mind the impossibility of making a large off-roader look svelte, this car is certainly not the last word in elegance. But then few Lexus products are. Since Toyota's upmarket brand first appeared in the UK, the badge has rarely been fitted to anything (with the notable acception of the IS 200) that came close to the top of its class in terms of visual appeal.

However, the RX 300 also has another very common Lexus characteristic. Some large 4x4s are basically off-roaders with various luxury items tacked on. Others are attempts to enter the class by manufacturers who build many different types of car without particularly specialising. Lexus (if we separate it from Toyota for the purpose of argument) operates at its absolute peak when it is designing luxury cars, and the RX300, whatever its off-road abilities, feels to all intents and purposes like a luxury car on stilts.

It is beautifully kitted out inside, and indeed the test car was particularly impressive in this respect for reasons we'll come to shortly. The ride is basically superb (though it's obviously compromised by the need to cope with the car's considerable height) and the steering in particular is magnificently smooth - few other vehicles in the class even begin to compare with it in this respect.

The three-litre V6 petrol engine provides decent pulling power, with an inevitable cost in terms of fuel economy, and it's also pretty smooth, though not to the same extent as the four-litre V8 in the very first Lexus to be imported to this country.

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