Feb 02 2009
GS I love you
Spending five days with a Lexus GS 450h over the Lunar New Year period got me thinking: Why aren’t all cars built like this?
The ‘h’ in the car’s name means it’s a hybrid, so it has both a petrol engine and an electric motor, and can run on any combination of the two power sources.
Nothing new about that, but what the GS 450h brings to the table is serious performance. We’re talking about a 0-100kmh time of 5.9 seconds, quick enough to make Maserati and Porsche drivers glance nervously in their mirrors.
Along with this speed comes extreme quietness. And I really do mean complete silence.
When the car’s at a standstill the engine shuts off completely, yet the air-con continues to work on the electricity that the hybrid system stores while you were braking to a halt.
It runs for up to 20 minutes or so too, so you can wait in cool comfort while not using a single millilitre of fuel.
In case you’re wondering, a large car uses around two litres of fuel an hour just idling – that works out to more than four cents a minute, and what about the extra emissions and wear and tear?
Over 900km or so of driving, the GS 450h returned an average fuel consumption figure of 8.3 litres/100km (12.0 km/litre). That’s amazing for a 3.5-litre car, especially given how much time I was spending enjoying its searing acceleration.
Hybrids make a huge amount of sense in Singapore, given our stop-start traffic and tropical weather. The sooner other luxury brands follow Lexus’ lead, the better.
The best part? The GS 450h lists for $185,000, or only $14,000 more than the slower, noisier and altogether less appealing GS 300. It’s a no-brainer.
