Lexus ES 300h 2018 first drive

Let’s start in the obvious place: the Camry connection. It’s sure to become a stick with which some would seek to beat Lexus, as if to suggest that the ES is a less bona fide luxury product or credible rival for a Mercedes E-Class or Audi A6 than a GS was.

Chance afforded us the occasion to park our ES 300h next to a 2018-model-year Camry while taking a short break from our test route in and around Nashville, Tennesse, and to observe that the likeness between the two cars is certainly striking.

Lexus engineers will admit that the GA-K platform on which the ES sits was developed with both the Camry and ES in mind, and that there is some commonality as regards suspension and body-in-white.

But there’s plenty of difference, too. Lexus uses lighter materials and stronger joining techniques for the ES than in its Toyota relative, while the ES’s chassis is also laterally braced in places by structural ‘performance dampers’ (depending on trim level) and has much more thorough cabin isolation measures than the Camry as well as bespoke suspension tuning (the former includes a noise-suppressing alloy wheel design, while the latter is delivered through double-valved shock absorbers).

Opt for the ES in F Sport and you’ll get adaptively damped suspension, too. None of which sounds like the technical makeup of an executive saloon with very much to be sheepish about, does it?

Lexus has high standards to maintain on perceived cabin quality and luxury feel with its bigger saloons. For the most part, the ES measures up to them — although there were some places where our test car could have been made to look and feel more expensive.

You’ll find soft, smooth leathers on the ES’s seats and in places around its fascia, but its dashboard and doorcards more widely feature slush-moulded plastic masquerading as hide and in a few places they feature harder, shinier plastics.

The decorative centre console trim doesn’t quite match that of the steering wheel for grain and, as a whole, the car doesn’t have the imposing aura of richness, solidity and technological sophistication you’ll find in an A6 or E-Class.

Well, you certainly shouldn’t rule it out on the basis of the location of its driven axle — because it isn’t actually the chassis of the ES that defines the limit of its driver appeal at all.

Rather, it’s the car’s hybrid powertrain technology, which does the same thing for so many of the firm’s current model range (although admittedly more restrictively for some than for others), but which also, for its faults, undoubtedly contributes to the relaxing refinement and fuel economy that distinguish the ES at its best.

A shortage of driver appeal proves no great handicap for plenty of medium-sized executive saloons, of course; and assuming it can be Lexus brought to the UK at a more tempting price than the GS had, the ES is good enough to do plenty to improve Lexus’s European sales fortunes.