First Drive: The New Lexus GX 550 Is a Master Stroke of Beauty and Brawn

It was a cold winter morning in the Arizona desert as I stood in front of the Ritz Carlton Dove Mountain near Tucson, staring at a new Lexus GX 550 before a day of test driving. Milling in a circle around the SUV was an assortment of journalists and content creators, Lexus media brass, and two engineers who’d flown in from Japan for the launch of the most radically new SUV that Lexus has ever created.

“Do you ever have a favorite vehicle that you develop, like a favorite child?” I asked, directing my question to the translator for Lexus Chief Engineer Koji Tsukasaki. But Tsukasaki-san didn’t need a translation for that question. He just laughed and pointed at the GX and said, “This one!”

I knew the answer before I’d asked. It’s hard to look at the new GX without feeling a gut instinct of desire to own one. You can read the specs all day long, but nothing prepares you for the presence of this SUV. It’s beautiful and rugged in exquisite balance. For me personally, it was like the Tonka truck of my childhood memories reincarnated as high art. It’s a pang of nostalgia mixed with the ambition that you can be the driver worthy of both its luxury and its off-road capability.

A Dramatic New Design

You may wonder how we arrived at this moment of design language where what feels fresh seems closer to an SUV made in the ’70s than one made a year ago. The automotive designer Camilo Pardo, who was the lead designer on the Ford GT of the early 2000s that brought back the spirit of the original GTs of the ’60s, once told me that car design is not linear, but comes in cycles. What’s old eventually becomes new, and vice versa. These decisions are made years in advance by designers with their antennae tuned to where our collective sense of taste and proportion is shifting. Looking at the GX, you have this feeling that it's perfectly timed to the tastes of the moment. Clearly, I wasn’t alone. I've never seen so many influencers and journalists in one place swooning over a car quite like this before.

I’ve been reviewing cars for six years, and of the many that I’ve driven, rarely do I drive one that makes me want to go out and buy it. The moment I drove the new GX 550 off the hotel property for the first leg of driving, my mind started doing cartwheels over how I could get my hands on one to drive for the next decade. Meanwhile I was getting texts and emails from friends all over the country who felt the same way, so I imagine a bit of patience will be required for those wanting to own this first generation of the new GX.

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What Does the Lexus GX Compete With?

Lexus is not shy about the fact that this is intended as a direct competitor to the Land Rover Defender in looks, capability, and the target demographic: small, young families in a high income bracket who can afford luxury, but also want to convey their sense of adventure—whether that means hypothetical or actual off-roading. Having reviewed both now, I think the GX has the advantage in luxury and on-road handling.

Compared to the new Toyota Land Cruiser (with a base price that's about 10k lower), the GX doesn’t just have more luxury touches. It also has a different driving dynamic—one that jibes with Lexus's brand-wide power-to-handling balance. It may be hard to describe, but you'll instantly know it by feel.

A Look Inside the Cabin

I drove a Luxury+ model with an MSRP of $84k, and an Overtrail+ with an MSRP of $79k—the former on-road and the latter off road. Both vehicles had some of the best seat massagers I’ve ever experienced in a vehicle. Turning them on is a bit too buried in the touchscreen menus for my taste, but that’s something that could be fixed via firmware. Everything you touch feels good—from the suede trim of the seats to the tactile buttons on the dashboard. The GX interior nails the button-to-screen ratio.  Plenty of dials and buttons mean that you only have to engage with the touchscreen for things you want to use it for, like maps and the virtual assistant.

One standout feature on the Luxury+ was a massive panoramic moon roof that can go from clear to opaque instantly at the touch of a button. I’ve seen that done in fancy hotel bathrooms to cloud a glass shower, but it’s far cooler as a moon roof. Also worth mentioning: The automatic windows are remarkably quick, and the rear door on the new GX has become a lift gate instead of the barn door side opening of previous models—with a foot motion-to-open sensor.

This is a three-row SUV on all models except the two-row Overtrail. So, if you need that third row, you’ll be sticking with the Premium or Luxury models. Overall, interior space for people and cargo is stellar. This is a vehicle your family could grow with.

What's It Like to Take the Lexus GX Off-Roading

What was the biggest challenge of fusing this new design with the GX 550's serious off-roading requirements? The hardest part, Lexus engineer Tsukasaki-san told me, was enabling the nose of the SUV to be short enough to allow for a sharp angle of approach for steep terrain, but also long enough to exceed any collision safety tests. I got the chance to test out that approach angle on an obstacle course that had been dug into the desert with excavators by an off-road crew A-Team to push the vehicle to its extremes.

The crew of off-road experts had flown out to construct a specialized obstacle course for the GX at Tucson’s White Stallion Ranch. They’re like a special forces of off-road courses who do this all over the country for Lexus and other automakers. Every prior wave of media had been rained out of the course, so we were the first group to actually try it out. It was a sandbox of steep embankments, deep trenches, moguls, and half-buried telephone poles. Crawl assist can be a loud business in some SUVs, but it’s quiet on the GX—easing me gingerly over a field of dirt moguls.

I had an off-road instructor named Dave Rees riding shotgun, who was so impressed with the GX that he said he'd already ordered one for himself. He directed me on lines that put the bumper within an inch of the dirt on a decline, balanced us on three wheels, or put us at steep sideways angles where your brain starts sending messages that something is seriously wrong. The GX shrugged it off like it was nothing.

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The off-roading cameras are futuristic—the best all-terrain awareness I’ve ever seen. The under-vehicle view creates a sort of Wonder Woman’s airplane effect where when you look at the large dashboard monitor it’s like you’re in an invisible vehicle and all you see is the terrain below and an animation of your wheels to track their exact line. We used this to track the wheels driving over two parallel telephone poles and kept them perfectly aligned the entire way. Having scraped a few too many skid plates off-roading, I'm thinking that this awareness will keep those plates free of, well, skid marks.

Towing Prowess for the Long Haul

One of the reasons why it’s so good off road is that the GX uses a body-on-frame design instead of a unibody design. This means that putting it through off-roading hell is less likely to twist the frame, which is more rigid. It also means that it has better towing capacity—up to 9,063 pounds. The downside to body-on-frame construction is weight and efficiency. Some may find the MPG of 15 city, 21 highway, and 17 combined, to be below their liking—particularly when those figures come with a premium gas requirement. On the other hand, knowing that the GX can function as a three-row family hauler, an off-roader, and something that can tow your boat or camper, might make the investment easier to rationalize. If you can be a one-car family, this could be all things to you.

Great Suspension and a New Engine Make it Awesome on the Road

As good as the GX is off road, it was the road handling and performance that really hooked me. Often times you don’t feel like an off-road-centric vehicle comes into its own until you leave the pavement, but you don’t get that feeling here. The steering is nimble, the suspension is extremely smooth without being overly springy, and the turning radius is tighter than you’d expect given the wide stance of the wheels that are pushed to the outermost corners for stability.

Along with the new styling overhaul is a new engine: a 3.4 liter V6 twin turbo, which is smaller than the outgoing V8, but with more horsepower (349 hp) and torque (479 lb-ft) that you can really feel at 2,000 rpm. What that means in practice is that you feel that power very quickly, and can lurch off a stoplight like a far smaller vehicle. It also has a 10-speed transmission, so it’s buttery smooth through the entire gear range, whether you’re crawling over a creek bed or bringing it from 0 to 70 when merging onto a freeway.

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Final Thoughts

There’s almost always an element of compromise that you feel driving anything truly rugged. Somehow the road manners never quite stack up, or the utilitarian interior feels too spartan for daily life. But Lexus has created a truly serious off-roader that feels just as good when you’re driving around town or taking it on a road trip as it does when you’re inverted on a bank or balanced on three wheels in the sand. This is the first off-road-centric SUV I’ve ever driven where I can’t see the compromise when I’m on the road.

• PRICE: Starting at $64,000 for the GX 550 Premium

• ENGINE: 3.4 liter V6 twin turbo, 349 horsepower, 479 lb-ft torque

• MPG: 15 city, 21 highway, 17 combined

• SEATING: Two or three rows, depending on model

• TOWING CAPACITY: Up to 9,063 pounds