Lex Appeal

Fancier Toyotas? Or genuine contenders in the luxury game? We head to ooty to find out.

- Kartik Ware

What’s in a name? A lot, if you’re the sort who pays attention. For as long as I can remember, Lexus has been a very recognisable name in India. Or at least in the city I grew up in, Mumbai. Bombay, as it was called then (and as I still refer to it), was still a decade or two away from becoming the mad blur it’s become now (except for the traffic, of course, which stands still in such high definition as to cut your retinas). And even then, I remember seeing imported cars with the ‘L’ logo and thinking, ‘Man, those things look special.’ And they were, seeing as they resided in the most well heeled garages of the city. And for the past few years, that has begged just one question — why doesn’t Lexus come to India?

Well, now it has. A bit late, if you ask me, but I’m no one to talk about punctuality. ‘Fashionably late’ is the term, I believe. And to experience these examples of Japanese opulence, we were whisked away to Ooty, the hill station in the Nilgiri mountains. Presented with the sight of the three new Lexuses (Lexii?), it is easy to point fingers at them and say, ‘Oh, they’re just tarted-up Toyotas,’ and you may be right to some extent. But there’s more to it than that.

Given our cab ride from Coimbatore airport to Ooty, I was secretly hoping that the roads would magically widen overnight, so that I could drive the Lexii (yeah, that just sounds right) with some peace of mind. But on the morning of the drive, such a miracle had failed to arrive, and as luck would have it, I was pointed towards the biggest of them all — the LX 450d. I kept referring to it as the LC, given that it’s based on the hulking Toyota which happens to be one of my all-time favourites. But bystanding Lexus officials were quicker than top-fuel dragsters to point out that there are huge differences between the two. I think I agree with them. Mostly.