2023 Lexus LM

For the best experience, don’t even drive it.

- Aaron Gold

When Lexus introduced the latest iteration of the LM at the 2023 Auto Shanghai show, we thought we might have stumbled upon the coolest minivan ever forged by humankind’s ingenuity. More recently, we were in Japan to drive prototypes of the new Lexus GX and TX models, and the company also let us have a go in the new LM—and dang if it isn’t three times as cool as we hoped. We probably won’t see it in the U.S., though, which is one of automotive life’s great tragedies.

The LM is a four-seat minivan based on a Japanese-market Toyota called the Alphard. Our ride from Haneda Airport into central Tokyo was in an Alphard equipped with massive reclining seats in the second row (to the detriment of legroom in the third). This was, we thought at the time, the height of taxicab civility … and then we experienced the four-seat LM.