PROPOSED: The Lexus LS600h L is the most complicated, most elaborate machine ever to take to four wheels. What "Ulysses" is to light reading and Confucianism is to the simple declarative sentence, this hybrid-powered limousine is nothing less than everything Toyota has ever learned about cars poured into one stupendous, stupefying, "because we can" performance piece.
I'm willing to entertain contrary opinions. Is a Formula 1 car more high-tech, more highly engineered? These are extraordinary confections, it's true -- all aero-optimized carbon fiber and ballistic engines -- but in terms of the sheer number of parts, subsystems, processors and electronics, an F1 car is a Babylonian goat cart compared to the mega-Lexus. The LS600h L, just as a for instance, monitors the driver's face with infrared beams and detects if he or she is nodding off. This system seems prudent, since the car is so smooth, so honeyed with refinement, with such a gliding, lighter-than-air ride, that a deep coma only ever seems just a few exits away.
What about, say, the Thrust SSC, the supersonic world-record holder for land speed? Bah! Thrust SSC was basically two jet engines with a screaming Englishman strapped on top. The LS600h L parallel parks itself, sweeps the road ahead with millimeter wave radar and stereoscopic cameras, monitors passengers' body temperatures and adjusts climate accordingly. You can fine-tune the loudness of the Lexus' door lock-unlock beep. The Thrust SSC doesn't even have doors, to say nothing of a beep.
What about the Maybach 62 S? Close, but no Arturo Fuente Opus X Robusto. The goliath Maybach is, you see, a conventional automobile, with a big engine driving the back wheels through a geared transmission. It's positively quaint. The Lexus, meanwhile, pairs a 5.0-liter direct-injection V8 (389 hp and 385 pound-feet of torque at 4,000 rpm) with a great honking water-cooled electric traction motor (221 hp), channels both outputs through a three-mode continuously variable transmission (with a two-stage reduction gear for the electric motor output), then sluices the resultant twist through a limited-slip center differential that ciphers optimum power sharing between front and rear axles. Not that the car has axles, really. The Lexus is crammed to the gills with batteries, electric motors, converters and cooling systems to keep it all from going pop. The Maybach has, what, champagne flutes?
