Life with the Lexus GX: The Art of Changing…Very Little

What is responsible for one of the oldest SUVs on the market having its highest sales ever?

Even though some optimism has returned since the “real” days of the pandemic, doesn’t it seem like an overall sense of dread is here to stay? I hope I’m wrong, but something about it feels persistent and…inescapable?

I was recently served an ad on Instagram for a disaster meal supply kit with a shelf life of 30 years, the ad skinned in cute, fun branding. I’ve never thought about one of these, let alone searched Instagram of all places for something like it. What’s going on?

Countless brands seem to be capitalizing on this rising sense of dread. You’re being accosted, and only our product can save you! One car brand seems to have prepared well for this moment by doing…well…not much.

Lexus and its broader parent company, Toyota Motor Corporation, aren’t exactly known for being quick innovators. They’re known for dependable grocery getters, rugged off-roaders, tough pickups, the occasional 10,000 RPM instant-legend supercar, and those gold emblems in the 1990s. This is not to say they NEVER innovate, as any car enthusiast will reluctantly admit that there are as many legendary Toyota vehicles and innovations as there are Toyota emerging-market shitboxes; the company just tends to not favor “latest and greatest” over “virtually indestructible and infallibly reliable.”

The Lexus GX, a venerable cult favorite of the Lexus range, is one of the conglomerate’s products that sits firmly in that “legendary” category, partly because it’s been on sale in its second, and somehow still current, generation since 2010; by sheer survival, it has become a legend of mid-aughts blank-check engineering. Twelve years on the market for a single generation of a vehicle is unheard of in today’s fast-fashion auto industry, with only a handful of other vehicles coming remotely close in their lifespans.

Lexus recently sent shockwaves through its fervent and faithful SUV fanbase, nearly cult-like in their loyalty to the Japanese brand’s leather-lined iterations of parent Toyota’s venerable off-roader product lines like the Land Cruiser and 4Runner. They actually made a technological update to the GX 460, in its 12th year on sale. The Reddit forums went nuts. What do you, the reader, think that tech update was?

Advanced driver assistance systems? No. High definition digital instrument panel to replace its analog gauge cluster? Wrong. Some kind of improvement in power or efficiency for its 4.6 liter, naturally aspirated, entirely unbothered gasoline V8 engine? Try again. Lexus updated the interior with a new infotainment system that has native Apple CarPlay integration for the very first time. In 2022.

Could this key technology addition - and not much else - be why one of the Japanese firm’s oldest available products skyrocketed to its highest-ever sales in the U.S. market in 2021? This 12-year-old, body-on-frame fossil that deletes a tank of fuel in, my routine experience, less than 300 miles just had its best sales year ever in America. According to Good Car Bad Car, Lexus moved over 32,000 of them through showrooms in 2021, besting its pre-pandemic 2019 sales totals by more than 6,000 units.

Aside from the lore of its Land Cruiser underpinnings, what is actually convincing people to return to such an old product? Is it Toyota finally caving and giving it an actual infotainment system? Is it nostalgia for actual driving feel, which the GX has in spades? Is it not being able to find another newer SUV that requires some unobtainable number of microchips? Is it the infallible build quality, with just enough luxury to sway you from a more modern but worse-made European competition? Is 1990s rugged-lux fully back, just like Avril Lavigne making new pop-punk albums and Abercrombie actually being wearable? What gives? The answer probably lies within several of those things.

While many will recognize the GX as a popular choice in urban and suburban family neighborhoods, the reason it enjoys the cult-like following other Toyota SUVs earn is because the GX is actually a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado underneath its Lexus badges. That Land Cruiser Prado, slotting slightly below the full-size 2008-2020 “200 Series” model that many U.S. readers are familiar with, is sold in other overseas markets and was made to go in and out of war zones, outbacks and other out-of-this-world environments without ever breaking down.

As such, many GX owners lumbering along highways and suburban backroads will never dish out a tenth of the abuse the vehicle is made to withstand. You’ll regularly see owners breaking the 200,000 or even 300,000-mile mark on the GX and its related product family when they’ve been serviced and cared for properly.

Through patent filings, we know the GX will get a next generation called the GX 550. It’s a safe bet that it will be good, and absorb some of the stellar new tech Toyota and Lexus have been debuting in the new Sequoia, NX, Tundra and other models. The downside? There’s but a few more years of being able to purchase this venerable monument to early-2000’s over-engineered excess new (or newish). Which is why I went car shopping one Friday afternoon this past April and personally bought a GX 460.

“Lexus updated the interior with a new infotainment system that has native Apple CarPlay integration for the very first time. In 2022.”

It’s not actually brand new, but may as well have been, showing quite literally no discernible signs of wear and tear. Take very careful note of the previous sentence. Driven for over three years, over 35,000 miles, no discernible signs - or sounds - of wear and tear. Remember what I said earlier about genuinely infallible build quality? Your barely-used Tesla or lower-end German sport sedan will rattle and whine like styrofoam packing peanuts after 18,000 miles these days, guarantee it.

Mine’s a 2019 Premium trim level model, metallic black paired with Ecru leather upholstery (Lexusspeak for light Toyota beige) and burl walnut wood trim. If your mom or dad had a Lexus or Toyota product of any kind in the 1990s or 2000s, much of my GX 460’s interior will inspire familiarity. It has the same side mirror adjustment switches that Lexus and Toyota vehicles have had for about 3 decades. It has a Lexus-hallmark wood and leather steering wheel, sadly a rarity in the automotive interiors of today. It is two model years prior to the aforementioned addition of Apple CarPlay, so it has an infotainment system that can only be described as Gameboy-core.

A pleasant example of the vehicle’s analog nature is that the leather-and-wood shifter is paired to a true “7”-shaped gated pathway of yesteryear, gloriously unlike a modern - and lifeless - electronic shifter. Willing the five-thousand-plus pound tank into drive is a nearly romantic experience for any car enthusiast who can’t stand the increasingly removed nature of every in-vehicle interaction.

It’s all just correct, and while many of these features and parts are intended as functional and durable on their own, they come together to form something really unique; it wasn’t as unique when it originally launched in 2009, but through attractive design improvements and not much else, it’s become unique in today’s market - and so utterly wonderful for it.

Lauding aside, back to the original question - is it our cultural fatalism that renews interest in a vehicle that is nearly certain to deliver the goods in any catastrophe no matter how heinous? I figured that many buyers might have fallen into various buckets of the former possibilities, but it’s the last possibility that intrigued me the most. Nobody will know for sure, but there are definitely some conclusions I can speak to.

This is one of the best cars I’ve ever had. It’s so, so, so good at being a companion to you every day. If you try to track this like a Cayenne GTS and judge it against the criteria one associates with a sporty SUV, you are an idiot. Comparison is the theft of all joy, and the modus operandi of so many outlets I used to like is to say that a Range Rover doesn’t handle as good as an F12 Berlinetta these days. Hey - who cares?

Against its intended function, this is a masterclass of overdoing it where it counts and doing it just right everywhere else. It never wants for power despite weighing as much as the Empire State Building, and is so much more maneuverable and responsive to input than the automotive media give it credit for. Those Land Cruiser creep-through-an-off-road-trail bits translate to a luxurious yet communicative driving experience through urban sprawls or long highway cruises. That’s not even the best part, just a nice surprise. The best part is the unrelenting, palpable and relentlessly reassuring build quality, which you feel over every bump and during every whoosh of the Rolls-smooth V8’s belt-driven fan. All of that comes together without massive intrusion of modern tech to offer a retro, yet wonderful, driving experience.

After six months of ownership, I absolutely love this thing - 13 MPG in the city and weight-forward emergency braking included. It won’t win a drag race, and it won’t set a Nurburgring lap record. Thank God for that. It will take you to the ends of Earth in serene comfort and quality every day for as long as you live without a whisper of protest.

Then, it will probably do the same for someone else long after you’re gone.

Photography by Matt Spadaro.