The new Lexus GX is a magnificent machine - if only I could work out what it's for

Is it better to watch the movie first or read the book?

I know what answer you’re already spitting at your phone screen as you read this, but hear me out. Because if you read the book first, you’ll spend the entire movie – or entire series of movies – grumbling about how the storyline is inaccurate and unfaithful and just generally profane in every way.

If you had done it the other way around, you would have none of these issues. In fact, you would put the book down feeling enlightened.

Where am I going with this? Today’s test car – the Lexus GX 550.

In keeping with the popular aspersion about Lexus, the GX is the posh version of the new Toyota LandCruiser Prado and went on sale in Australia in late May last year.

The trouble was that it was a good seven months before the Prado arrived in December. So naturally, the lesser Toyota didn’t stand a chance. Everyone had read and re-read the Lexus books.

I covered a lot of the common complaints in last week’s review of the Prado, but basically, the gist is that the GX 550 has none of them. And for not much more money.

My base $116,000 Luxury model is still $43,500 more than the cheapest Prado (also confusingly called the ‘GX’), but it’s only $16,000 away from the top-of-the-range Prado Kakadu. That’s the price of a good bull bar.

Mind you, to get all the same macho stuff you’ll find in the Prado – 18-inch wheels with all-terrain tyres, wheel-arch mouldings, underbody protection, rear-locking diff, six off-road drive modes, ‘Crawl Control’ and ‘Downhill Assist Control’ – you’re paying more like $122,250 for the five-seat GX Overtrail.

Then there’s the Sports Luxury, starting from $128,200 – more of a poser than off-roader. Think things like 22-inch wheels, “semi-aniline” leather upholstery, a Mark Levinson audio system, heated and ventilated second-row seats, adaptive suspension, and much woodgrain.

One thing’s for sure – the GX is more car-like to drive and less gruff and noisy.

Under the bonnet is a 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 petrol engine, a mighty thing that has you wondering how it can move so much metal so effortlessly until you look down at your fuel consumption and realise it’s drinking 12.7 litres per 100 km of fuel.

Yep, a fair way from the 9.6 litres I was getting in the turbo-diesel Prado.

However, the GX also doesn’t have to stow a tank of AdBlue diesel exhaust fluid and a 48-volt lithium-ion battery under the boot floor. That means the Prado’s most loathed feature – the hideous plastic boot space-robbing platform – is gone.

The two rearmost seats are also electric, even if you would have watched your child lose their first tooth, graduate university, and have their first child in the time it takes them to rise.

I have mixed thoughts about the rest of the interior.

The enormous 14-inch touchscreen, which is front and centre, also includes controls for the air conditioning down the bottom, but thankfully, these are always there. It’s all well and good.

I did want more of a solid click from the temperature dials, though. As it was, only the most delicate of touches can bump the degrees up or down, and one mistimed jolt from the road and the air blasting out the vents goes from cool to hellfire.

And the flat section at the base of the centre stack – that looks a bit like it should be a wireless phone charging pad – actually reveals itself to be an elaborate retracting cover for the 12-volt socket. It’s weird.

Outside, the GX’s rugged, boxy look certainly carries a lot of presence and with far less uncouth ungainliness than its LandCruiser-based, cheese-grater-faced LX sibling.

In the end, then, I’m torn.

Despite the seething online hate that described the new Prado as the worst remake since whatever Disney’s latest film is, I actually really enjoyed my time with it. So by the same metric, I should be positively drooling over the GX.

And yet, at least in non-Overtrail form, I’m left a little perplexed as to why it exists. Picture it off-road, ever? Or even towing? You can, but you wouldn’t – you’d run out of fuel by the end of the street. The Prado makes more sense on paper for these things.

The best I can come up with is that the GX is Lexus’s answer to the Mercedes G-Wagen and the Range Rover. So if this is what you’ve been waiting for, buy one. And do whatever it is you do with it.

2025 Lexus GX 550 Luxury

• $116,000 (plus driveaway costs)
• 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 petrol, 260 kW / 650 Nm
• 10-speed automatic, full-time 4WD
• 12.3 litres per 100 km claimed fuel consumption, 80-litre fuel capacity
• 3500 towing capacity (braked)
• 2525 kg.

Thanks to Lexus Australia for providing this car for testing. Region has no commercial arrangement with Lexus Australia.