2016 Lexus RX 350 F Sport review – Roadshow

The Good Plenty of excellent materials in the cabin and the large 12.3-inch display screen is good for crisp graphics.

The Bad The Remote Touch joystick is too difficult to use and requires the driver to take their eyes off the road. The F Sport model is not as aggressive as the name implies.

The Bottom Line Enthusiasts who like to carve up the twisties should look elsewhere, but those who need comfortable transportation should be satisfied.

I suppose we can credit Lexus with bringing us the first ever luxury crossover vehicle in 1998. The RX 300 showed that Americans were hungry for smaller SUVs that were chock-full of features. Other manufacturers quickly caught on and now, 18 years later, Audi, BMW and even Porsche give consumers the full-court press of luxury crossovers.

But the original is still in the game with the 2016 Lexus RX 350 F Sport, the fourth-generation of this popular crossover.

Lexus

The most obvious changes in this latest iteration of Lexus’ five-passenger crossover are on the outside. It’s gotten a little longer overall and the wheelbase has increased, but what most folks notice is that gaping, bigmouth frog of a grille. The spindle grille dominates the front of the RX 350, so much that it’s difficult to notice the handsome triple-beam LED headlights or deeply recessed fog lamps.

Emme Hall/Roadshow

Your eyes will next focus on the sculpted profile, which gives Chris Hemsworth’s cheekbones a run for their money. Come around the the rear and the deck lid slopes up steeply to a very sharp rear spoiler. It’s like the designers took a scalpel to the previous generation and hacked away any gentle curves, leaving us with this very unique and sharply creased crossover. Like it or not, you have to give Lexus props for making such a bold design choice.

With the stretched wheelbase there is plenty of room for rear-seat passengers, but utility has suffered at the hands of design. The steeply raked rear hatch allows for only 18 cubic feet of space with the rear seats up, 56 cubes with them folded down. This is subpar for the class with the Mercedes-Benz GLC offering 20.5 cubic feet behind the second row, while the Audi Q5 measures a whopping 29.1 cubic feet.

The engine got a tiny bit of a makeover as well. It’s still the same 3.5-liter V6, but output is up by 25 horsepower and 19 pound-feet of torque. Now boasting 295 horses and 267 pound-feet of torque, the engine is mated to an eight-speed automatic transmission. All-wheel-drive is standard in our F Sport review model, but other trim lines get front-wheel drive standard with an all-wheel-drive option. The all-wheel drive F Sport has an EPA fuel rating of 19 miles per gallon in the city, 26 miles per gallon on the highway and 22 miles per gallon combined. During my week with the RX 350, my lead foot produced a combined rating of 20.1 miles per gallon.

F Sport-ish

Don’t look for corner-carver abilities, even in the F Sport. This model adds adaptive suspension with drive modes, paddle shifters, well-bolstered seats, 20-inch wheels and some special interior trim, but it still manages to be more sedate than scintillating.

I took the RX 350 F Sport on my super-secret driving road in the hills just east of Oakland, California. There I found a fairly willing chassis stymied by anemic acceleration, numb steering and a transmission that is determined to keep you in automatic mode, no matter how much you want to click those paddle shifters yourself.

Redesigned
2016
Lexus
RX
350
is…bold…

See full gallery

1 – 6 of 26

Next
Prev

The RX 350 starts off the line just fine, but acceleration drops in the midrange as torque doesn’t come to full twist until 4,700 rpm. This is especially noticeable when trying to pass someone or accelerate out of a corner. Dropping a gear is absolutely necessary, at which point you may find yourself redlining at 6,500 rpm.

As I dug into corners, the traction control interceded to keep the RX 350 stable, but if the light on the dash hadn’t lit up I would never have known it. Steering feel, especially in Sport Plus mode, was so devoid of feel I had no idea when my tires were losing grip. It’s tuned to be extralight at parking lot speeds and does weight up a bit at speed, but it’s so uncommunicative as to be frightening if you really dive into the twisties.

Emme Hall/Roadshow

My final problem is with the transmission. While I’ve slowly accepted the fact that most manu-matics will shift on their own at the redline, I expect the transmission to stay in manual mode once I put it there. My test roads consist of tight turns interspersed with a few sections of cruising sweepers. The RX 350 would default back to automatic every time I got to the easier parts of the road and proceed to shift to the lowest rpm possible.