Design Lexus ES350

Lexus ES350 Design

Since its inception in 1989, the Lexus ES line has traded on its core values of composed practicality, restrained styling, and understated luxury.

It has worked hard to distance itself from its pedestrian Toyota Camry roots, and it’s not about to compromise its dignity with a flashy makeover just to get the neighbors talking. Let the Lexus LFA and LX lux-UV shoulder the fuel-swilling, in-your-face grandstanding for the brand the ES is quite content in its role as an amiable friend to the aspirational masses. So when it came time to create the sixth-generation ES, Lexus made sure not to wander far from the same predictable formula that has put more than one million examples of the car on the road to date.

Lexus ES350 Engine

In addition to the still cautious but slightly more-outgoing styling, the redesign yields minor gains in size. The ES350 grows an inch in overall length to 192.7 and 1.7 inches in wheelbase to 111.0; height increases 0.8 inch to 57.1, while width stays the same at 71.7 inches.

Lexus is particularly proud of the ES’s 0.27 coefficient of drag, which it says betters the previous generation’s number by .01. In a quest for improved high-speed stability, tiny aero “stabilizing fins” have been placed on the doorframe covers and rear combination lamps; Lexus says they pull the airstream closer to the body, creating vortices that in turn stabilize the vehicle. Similar fins reside on the underbody covers.