Lexus IS 250
By Jeremy Clarkson of The Sunday Times
What a perfect way to make the girls go 'Eugh'



Quite often, pink magazines full of advertisements for garden furniture and Jilly Cooper curtains call my wife to see if she’d like to become their motoring correspondent. “We’d like you to write about cars from a female point of view,” they always say.

Right. I see. And what exactly is a woman’s point of view when it comes to cars. The colour? Whether you break your nails on the door handles? How much space there is in the boot for babies? Puh-lease. My wife’s argument on this point is sound. Women who are interested in cars are excited by exactly the same things that excite men. Power. Looks. Handling. And women who aren’t interested in cars won’t read about them, no matter what shaped genitals the author has.

So she sends off 1,000 words about a Caterham Cosworth, saying that it ripped her eyeballs out, set her hair on fire and left her with the same sort of ruddy glow she gets from a really good Terminator movie. This, as a general rule, is placed fairly quickly on the editor’s spike.

If we look back over the years, my wife, a mother of three, has run a Caterham that she misses dearly, a Lotus Elise 111S that she sent back for sports exhausts because it wasn’t loud enough, a BMW Z1 and a motorbike of some kind. Currently she appears to have an Aston Martin V8 Vantage.

Ask her about space in the back for kids or whether these things have convenient handles on which she can hang a handbag and she’ll shove a hot conrod up your jacksie. She’s not bothered. And it’s an especially good idea to steer clear of fuel consumption, because if you bring this up she’ll siphon a gallon from the tank and use it to burn you alive.

This is why I always give sexism a wide berth when writing about cars. Any suggestion that one model is better suited to men, or women, and I have to spend the rest of the day disentangling myself from the ironing board. Or begging to be let out of the Aga.

This is no great hardship because of all the “ists” you can call me, “sex-ist” isn’t one of them. I don’t run for the exits when a pilot comes on the PA system to say her name’s Sandra, and when a lady doctor is examining my arthritic hips I’ve never once been tempted to say, “Oh, and while you’re down there . . .”

However, I am bringing some stereotypes to the table this morning because I have a question about the Lexus IS 250 SE. Have you ever seen one being driven by a woman? In fact have you ever seen any Lexus being driven by a woman? Apart from that girl in Terminator 3 who nicked a 430 convertible — and she was technically a robot — I haven’t. I’ve seen girls in Evo 8s and Ferraris and Astons. Once I even saw a girl in a Lamborghini LM002, which caused a faint but distinct stirring. But never in a Lexulator.

I’m sure that Toyota’s marketing department will be reaching for the e-mail button right now to send me figures that show x per cent of Lexees are bought by women, but I bet that if these “female” customers were examined more carefully, every single one would have an Adam’s apple.

It’s hard at first to see what makes the Lexus brand as uniquely male as a Leatherman or a hunter-killer submarine. The IS a pretty car and we know from every single survey ever undertaken that no other vehicle on the planet is quite so well made.

Of course there are some things wrong with it. Space in the back is limited, the seats aren’t overly supportive, the steering is way too sharp and the door mirrors are the size of barn doors. But since when did a woman ever complain about a mirror being too large? Perhaps, then, it’s the rev counter that glows orange as you approach the red line. “Noooooo” wailed my wife after she came back from the school run. “I loved that. I made it orange the whole way home.”

What then? What feature does this car have that makes it so unappealing for women? My wife couldn’t help. “I just don’t like it,” she said.

I did. Oh sure, it’s not the fastest car in the world. In fact it has about as much power as my second serve. But this is not such a bad thing because of that super-sharp steering.

If by some miracle you’re going too fast when you turn the wheel, you had better be awake, because everything can get awfully skittish, awfully quickly.

Also, the touch screen sat nav system was preposterously complicated. But you can solve this, if you’re a woman, by reading the instruction book.

Me? I was too busy revelling in the quietness of the engine, the complete absence of wind roar, even around the six-acre door mirrors, and the well-chosen ride.

It’s never too harsh that it shatters your bones on every speed bump and it’s never so soft that it flops into the hedgerow on every bend. I also loved the sense that every button and every switch will outlive the sun.

Then there’s the stereo, which has (a lot) more power than the engine, and the price. Take into account the list of standard goodies and this car costs not hundreds but thousands of pounds less than a BMW 3-series. It’s better looking than a 3-series too. In fact it’s better looking than a Mercedes C-class, an Audi A4 and a Jaguar X-type. Obviously, in this sector of the market, I’d take the Alfa Romeo 159 because that has a soul that the Lexus is missing. But if you don’t want to be plagued with breakdowns, the IS 250 does appear to be a good bet.

And that brings me back to the original question. Why do you never see one being driven by a woman? To find an answer we need to get logical. Nobody who’s interested in cars, whether they’re a man or a woman, will buy a Lexus. They’re just not zingy enough.

So they are only for people who are not interested in cars, people who simply want four reliable wheels and a seat. And this is where things split. Men are happy to go down the Lexus route whereas women are not.

To see if I could find out why, I did something unusual. I picked up the phone and rang a few girls who don’t know one end of a dipstick from their left cheque book. And all, curiously, said pretty much the same thing. “A Lexus? Eugh.” “They’re perfectly revolting.” “They’re for people who play golf.” And best of all: “They’re all driven by the sort of person I wouldn’t want to know.”

There’s an inescapable conclusion here. Buy a Lexus and you are demonstrating two things. First that you are a man, and second that you are not interested in a car’s power or handling. This, it seems, is not something women find attractive.

Think about this, before you say no to that Alfa.