Best New Vehicle for 2006 – Lexus LS 460

Lexus’ new LS 460 flagship is simply amazing. It’s chock-full of luxurious appointments and modern gadgets, wrapped in a taut, sporting body—and most amazing of all, it’ll all work three years down the road. Out of pretty much everything on display in Detroit, this Lexus strikes us as the car we’d most like to take home—and that simple fact is why we’ve crowned it Best New Vehicle for 2006.

The new LS adopts the L-Finesse design language seen on the new IS and GS lines; perhaps to its best effect here. Even the 203”-long L model looks tight and lean, compared with the outgoing land-yacht. Inside is a revelation as well; the LS is packed with the kind of accessories you’d expect in a full-size luxury model—navigation, power everything, superb audio system, rear sun-shades, reclining rear seats, and so on—but it’s all easy to use, and likely to last. At 380 horsepower, performance from the 4.6L V8 promises to be top-notch as well—and the stiffer underpinnings should lend a sportier driving experience. Sixty m.p.h. is said to be had in about 5.5 seconds; and in a shot across the bow of that other luxury brand, the automatic transmission now features eight gears.

Still, in a car like this, it all comes down to the feature content. The Auto-Park option takes parallel parking almost entirely u of the driver’s hands; once you’ve found a spot, engage the system and it steers itself in perfectly, with only the brakes under driver control. The Mark Levinson name once again graces the audio system; this time there’s 19 speakers, and an integrated hard drive with room for 4,000 songs. The three-zone climate-control system monitors not only cabin temp, but occupant temp as well. The obligatory navigation system features real-time traffic data, too. Add the rear-seat Ottoman Package (and why wouldn’t you?), and the best seats in the house recline with their own massaging leg rests, DVD player, and covered beverage cooler. In the LS 460, the Smart Key becomes a wallet-sized Smart Card, which you need not access to enter or start the car. And there’s more—a slew of alphabet-soup electronic aids (think ABS, EBD, BA, VSC, Lexus own VDIM, ESP, and so on). A hybrid version will be unveiled at the New York show in a couple months.

If you need more, Lexus promises “technical details” to be released at the Geneva Show. We didn’t; this new LS is so desirable, for so many new reasons, that it was easy to crown it our Best New Vehicle for 2006.