The 2016 Lexus LX570 is getting a front-bumper tweezing to match the rest of the Lexus lineup. Yep, the fancified Toyota Land Cruiser will henceforth look like a cyborg insect too. But the well-deserved interior upgrade is downright sexy.
Look at that glorious three-spoke wheel. The big, juicy, soft-looking slabs of leather all over the place. Delicate gauge pods and... movie theatre poking out of the dashboard?
I mean, obviously that’s the infotainment rig. But sweet Christmas on a cracker that sucker is huge. Short of the vertical TV stuffed into the front of a Tesla Model S this has got to be one of the biggest front-seat screens ever, right?
And Toyota’s already done a good job maximizing real estate on their more “traditionally” sized in-dash screens. The “multi-app” display feature, letting you split the screen between up to three readouts at once, was one of my favorite things about the 2014 4Runner.
With this much screen space, man, who knows what they’ll be able to accomplish. And who knows what I’ll run over while I’m flipping through menus! Or, like, watching Avatar in full theatre-quality widescreen.
As to my earlier gushing on the design, I wasn’t being sarcastic. The refresh makes the outgoing 2015 design look downright frumpy:
They’re not skimping on screen size in the optional rear entertainment setup either. In fact those screens look about twice as wide as the current OEM in-seat monitor offering.
Here’s the old one. Very Enterprise-D. Which means “futuristic 90’s” for the handful of non-nerd readers here.
As for the rest of the back, here’s the rear exterior.
The taillights are getting the same tweak-treatment as the front; stretched out and flattened to fit in with the rest of the Lexus family. The 2016 SUV is still wearing an “LX570” badge here, so we might assume it’s running the same 5.7 liter V8 as the current model.
This year’s Lexus LX starts at a little over $80,000, and basically appeals to those who like the idea of a Toyota Land Cruiser (reliability, capability, luxury) but don’t want there to be any confusion about how much money they spent on their car.
The new one certainly won’t be any cheaper, but we may hear more details on specs and pricing at Thursday’s official reveal. Or at least, we’re 99 percent sure it’s Thursday. We know Lexus is showing off “some” new vehicles tomorrow at 7PM EST, we can see the LX here is obviously getting shipped somewhere, and they have been tweeting a lot of LX stuff lately...
These photos came to us from motorionline.com, and have started popping up all over the place including the Chinese site auto.ifeng and some dude named Thomas Bondan’s YouTube channel. Looks like somebody working at the dock might have snapped ‘em, but there’s no mistaking the vehicle even if the name wasn’t glued to the tailgate.
So we’ll probably see more details tomorrow. Meanwhile, what do you think?
Contact the author at andrew@jalopnik.com.