Is The Affordable Lexus GX Without The Added 4x4 Goodies Any Good Off-Road?

foreign such a cool video for you today because typically when the manufacturers send us new vehicles to review it's always a top spec with all the options and all the goodies and all the off-road capability features but in today's video we're taking the new Lexus GX 460 off-road but not in the top spec so this model does not have the air suspension it does not have the off-road package with multi-terrain selected crawl control and all those goodies so in this video we're going to find out how does a standard Lexus GX perform out in the dirt now for those of you that don't know the Lexus GX is a luxury SUV that happens to be one of the most respected off-roaders in the industry because underneath it's a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado which is sold around the world as one of the most capable Vehicles you can buy now of course for the US it's a Lexus so it's got a lot of luxury features it's got these big fancy side steps on it it's got that beautiful front end but it still has the bones of a proper off-roader and the cool thing about this model is the wheel and tire setup so we're rolling on a set of 265 60 r18 Wheels we actually have a pretty small wheel for 2022 in the luxury SUV world and then we're rolling on a Bridgestone Dueler tire and HT it's not really a true crazy old terrain but it's a little bit more aggressive than some of its competition and I'm excited to see how they do it out in the dirt I want to give a quick shout out to our new auctions site tflbids.com where we're currently selling our Toyota fj40 a really cool albeit rough surviving FJ check it out over at tflbids.com in this video we're running the Onyx off-road Andre's pit course and Onyx off-road is our go-to off-road navigation software it integrates with apple carplay super great to use and never get lost out on the trail and let me uh Engage The off-road modes and spoiler alert there's not many now this vehicle is awesome because it still has a true low range so it's got an actual transfer case we're going to engage it by pushing that uh that little knob in and then twisting it then we have a downhill assist system there too which is not going to help us much up the hill and then apart from that you know drive on the on the transmission selector and off we go now as I mentioned if we had the top trim we'd have an air suspension control knob where you could raise a vehicle we'd have a crawl control knob which is uh Toyota lexus's automated off-road driving system which is incredible we'd have a knob for multi-terrain select so you do get a lot more kind of goodies in that package but this model does not have it this is going to be a more standard GX now up first is a whole street and this is a set of off camber holes that is a great test of ground clearance then we only have 8.1 inches in this vehicle and we do have a nice chunky front skid plate but what I'm worried about are these really large side steps they kind of hang down they are great for getting your grandma in and out of the passenger seat or the rear seat but not really what you want out on a trail but actually we did have enough ground clearance to make it through holes I recently tore the entire side off of a Forester doing better than that and yeah really really nice absolutely no concerns there so we had enough ground clearance for holes now if you wanted to get this vehicle more ground clearance there are actually a ton of lift kits and accessories available for the GX that allow you to do so but we test them of course straight out of the box next up is going to be logs and logs are they're logs they're actually telephone poles but they're inset into the ground and we're going to see the ride quality is now this Lexus is decidedly old school by 2022 standard so we have a solidar axle but an independent front suspension and then a body on frame construction we're gonna try to take this at a nice continuous rate and see how the suspension quality feels and I'm going to tell you immediately feels very good in some ways I think this feels better than the air suspension because in the air suspension when you go into the upper Heights you kind of start topping out the travel but with the coil look at that absolutely fantastic wow wow that is the most comfortable I think I've ever taken that little Challenge and we just walked up now this challenge is a real um course for a crossover like a RAV4 even even so recently I took a TRD off-road RAV4 through this area and it really really struggled but in the GX we're just walking through all of it it's incredible how much capability even a standard relatively run-of-the-mill GX Lexus has now we do not have the full 360 degree camera so the top spec model will have this cool little trail cam where you can see where your tires are positioned you do not have that option in this model so I'm gonna have to go off of kind of feeling and we've got some pretty large rocks here which look very easy to bash into the front end of this rig so we're going to be a little bit careful about that but do the best we can kind of get it up this course it's ride quality is so good this V8 4.6 liter kind of old kind of you know unsophisticated by modern standards but it is a good one it's just the solid offering with a lot of low end torque super smooth incredibly smooth incredibly refined too something that people don't give this engine enough credit for and Whisper quiet if you want the ultimate in silent operation you got to consider the uh the 4.6 now we wait up we made it up the easy side of holes no or rocks excuse me no problem I say we give the hard side a go did tap out a Bronco sport pretty recently through this section be careful of those side skirts actually these um tires seem to be handling really well quite impressed even though it's not a super aggressive all-terrain design they're gripping nicely seat belts locks I can't see how close I am to touching the side that's when the camera system would be good so far so good though handling it beautifully I just crested the top and didn't touch anything even with a relatively small amount of clearance the um capability of this vehicle just shows like crazy so next up is going to be trenches and these are these off-cut dips in the soil we're going to get the vehicle in two wheels now this is really where I'm curious to see how this four wheel drive system performs because crawl control gets us through this no problem every single time every time it engages it's quick it's rapid to use the only other piece of tech we can engage as we go through here is going to be the center differential loss so I'm going to click that on now and we'll uh give the Lexus every chance to kind of Thrive through here there we go got a little bit of a clip click so we'll get low range sensor diff lock on and take it at a hard angle here right through uh right through the middle of the course diving in so the left side is now fully into the trenches and we're going to take this slow on purpose um wow very decent articulation now in a lot of independent suspension Vehicles we'll have the two opposite tires weld to the air but not in the GX that was awesome but it's going to get a little harder here so we're gonna stop on purpose we got some wheel spin it doesn't matter I mean the way that the traction control engage there feels very similar to crawl control a little bit of accelerator look at that look at that guys that is just unreal so impressed with that here we go this is gonna be the ultimate Challenge put it up the hill just a little bit of accelerator all right um so I wasn't planning on going through anything harder in this vehicle because of all the low-hanging plastic but I feel like I'm doing you guys an injustice by not so we're gonna go do a little bit exploring in the fish pond course now there's parts of it which are going to be too hard like um Nathan's crack we would run out of approach angle really slam that plastic into the dirt but I think we can explore so the back side and do it with uh relative safety now the Lexus GX 460 is decidedly old school and fans of this vehicle love that so under the hood you'll find a 4.6 liter V8 naturally aspirated no turbo charging no supercharging no fancy hybrid systems this is a very very reliable powertrain but also very thirsty the EPA rates is at just 16 MPG combined 301 horsepower right around 330 foot-pounds of torque for 2022 Lexus has introduced a new black line special edition which is what this vehicle has it's got some cool blacked out goodies on the exterior as well on the inside now the GX starts at about 55 000 that black line is good at over 3K and it's got a couple other little odds and ends like this these crossbars and headlight washers but as equipped sixty one thousand dollars which is a lot of money but when you consider that a luxury GX 460 with the offward package is well over 70k it's not unreasonable all right so we got this steep gnarly Hill Climb we're like probably 25 degrees up and it's kind of loosened a little bit unpredictable as to how the vehicle is going to perform here um but hopefully we get a good sense of some of the capability of the Lexus GX wow really pointing at steep okay so we got some wheels off the uh off the soil there I'm gonna take it nice and easy you can feel those doulers kind of struggling for grip here I'm gonna stop and we'll see if we have the torque to get going again so complete stop on the accelerator beautiful beautiful um linear acceleration curve in this vehicle you know the GX gets a lot of hate because it is an aging platform but I think it's aging gracefully and it just goes to show that it'll do everything SUVs well I said that too soon maybe but really getting hung up there so we did get a little hung up there but a little bit of accelerator and we pulled ourselves through um yeah this platform just goes to show how technology is cool but it's really traditional Hardware that matters um solid drivetrain components a solider axle um some decent clearance and an amazing four-wheel drive system that's what's more important than fancy switches and different modes visibility is a little tricky and we don't have that front camera so I'm being a little ginger with it on The Descent here we do have some relatively big pointy rocks which are probably going to want to get hung up on the undercarriage but so far so good oh yeah you feel that that was hard on the um Underside there but we do have a skid plate in the front here though so I want to be careful about that that fuel tank it's taking it nice and easy absolutely incredible I forgot to use a downhill assist but that's how it works and just basically let off and it'll control your speed I prefer not to use it on the way down but it is there as an option if you would like a little bit of extra peace in mind one of the great things about the GX is this insanely customizable platform even though it's a Lexus even though it's got all sorts of luxury odds and ends on it it is still capable and ready to hit the trail with a little bit of modification now unfortunately stuff like these side steps that low front end do limit some of this vehicle's capability but throwing a set of bumpers a set of Sliders and this thing will go anywhere you want to point it plus the cool thing about this model is it doesn't have the air suspension so if you go to lift it you don't have to deal with that additional step now let me know what you guys think in the comments below as always it's been Tommy with tfl we'll see on the next episode foreign

Channel: TFLoffroad

Views: 150,589

Keywords: TFLoffroad, TFL, TFLoff-road, TFLcar, TFLtruck, TFLnow, lexus, off-road, lexus gx 460, lexus gx460, lexus gx, offroad, lexus offroad, lexus gx off-road, lexus off road, lexus gx off road, lexus gx470, 2020 lexus gx 460, lexus gx 470 offroad, 2020 lexus gx, 2020 lexus, lexus gx 460 off road, lexus gx 470, off-road vehicles, lexus gx review, offroad lexus, lexus gx 460 review, lexus lx 570, lexus gx 2020, lexus gx470 off road, lexus gx470 offroad, lexus gx470 review, lexus gx vs lx

Id: tT7Pafq8R1I

Length: 12min 40sec (760 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 27 2022