► Month seven and its goodbye to the Lexus NX300h
► Depreciation figures make for a pleasurable read
► Excellent cabin, mind-boggling gizmo’s, but utterly pointless
We should start with the residuals – just look at those figures! The depreciation is so modest you could probably have haggled away that much if you’d been in a more aggressive mood when you bought the car. If ever you doubted Lexus’s brand, now’s the time to believe. Short of buying a classic Ferrari, this is as close as you’ll come to a car as an appreciating asset.
Like all Lexuses, the NX is beautifully built, challengingly designed and likeably leftfield premium. The external lines, described last month by Stephen Bayley as ‘a cry for help’, have been much discussed, but I admit I like them; I admire their swagger. The interior, meanwhile, is sublime, like the waiting room in an architect’s office – all modern materials, lavish hides and elegant angles. To walk up to, to climb aboard and to spend time in, the NX is a flatterer. It makes you feel special.
And then you press the button marked ‘power’, and your feelings become somewhat mixed. The ensuing pure silence as the car rolls electrically forward is initially enthralling, but before you’ve even summoned the pace to squish next door’s cat (who didn’t hear you coming) the four-cylinder petrol engine hurrumphs into life, jettisoning said mog and shattering the illusion of green credentials. And that’s the last you’ll hear of EV mode unless you hit the button to release several hundred yards of silent progress between traffic lights. That’s a pretty feeble payoff for the 50kg weight handicap of two electric motors and a party pack of batteries, even if the front motor does harvest braking energy and the rear one does, very theoretically, turn the rear wheels when they lose traction (turns out E4 is not just a Freeview channel showing endless Big Bang Theory re-runs – it’s also Lexus’s part-time 4×4 moniker).
The brake regeneration part of the equation has become rather unsettling over time – I didn’t feel it at first but have started to notice the sensation of driving over mildly corrugated concrete when pressing hard on the left pedal. Brake performance is good, but it feels as if it’s harder work than it should be.
Apart from all the batteries, you also have to drive around with an elephant in the room (not good for the blonde leather): that being the fact that hybrids Don’t Work. Here’s a car producing twice the amount of CO2 (121g/km) as that prescribed by London’s congestion charge zone, and returning a scandalously modest 38.1mpg, which is worse than Chris Chilton’s Mondeo diesel. The NX languished fifth in our unofficial Our Cars mpg table back in November, and I feared it might miss out on the play-offs. Now it’s slipped to seventh. If it were Chelsea, we’d have sacked the manager.
Irritations? We’ve had a few. The battery-compromised boot is small enough to rule out having two children (should do okay in China), you could knit a jumper in the time it takes the auto-tailgate to close, wind noise around the A-pillars drops the refinement ball and the touchpad controller is simply maddening, requiring your left hand to out-dance the right hand of a brain surgeon.
Joys? We’ve had some of those too. The 14-speaker Mark Levinson sound machine envelopes you like a VR headset, cancelling everything, inside and out – even the whiny engine noise on kickdown. The head-up display is perfection, the steering really nicely judged and the ride fantastically balanced between sport and comfort (its body control is a revelation, especially on track, oddly).
In the end the NX seems damned by a lack of purpose – I don’t really understand what it’s for. But despite more flaws than a cheap diamond it remains a fascinating, curious, infuriating, rather lovely thing.
**Logbook: Lexus NX300h Premier
Engine: 2494cc 16v 4-cyl, 153bhp @ 5700rpm (195bhp with electric motor), 148lb ft @ 4200-4400rpm
Gearbox: Electric CVT, 4wd
Stats: 9.2sec 0-62mph, 112mph, 121g/km CO2
Price: £42,995
As tested: £44,640
Miles this month: 891
Total miles: 9279
Our mpg: 38.1
Official mpg: 54.3
Fuel cost overall: £1350.81
Extra costs: £0
**From the driving seat
+ Cabin chiselled by artisans from a block of quality
– Drivetrain less easy to understand than the Duckworth-Lewis method
+ Body control beyond an SUV’s wildest dreams
– We’ve run out of jokes for the stupid touchpad
**Count the cost
Cost new: £44,640 (including £1645 of options)
Dealer sale price: £40,477
Private sale: £38,462
Part exchange: £36,632
Cost per mile: 14p
Cost per mile including depreciation: £1.01