Click. The world's first hybrid stretch is ready to go. Or is it? I ask the Crown Motors people if I've started this Lexus LS600hL properly, because it's awfully quiet up here on Peak Road.
A dealer minder laughs. The test car is raring to leave the petrol station, he says. He points to the cartoon on the dashboard console that shows the hybrid is on electric power. 'See,' he says, with the triumph of a ward orderly who's just found an oldie's false teeth.
It's the newest, biggest Lexus, the toast of Al Gore's America. Its silence is deafening after decades of vroom, but this is automotive history.
Powered by a new five-litre V8 engine and two electric motors, the LS600hL has the combined 445 horsepower of a six-litre supercar but the petrol sip and emissions of a three-litre saloon, Lexus says. In theory, Hong Kong's bosses can now boast of 520Nm torque apres-golf, and still tell shareholders how they run 10.8km on a litre of petrol, which the marque says is 45 per cent more efficient than other stretches.
So, for these boasts alone, the LS600hL will probably sell well here for HK$1.6 million. Packed with electronics and with a drag of just 0.27Cd, this greenie is impressive. Yet critics might say it lacks the road presence of the BMW 750Li and the swish of the Mercedes-Benz CLS500. I see their point. Next to the HK$1.62-million Maserati Quattroporte, the Sophia Loren of cars, the LS600hL seems a bit of an Ugly Betty, but Lexus fans have long preferred tech to torque and reliable residuals to revs.
The LS600hL will wow these devotees in essentially the same neat body as its petrol-driven predecessor, the 4.6-litre LS460L. Critics might have expected the marque to have given the hybrid more legroom in a longer, fatter body, with maybe a retractible Spirit of Lexus figurine on its bonnet to advertise its extra oomph.
