Lexus IS 2021 review: 300 Luxury

The new IS looks so much better. The old car had a lovely, low-slung profile, which is basically unchanged in the new car. But the bits where the IS wasn't particularly convincing - headlights, grille, guards front and rear - are now rather more so. 

The new IS looks so much better.

The engineers kindly pushed the wheels out further to widen the car's stance and the designers made the absolute most of that by really chunking up the front guards and sending the rear guards to one of those gyms where the guys struggle to get through the door without going sideways. 

The new headlights have a much cleaner look and now integrate the LED daytime running lights. The full width effect of the tail-lights accentuates the extra width of the car and now it looks properly sporty, even in entry-level Luxury specification. The only thing letting it down is meek looking alloy wheels.

The new headlights have a much cleaner look and now integrate the LED daytime running lights.

The cabin is pretty much the same as the old car, which is a double-edged sword. It's beautifully built, full of lovely materials, and it's a nice place to be but there's no real innovation. Well, I say there's no innovation - the new 10.3-inch touchscreen looks terrific and does help bring the cabin further towards 2020 while making the Lexus signature analogue clock look ever more naff, but you learn to ignore that.

Space has never really been the IS's thing. The rear seats are a wee bit tight if you're approaching 183cm/6'0" tall, as is the headroom. The big transmission tunnel also pretty much renders the car a four seater unless the middle seat occupant has tiny feet or is extremely short.

The rear seats are a bit tight.

The boot is 480 litres (with the seats in place) and that matches the trio of Germans (Audi A4, BMW 3 Series, and Mercedes-Benz C-Class) who all say their boots are the same size. Be aware that the Hybrid version has 450 litres, with the battery pinching some space.

The IS is a very comfortable, low-stress car. Most offerings in this segment are, but there's something about the way the Lexus goes about its business that easily makes it the lowest drama car of them all. 

The IS is a very comfortable, low-stress car.

Everything is quiet, there are no loud beeps and everything works the way it should. It could do with fewer buttons - it's still pretty much the old interior - but the seats are enormously comfortable and it's all just terribly nice.

Access to the rear seats is perhaps a little trickier than you might expect, with an oddly-shaped and constricted entry. Happily, the boot opening is extremely wide and welcoming for your stuff.

The boot is 480 litres.

Front seat passengers score two cupholders which are joined by a slot which makes it handy spot to lay a phone if the wireless charging pad under the air-con/ventilation controls is already in use. 

The rest of the console is taken up with the pointless touchpad (the new screen is a touchscreen) and a drive select dial which feels lovely, but is unlikely to see much use in this version of the car.

While there are bottle holders in the front door, there's no room in the rears for them, but the centre armrest does have a pair of cupholders.

To help you avoid a crash, and keep you safe in the event of one,  Lexus loads up the IS with eight airbags, ABS, stability and traction controls, forward AEB (with day and night pedestrian detection while between 10km/h and 80km/h, with cyclist detection during the day and car detection all the way up to 180km/h), active cruise control, lane departure warning, lane trace assist, turn assist (which tries to stop you turning across oncoming traffic), blind spot monitoring, road sign recognition and reverse AEB (up to 15km/h) and reverse cross traffic alert. That's a lot. 

Lexus is sticking with the five star ANCAP safety rating from 2016.

It also feature a tricky new feature that warns you if it thinks you're accelerating when you mean to brake.

For the kiddies, you get two ISOFIX points and three top-tether points to locate baby capsules and child seats.

Lexus is sticking with the five star ANCAP safety rating from 2016.

The IS 300 runs on premium unleaded and in official government-mandated testing returned 8.2L/100km. 

We had the IS 300 for a week and it spent a good deal of time getting around the suburbs but also took us for a pleasant trip to the Blue Mountains (around 120km west of Sydney) for lunch. Over the week it averaged 9.3L/100km, which is a pretty good effort.

The Lexus warranty spans four years/100,000km. It's an oddity in the segment because it goes for longer than Jaguar, BMW and Audi who offer unlimited kilometres, but it's shorter than Mercedes and Genesis who both offer five years/unlimited kilometres.

Newcomer Genesis also out-punches on the servicing front (free is hard to beat), the Lexus offering capped-price servicing at $495 for the first three services, which are required every 12 months or 15,000km. Free roadside assist runs for three years, too.

Lexus will come and get your car from you and leave you with a loan car or you can take a loan car when you go to the dealership. I've never met a cranky Lexus owner in my life, they seem to run faultlessly for - literally - decades and servicing never seems outrageous.