The 2025 Lexus ES 350 Is Slow, Old and Brilliant

• The current Lexus ES is on its way out.
• We got behind the wheel of the current car for one last go around the block. 
• How does it hold up in the face of newer, quicker competition? We find out. 

That said, just because the ES is as well trimmed as its competition does not mean it's as performative. In our testing, the front-wheel-drive ES 350 with its 302-horsepower 3.5-liter V6 needed a pretty sedate 6.8 seconds to get to 60 mph from a standstill. The quarter-mile mark appeared after a lengthy 15.2 seconds, and the Lexus was traveling at 94.7 mph. Said another way, the ES needed an extra 8.4 seconds to gain just 34.7 mph after it hit 60. It doesn't matter what driving mode you put this sedan in or how hard you attempt to push it, the ES will take its time. 

Rivals will simply blow the ES away, and you don't even need the faster ones to do it. A base BMW 330i with its turbocharged four-cylinder engine needs just 5.7 seconds to hit 60 mph. The Audi A4? Even quicker than the BMW at 5.3 seconds. There is no performance metric where the ES outdoes its competition. 

But you know what? That's OK. Not every midsize luxury car has to have a sporty bent, even if Lexus still insists on putting "F Sport" badges on the ES.

The ES 350's steering is heavy and dutiful off-center, but it demands patience. The brake pedal is soft with a long travel so you can do your best imitation of a chauffeur when you come to a stop. You wouldn't want to spill your clientele's beverage, would you? The back seats are relatively spartan, but the rear sunblind, comfortable bench, and vast amounts of legroom make it a more than acceptable place to spend time. Trust me, when you're waiting at LAX for an Uber, you want the ES to be the car that picks you up. 

The point is, the ES knows exactly what it's supposed to do: It lets you get in and shut your brain off while you float your way home from a drawn-out, meeting-filled day at the office. 

The controls are all so easy to use. There's no haptic feedback silliness, no menus to jump through, and no learning curve to master. There is a button for almost everything; it's just that there are two dozen of them smattered about the cabin. Even then, we'd take the tactility over the touchscreen-heavy confines of the ES' competition. Everything is where you'd expect it to be, and there's very little fiddling around to do (unless you want to turn on the air conditioning, which is the only primary control buried in a screen menu). 

In the ES, the suspension actually suspends. You get a sense of roll and the chassis flexing as you move through city streets and bobble over highway expansion joints. The whole car flows with the road instead of fighting it for marginal gains on a skidpad.  

Instead, all you have to do is fade away into your leather-lined happy place as the ES glides along. It’s the kind of beautiful, approachable simplicity that serves as the antidote to the all-too-complicated, beep-and-chime-filled annoyance that driving in 2025 has become all too synonymous with. The ES is well worth this test car's $54,350 price tag.

Sports cars get all the kudos, and waxing poetic about luxury surroundings is usually for the Bentleys and Rolls-Royces of the world. But there's definitely still a place in the automotive pantheon for the seventh-generation Lexus ES. Let's hope the new one doesn't screw it up.