Lexus LS 500h
Why 7.8: Lexus refused to accept that a hybrid flagship had to drone, so it bolted a four-speed gearset behind the planetary hybrid transmission to give the thing ten distinct ratios and a stepped shift feel. Nobody else has ever built one, and nobody else ever will.
Layout
Natural habitat
Ride comfort
Sound
Lexus bolted a real four-speed gearset behind the planetary hybrid drive specifically so the V6 steps instead of droning, which is more consideration than any rival paid the problem. But this is the quietest cabin Lexus has built, the engine is off for much of the journey, and what you hear when it runs is a characterless hum.
6-cylinder · naturally aspirated · 6,600 rpm redline · rated 2.2 / 10 for engine sound
Market value
Median asking price, good condition · €74k (2018) → €31k (2026), trending down · illustrative data
Child seats · ISOFIX
Two ISOFIX positions on the outer rear seats, the outer pair being the ones the standard covers.
The rear anchors are the supported route — the manual points child seats there, and front-passenger ISOFIX is the exception rather than the rule. A belt-mounted seat up front needs the airbag off, and cars with a rear row don't always fit a deactivation switch, precisely because the rear seats exist.
Derived from production years and seating layout, not a per-car source. ISOFIX was standardised as ISO 13216 in 1997, required on new EU model types from 2011 and on all new EU cars from 2014.
The long version
The fifth-generation LS arrived in 2017 with the hardest brief in the industry: replace a car whose entire reputation was built on being quieter and better made than a Mercedes, at a moment when Lexus had decided it also wanted to be interesting. What came out is a flagship with genuinely striking sheet metal, a cabin containing hand-pleated Kiriko glass and origami-fold door trim, and the Multi Stage Hybrid — a planetary hybrid drive with a physical four-speed automatic behind it, which is the sort of solution a company arrives at when the alternative is admitting the CVT feels wrong. It works. It also produced a car that no longer sold, because the badge that once undercut Germany on price had drifted upmarket while the buyers had drifted to SUVs. Lexus moved a few hundred LS saloons a year in America by the early 2020s. The consequence is the steepest depreciation of any car with this build quality: an $80,000 hybrid flagship is a $34,000 car after seven years, and it will not have broken. Nobody speculates on an LS because there is no market to speculate into, and the people who buy them used are buying the most reliable luxury saloon on earth at a Camry-plus price. What holds the mileage figure back is simple demographics — LS owners are older, retired, and cover fewer miles a year than the car deserves.