Lexus LM - long-term review

You have a Lexus LM. You have four bicycles. How do you use the former to transport the latter? The answer to this question is not straightforward. But as a fully paid-up MAMIL (Middle-Aged Man In Lexus), I am duty-bound to answer it.

You might imagine, given the sheer size of the LM, that you could stuff at least a couple of the bikes inside. You cannot. The inside of the LM is too full of throne to leave space for bikes, at least without the aid of a hacksaw.

So they’re going on the outside. A tailgate-hung rack is off limits, the LM’s rear door not built for such exertions. There’s no official towbar option (it’s somewhat unclear if there’s even an unofficial option out there anywhere), which leaves one choice: bikes on the roof.

Just one tiny issue with this. There’s no official roofbar kit for the LM either. Almost as if those in the market for a £120k mega-limo aren’t too worried about roof tents or family biking holidays.

Help arrives, however, in the reassuringly Swedish shape of the fine folk at Thule. Because while Thule don’t offer a roofbar kit for the LM, they do offer one for the current Toyota Alphard. It would seem no one has actually tried using an Alphard kit on an LM. But at least partially convinced by my assertion that the two cars share (upper) sheetmetal, Thule gamely allow me to play guinea pig, providing the bits to hopefully bolt bars to LM roof (specifically the 710500 footpack and 145385 fitting kit, since you ask) along with a quartet of bike carriers.

Honestly, if you’re in the business of regularly transporting bikes on the outside of your car (and I very much am), Thule kit is the business. Over the years, I’ve damaged too many bike frames, and skinned too many knuckles, using flimsy cheap bike carriers. Don’t bother with the budget stuff. In joyous news, the Alphard kit fits the Lexus like a glove, with just one issue: the sheer height of the LM means the only way to get bikes on or off is with the aid of a stepladder.

Clearly there’s only one way to find out if the bars are sturdily attached: with a two-thousand-mile road trip to Italy (with a stepladder). I am delighted not only to report that the bikes remain firmly attached all the way to Aosta and back, but also that the LM is entirely peerless when it comes to Euro-tripping. So long as (a) you’ve hooked up the rear screen to a Firestick controlled by your rear-seat occupants and (b) the front-seat occupants have no desire to actually converse with those in the rear.

I’m not sure my kids even noticed they’d just been subjected to a 750-mile day on the road. Are we there yet? Yes lads, we arrived 15 minutes ago. Time to switch off the telly. The LM’s rear lounge is so cossetting, so comfortable, so very Virgin Upper that it makes large countries simply disappear. Neat trick.

It should be noted that bolting a quartet of bikes on the roof does not aid the LM’s efficiency. At autoroute speeds, the big bus returns well under 30mpg. Lexus claims the LM boasts a 60-litre fuel tank, but in the real world I’ve found it’s less than 50 litres from brimmed to oh-god-you’re-out-of-fuel dashboard panic stations.

I cannot explain this discrepancy, but can I tell you it equates to a real-world range of under 300 miles across France. For a machine that’s about peerless, worry-crushing effortlessness, this is less than ideal.

But EV-grade range anxiety aside, the LM might just be history’s finest family road-trip car. And, thanks to Thule, now history’s blingiest Tour de France support vehicle. Chapeau!