Lexus GX 550 Overtrail review: trail-ready or just another luxe SUV?

I wasn’t expecting to enjoy the Lexus GX 550 or to liken it to one of my hero cars. But when I saw it on the moguls, one of the all-time greats immediately came to mind.

Lexus has never impressed me. With an undefinable ambience of luxury, they somehow lacked the chic, cohesive style of the Audis and Porsches of the world, struggling a little with layout and usability. But from an engineering perspective, there’s a certain reliable solidity and trustworthiness Lexus offers that competitor brands cannot, and that’s especially important when it comes to offroading.

I’d be genuinely surprised to see a Lexus throw up a fault code, an electronic protest, or not allow me, the driver, to control the car. Whereas with other cars in that price bracket, I know it’d be only a matter of time. Despite the impressive numbers and styling, some of those sports-oriented SUVs can’t even manage a racetrack without complaint, let alone a dirt track. And for that, I respect Lexus’s trustworthiness because nothing makes you fall out of love with a car more than it letting you down, particularly when it’s far off the beaten path and you’ve paid a premium for it.

But I do feel Lexus often engineer the joy and charisma out of their cars, somehow thinking that features like seventy-zillion on-road driving modes make a car engaging.

What changed my mind about the Lexus GX 550?

My mind began to change the moment I closed the driver’s door and looked out over the bonnet. “Good view” I mentally noted, something unusual these days with huge pillars and inset seats. A scan over the controls revealed the usual LEXUS CAPITAL WHITE LETTERING, which I think spoils the look somewhat, but it is functional.

I was happy to see evidence of a design decision I doubt any competitor in this bracket would choose to emulate – an array of buttons for locking the centre and rear diff, low range, Crawl Control and more. Manual driver control, a joy, a rarity, but it does require the driver understand the car.

Lexus gives you the tools for driver control. Go, Lexus! Just don’t read the owner’s manual; the advice is hopeless.

Further approval followed as I pressed the accelerator for the first time and felt 260kW of power bring the horizon closer to 2500kg of car. I’ve never met a kilowatt I didn’t like, and the Lexus GX 550 has plenty of them delivered through a 10-speed gearbox, so it does not lack straight-line speed. There can be no quibble with the engine except for the slight delay between requesting your kilowatts and their delivery, even in Sports+ mode.

Speaking of which, in true Lexus fashion, the GX 550 has a ridiculous five driving modes: Sports+, Sports, Normal, Comfort, Eco, and Custom, so you can blend your own, an entirely pointless exercise. The engine and exhaust note change, but it feels a little artificial through the speakers.

How does it go on-road?

So we’ve now got a heavy 4×4 hurtling towards a corner, so at some point, brakes need to be applied, followed by various forces coming into play to make the thing turn. And here it is clear the Lexus GX 550 is no match for the lighter, lower European SUVs on their low-profile, road-oriented tyres with fully independent suspension.

Lexus fitted decent all-terrain 265/70/18 tyres, hardly the rubber for laptime lowering, but a worthy 32.6″ overall diameter. I could go on, but this car wouldn’t see which way the others went on a racetrack. But I don’t care and neither should you, for three excellent reasons.

First, nobody takes high-performance SUVs to racetrack bar manufacturer days. They take proper sports cars because while quick, the sporty SUVs aren’t usually designed for the rigours of hotlapping. So the racetrack disadvantage of the GX is one that will never be realised. Let us instead consider real-world roads, and here, the balance tilts.

Yes, the sports SUVs are indeed quicker…but they are now limited by road laws and all the usual reasons you cannot go flat out on the road. That means the GX is much, much, closer as it doesn’t lack for power, and gets closer yet when we consider rough, real-world bitumen roads. Back in the day, I did a back-to-back test of a Lotus Elise vs a diesel Range Rover Sport and concluded the latter was, point-to-point, quicker because you had much better visibility, less bouncing, less need to deviate around road problems, and the Lotus’s advantages simply couldn’t be realised on public roads.

The Lexus GX 500 has the one trait I like in a fun car …

So, too, is it with the GX – you can make rapid progress across the country thanks to that powerplant, all-drive system, great visibility and tyres that care not about potholes. The suspension does its part too. The combination of the E-KDSS swaybar-disconnect system combined with adaptive dampers (AVS) keeps the car more level than you’d expect. If you want, the ESC will let you find the grip limit in Sport+ mode without interference and at a lower speed than that sports-SUV. Under hard braking into a corner that limit arrives with a decent amount of oversteer, and if there’s one trait I like in a fun car, it’s rotating it under brakes.

I’m actually kind of worried about writing this because now Lexus will now engineer this feature away, so enjoy it while it lasts. Sure you have to work a little harder for your ultimate speed in the GX, but it’s good work, it’s an input-reward loop and that is true fun, true sports. I don’t want to travel even faster for less effort and therefore fun. I just wish the throttle was that little bit more responsive.

How does it go on dirt roads?

Next up we have dirt roads, and here the GX is first-class, the way the suspension just dispatches what I know to be quite harsh corrugations is truly impressive. The electronics don’t get in the way, the AWD system delivers, the power is there, the electronics help not hinder…it’s a great dirt-road cruiser.

Offroad is where I’m expecting the GX to do well. It is built on Toyota Prado 250 fundamentals and their latest tech at that. It has all the right gear, too: low range, centre diff lock, rear locker, and E-KDSS. Nevertheless, I am surprised by just how good this car is off-road. Everywhere I point it, the Lexus GX 550 simply oozes along with unbothered ease, and it embarrassed our safety car and benchmark, a modified PX2 Ranger Raptor. The GX’s wheels barely lift off the ground, and when they do, the brake-traction control immediately intervenes to keep progress smooth to the point where – and prepare yourself, traditionalists – the rear locker is redundant.

Yes, you read that right!

Yes. Not needed, don’t bother, you read that right. I kept trying tougher and tougher hills till I found one that the GX struggled on with the rear locker. Then I disengaged it, and the car worked better. And better again with Crawl Control. Brake traction control does work on the front wheels when the rear locker is engaged, but it seems to be desensitized.

Speaking of Crawl Control, this is a generation and then some beyond what we first saw in the early LC200s, and I feel, even better than the LC300s. It’s super smooth and effective and very, very slow, down to 1km/h. It works in reverse very well indeed, better, in fact, than any human could manage.

Essentially you can drive the car with the dial, changing your speed, then select forward or reverse as you wish. And you’ll outperform pretty much anything else on the market. But there is a caveat, and that is you need to understand how to set the car up – centre locked, low range and so on. If you don’t do any of that and attempt something interesting in high range unlocked, you’ll go nowhere. This is where the likes of the Land Rover Defender (sorry, DEFENDER DEFENDER) have an advantage as they make life easier for novices, with fewer controls, more prompts, but in the end, less flexibility.

Which is better off road?

Which is better offroad? The Lexus GX 550, unless it’s a specific situation where the DEFENDER’s air-independent suspension gives it a clearance advantage.

Something else a novice, and even expert would appreciate, is the 360-offroad camera with transparent wheel placement, called Multi-Terrain Monitor (MTM). This is not unique to Lexus, and their version isn’t any better than the others, but it’s still cool.

We even tested a feature Lexus would prefer we didn’t. On one of the runs, my co-driver bounced a wheel over a rock trying to keep away from a rut … and then hit the rut. The moral of the story is that it’s usually better to keep in the ruts rather than try and climb out. The plastic wheelarch trim was ruined, but the panel was otherwise undamaged, so those wheelarch trims do protect the car.

What could be better on the Lexus GX 550?

Is there anything I don’t like? Yes, the user interface. Android Auto worked very well, except that once it’s activated, you cannot then get back to the main controls, so you can’t do something like reset the fuel consumption, or least, I didn’t find a way. Nor could I see a way to switch off Auto from the car, only the phone. Usability has never been a strong point of any Japanese brand and Lexus seem keen to carry on with the tradition.

Now for weights. What follows is a bunch of numbers, but if you prefer words, here’s the summary. Like most wagons, the GX doesn’t really have enough payload for 4×4 touring if modified. It will tow 3500kg but I wouldn’t recommend it, more like 3000kg, and you’ll lose a lot of your payload if you do tow heavy. However, on this score, it’s not really any worse than competitor vehicles and better than most. I know Ironman4x4 have a GX on fleet and are working out what they’ll make for it.

The detail – I put the car, full of fuel, over a GoWeigh weighbridge, and it read 2500kg, rounded to the nearest 20kg, which is less than the spec sheet of 2515kg. With a GVM of 3110kg, that’s a payload of 610kg, which is not much if you’re going to heavily accessorise it, but it’s sufficient if you don’t, and to be fair about the same as many other 4×4 wagons.

What about towing?

But what about towing? The Overtrail can pull 3500kg, towball mass 350kg, so that’s most of your 595kg payload gone, leaving 260kg for occupants, gear, accessories etc. I wouldn’t tow 3500kg with any car of this class, but there is hidden good news with the axle weights; the front is 1570kg, and the rear is 1860kg. My weighbridge results were 1160kg front axle and 1340kg on the rear, so that means you’ve got a huge 230kg on the front axle to play with and 700kg on the rear, very decent margins. At 350kg TBM, you’ve got 700-(350*1.5) = 175kg left on the rear axle, not a lot but decent for this class.

I don’t think you buy cars like this particularly minded about fuel economy. But for the record, I got around 12L/100km around town with a bit of freeway and sub-10 when on the freeway. The fuel tank is 80L, so you’re not getting huge range but you do get huge power.

What about the other Lexus GX 550s?

What of the other Lexus GX 550s? There’s three models: Luxury, Overtrail and Sports Luxury. The Overtrail is the model on test and is a five-seater focused on offroad. The Luxury and Sports Luxury offer seven seats and fewer offroad features, but would still be highly capable. The Overtrail gets Crawl Control, the Multi-Terrain Select adaptive terrain system, Multi Terrain Monitor and the rear locker, plus the offroad tyres. Overall, I’d say the Luxury and Sports Luxury could still go where the Overtrail goes, but not as easily and would need a more skilled driver, plus you’d be scratching those 20 and 22″ rims if not picking up punctures on that thin rubber.

Happily, all grades get a full-sized spare, which is rare these days but essential for anything that resembles an offroader. The Overtrail and Luxury can tow 3500kg, and Sports Luxury 3150kg.

Now back to those moguls…

A great test of offroad capability is to drive the car slowly over very rough terrain, to the point where a wheel or two will leave the ground. There are a number of ways to keep the car moving in those situations, such as traction aids like lockers or brake-traction control and good suspension design.

Watch a Classic Range Rover over such terrain if you want to see old-school impressiveness. It simply oozes along, graceful and unhurried, nicely balanced, suspension flexing up and down. Proper capability, not just doing it, but doing it well and in style.

Watching the Lexus GX 550 perform against the Raptor, I was similarly struck with the effortless, easy way it melted across the moguls.

not as good offroad as the lexus, stock standard. send hate to the editor, not me.

And then I realised the GX is the Classic Range Rover, reborn or to use the trendy word, ‘reimagined’.

If I distil what the original Range Rover values were, I’d say they were powerfully comfortable on-road performance, superb off-road capability, luxury with a practical touch not just for the sake of it, and the ability to tow heavy. I feel the modern Range Rover has somewhat lost those values, but the Lexus GX 550 embodies them like few other cars today. It even looks vaguely Classic with boxy lines.

Who’d have thought Lexus would have made a better Range Rover than Land Rover?

Specifications