We drove the absolutely brand-spanking-new 2014 Lexus IS 350 F-Sport at the launch event in Dubai just two weeks ago. It was a great car, but we couldn’t help but feel slightly underwhelmed by it. Now we got the non-Sport version of the car for a few days, and we were keen to see if it’d be just as underwhelming. Ironically, we had more fun with it!
The previous-generation Lexus IS 300 was a compromised but attractive sedan, easily the carmaker’s sportiest offering for the better part of a decade, if we were to overlook the overpriced (and overrated?) LFA. It was going to be a tough act to follow in terms of styling, although it was a given that the replacement also needed to address the issue of interior space. After the rather good GS sedan, every model in the Lexus range got a “spindle” grille and now looks like clones of each other, so their designers had to do something drastic to make the new IS be more than just a GS-lite.