Lexus IS vs Toyota Prado

What's the difference?

One question frequently discussed in the skunkworks of the CarsGuide office is: What exactly does Lexus stand for?

When the brand debuted its original export-market IS sedan in 1999 the messaging was more or less clear: Toyota’s premium sub-brand was here to be a Japanese BMW.

The brand even employed Nobuaki Katayama – chief engineer on the iconic Corolla AE86 program – to again take the reins of its small rear-wheel drive sedan program.

As the years went on though, Lexus changed. Fundamentally geared toward the US market, the second-generation (wild IS F aside) became a bit more sedate and softer around the edges, while the third generation strayed even further from the sedan’s performance-inspired roots, leaning into a plush interior, hybrid drive, and even CVT transmissions.

This brings us to today’s Lexus IS. Essentially a heavy facelift of the third generation (which arrived back in 2013), the brand has “reimagined” its core sedan with a tweaked design and updated technology for 2021.

Is it enough to keep it relevant against its ever-present European rivals and the newly arrived threat from Hyundai’s Genesis G70? I took a signature IS300h hybrid for a week to find out.

They call it the Toyota LandCruiser (two words) but to Australian eyes it looks like what we affectionately call a Prado. But it’s what’s underneath the surface, beyond the name, that makes this car so interesting.

We recently had the opportunity to drive the Toyota LandCruiser in the US, where the engine isn’t the usual turbo diesel found in the Prado, but rather a petrol-electric hybrid that Australian buyers are denied.

So we wanted to know if we were missing out on something special or if Toyota Australia made the right call to stick with a diesel-only option. Aside from the engine the LandCruiser is very similar to the Prado, so we’ll focus on the key difference rather than detailing the minor changes across the pair.

We spent time behind the wheel of the US LandCruiser to find out, spending a few days driving it around Los Angeles to get a feel for it.