If you want a luxury sedan that'll outlive your mortgage and still feel special at 200,000 miles, the 2019-2025 ES is the one to buy, owners report zero drama, 50+ mpg from the hybrid, and an interior that hasn't aged a day. It's the last ES with the smooth V6, and the last one that feels like a proper Lexus before the brand lost the plot. The 2026 redesign strips out the V6, replaces buttons with touch-capacitive surfaces, and swaps hand-stitched luxury for Tesla minimalism that screams 'cost-cutting.' Nobody's driven one yet, so the hate is all aesthetic, but when a brand kills its best engine, ditches the iconic L logo for spelled-out branding, and makes the interior look like a rental car, that's a red flag. Buy the outgoing generation while you still can, it's the last ES that knows what it is.
Toyota built this full-size sedan to outlast your mortgage, owners routinely push 300k, 400k, even 486k miles before anything critical breaks. It's a Camry stretched to Lexus proportions, sharing the ES platform but costing thousands less, and the hybrid models deliver shockingly good fuel economy (40+ mpg) for something this spacious. The catch: Toyota discontinued it after 2022, so you're shopping used-only, and the older generations that dominate owner forums come with age-related quirks like seal leaks and the infamous 2008 dashboard melt. If you want a highway cruiser that'll run forever and don't need the latest tech, this is one of the smartest used buys in the sedan graveyard, just budget for the fact that even Toyotas need parts when they hit drinking age.