Test Drive: You will pay a lot, but Lexus 600h delivers

PARKING LOT F, ROSE BOWL, PASADENA, Calif. -- Pausing in a surrealistically empty ocean of asphalt to corral impressions of the $104,715 Lexus LS 600h L sedan.

An overwhelming car. The price is the highest ever charged by Lexus or any other Japanese automaker.

Power is fierce; the array of safety features, almost imponderable.

Leather-covered dashboard is handmade and some parts of the body are hand-sanded between coats of paint. Lexus says master craftsmen oversee many other key operations to boost Lexus' already respected quality and infuse a hand-made feel, though the car is built mainly by robots, in the modern fashion.

The gasoline-electric drivetrain pushes hybrid technology to new heights — but of sophistication or absurdity?

The car is Lexus' effort to attract the super-affluent buyers it hasn't quite reached, in addition to the ordinarily affluent that it has. A 5-liter gasoline V-8 is teamed with two electric motors in the now-familiar Lexus hybrid system, called Hybrid Synergy Drive. It's arranged as an all-wheel-drive setup, not just two-wheel-drive, in the LS 600h, however.

The power of a V-12, Lexus says, and the fuel economy you'd get from a big-displacement V-6 in an all-wheel-drive car. Translated, about 20 miles per gallon on the windows sticker, about 18 on the byways around here, including a spirited frolic on the snaking Angeles Crest Highway. On which, it should be noted, the car handled more crisply than you'd expect, given the non-sporting reputation of Lexus' big cars.

At that level of price and performance, who cares about mileage, you might ask. Why, says Lexus, those super-affluent buyers it is trying to lure. They want to feel good, or less bad, about their luxury car indulgence. Hardly a 50-mpg Prius, but the 600h does get better mileage than its rivals, and poops 70% fewer objectionables out the tailpipes, Lexus explains. Less effluent from the affluent.

No sacrifice of comfort, either, with near-limousine back-seat accommodations opened up by the long-wheelbase chassis. That's why the "L" is in the model name.

To get the necessary muscle, Lexus says it could simply have put a real V-12 under the hood. "But doing things differently" and offering a sophisticated alternative is key to Lexus' image, says Jim Farley, newly appointed to run the Lexus brand in the U.S. after getting Toyota's other non-namesake brand, Scion, off the ground.

So engineers created a third version of the current Toyota/Lexus V-8. The first was the 4.6-liter in the Lexus LS 460 sedan. The next was the 5.7-liter V-8 in the Toyota Tundra pickup launched earlier this year. Though the one in the 600h is a 5-liter engine, the car is designated 600 because it performs as well as a 6-liter 12-cylinder, in Lexus' view. The "h," of course, means it's a hybrid.

The gasoline engine alone is rated 389 horsepower. Add the electric motor's power and the total is — can you believe the coincidence? — 438 hp, same as BMW's 6-liter V-12.

The second electric motor doesn't drive the car. It works as the starter for the engine, as the generator to keep the battery full and the accessories powered, and influences how the continuously variable automatic transmission blends power from the gasoline and electric sources.