RX Strength
July 13, 2026
Alex KiersteinIt’s time to appreciate the first-generation Lexus RX, not as a horseman of the crossoverpocolypse, but as a compelling and handsome vehicle in its own right.
I’m not sure when the first-generation Lexus RX300 went from being part of the blobular background noise to something I follow with my eyes as it drives by, but it happened. One day I looked at it and thought, “that has to be one of the best-looking crossovers from that era.” And it is. That flip is a fascinating aspect of car desirability, when like a murmuration of birds we all seem to decide at the same time that some boring old car is actually quite cool. The XU10-generation RX300 has flipped for me, and I wonder if I’m alone in this.
I will say that Toyota certainly got the formula right. In the late 1990s, SUVs were generally large, inefficient truck-based things increasingly being purchased as lifestyle accessories. The Lincoln Navigator, for example. They got a lot of criticism for being the cynical cash-ins that they were, and rightly so. A lot of buyers moved from relatively efficient and lighter sedans to heavier and less efficient SUVs, while using them for essentially the same purposes. In other words, the additional capabilities of a 4×4, truck-based, body-on-frame SUV weren’t being leveraged by buyers, and it was hurting them at the pump.
It’s worth rehashing all of that because the Toyota RAV4 had debuted just a few years earlier, and deserves credit for pioneering a much saner approach than selling Isuzu Troopers as family do-everything vehicles. By modern standards, the original RAV4 was extremely light and offered a much better balance of usable capability with an upright look. The two-door and convertible models aimed at the active youth set. And at the time, I thought they were all a bit silly—heavier and taller than front-drive wagons that handled perfectly well in 90% of the conditions the RAV4 might possibly see.
This, of course, ignores the fact that the market is going to want what the market wants. If the market wants tall, stupid vehicles, that’s what it gets. And among the tall, stupid vehicles, the RAV4, Honda CR-V, and Subaru Forester were among the least stupid. (Plus, the latter two looked good, if more conventional, when compared to the earnestly goofy RAV4.) This, paired with an American fuel economy and emissions regime that effectively forced consumers into crossovers and SUVs was all it took.
But compared to these Corollas, Civic Shuttles, and Impreza wagons on stilts, the XU10 RX looks like a fully formed idea. There’s a lot of the smoothness of the first-generation Lexus SC and GS in the shape, but with some of the more attractive second-generation GS’s distinctiveness in the details, like the shapely lamps. It makes its platform-mate, the Toyota Highlander, look frumpy and disproportionate.
But cleverly, like the Highlander, it’s more car than anything else underneath. The Camry, Lexus ES, Toyota Sienna, and Toyota Avalon all share a basic architecture. That means the RX drives like a Lexus instead of a leatherbound pickup. The 3.0-liter V6, shared among the other K-platform cars, is smooth, too.
Had it shared the rear-drive-based, straight-six-powered platform of the SC, LS, and GS, the RX would have been a legend in its own time among us weirdos. It probably would have also sold poorly; instead, the practical, front-drive-based, Camry-derived RX became a multi-generational hit. Its second generation closely followed the formula, looking almost like a heavy refresh of the XU10 rather than a new model on a new platform. The two generations after this, including the current one, seem less distinctive, but this may just be that not enough time has passed for them to reenter the mind as interesting modern classics.
My EP3 does everything I need it to do, and it’s also fun around town. But given how cheaply nice, low-mile XU10 Lexus RXs go for around here, it’d be easy to kick the EP3 to weekend car status and get something roomier and cushier for kid-and-stuff-shuffling. Sometimes it’s nice just to have a nice car, right?
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