Think of this comparison of the Buick LaCrosse, Hyundai Azera, and Lexus ES 350 as an elimination round. Very soon, the soup bowl of contenders in the full-size, near-luxury sedan category will be joined by two new ingredients -- the profoundly revamped Toyota Avalon and Lincoln MKZ -- and both of them will spice things up.Hold on, an Avalon and an MKZ ... spicing things up? No, we don't mean in-car bingo on their entertainment screens. They're the revamped real deals. Toyota, after contemplating nixing the Avalon nameplate entirely, has pulled out the stops to build a serious player instead. And Lincoln? It's betting its entire brand on the MKZ re-establishing its relevance. But as we await these two, let's winnow down the existing challengers.
Of the current crop, our top trio hails from three different countries. The Buick LaCrosse is a familiar face that trumpeted Buick's return to the living three years ago. In 2010, we compared the LaCrosse to the previous-gen ES 350 and found the new Buick an unexpectedly good driver. It was dramatic-looking, with a confident, big personality design. And its claims of being very quiet were born out by it coming within a whisker of the previous-generation ES 350's noise levels.Since then, that ES 350 has been replaced by an all-new edition, which MT contributor Art St. Antoine recently explored in-depth. As he pointed out, it'll probably be an even bigger sales hit. But let me summarize his dim conclusion: "...in many respects it's downright disappointing, an uninspired effort, beneath what Lexus is clearly capable of." Some indisputable good news is that those Avalon origins (its predecessor was based on the Camry) have led to more than four inches of additional rear legroom. But overall, St. Antoine's critique is pretty harsh.
The Azera is a real wild card. Based on the Sonata's platform, it's sort of Hyundai's Avalon -- 3.5 inches longer than the Sonata and 1 inch wider. And the biggest winner is rear legroom, which is inflated by 2.2 inches. But what immediately struck us was the Azera's jewel-like interior. If Audi is the leader in sophisticated, artful interior design, Hyundai has become the ringmaster of mass-market dashboard dazzle. How well does it actually work? We'll get to that, but first, the numbers.
Two insights emerged from sifting through the data we recorded at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. First, the ES is a comparatively light car, light enough to leverage its last-place horsepower (268 versus the Azera's 293 and the LaCrosse's 303) into a sizable acceleration advantage. Remarkably, its 6-second-flat, 0-60 mph time is 0.6-second quicker than the Azera's and almost a second better than the 531-pound-heavier Buick's.The new ES is even 55 pounds lighter than its predecessor, delivering 2.4 better combined EPA mileage (2013's 24.6 mpg versus 2012's 22.2). Some of that is because of its Michelin Primacy MXV4 tires, which happen to be the same low-rolling-resistance rubber worn by the ES 300h hybrid. Unfortunately, it shows.
The Lexus understeered its way round the figure-eight course's corners at a crummy 0.76 g, not helped at all by its group-worst weight distribution (61% of it up front). Frankly, I wondered if this car had the wrong tires, but a call confirmed that these are indeed the prescribed footwear.
Numerically, the track numbers don't offer a particularly clear picture - the Lexus is quickest in a straight line; the Hyundai stopped in the shortest distance; the Buick delivered the highest lateral grip. However, subjective differences most certainly emerged from our figure-eight lapping.Here's what I said about the LaCrosse: "On the road, the Buick seems easy to pitch and roll, but here, where it's being driven much, much harder, that impression largely disappears. It really gets with the program and turns in a lot better than I expected. Unfortunately, its seats are way too wide a perch for performance antics, and its insanely-wide A-pillars badly obstruct your view while cornering."On the Azera: "This car's steering is a tick more remote than the Buick. Its on-center response is slow, but add in some angle and the front end bites abruptly. The Buick's steering is no great shakes, but it's better than this. Within a few laps the Hyundai was really punishing its front tires."And the ES 350: "Although its stability system is still presiding over matters, its touch is so subtle, I was able to slightly spin the inside front tire at will while cornering. All its controls seem to have a little more clarity than the other two, but that understeer is a real problem. And its seats? Frankly, I'm simply flying into the door panel. The support is virtually nonexistent."To be honest though, for cars in this category, sportiness is an optional reward. But refinement better be standard equipment. And so we took all three cars to a favorite long, straight, delightfully ill-paved road late at night to measure interior noise over an uninterrupted, one-mile stretch. (The results were averaged two-ways.)This time, the ES 350 bested the Buick in interior noise, 24.6 sones (and 66.1 dBA) to 25.3 sones (66.7 dBA). The Hyundai was a sonic blink behind, tying the LaCrosse in sones, but generating 66.8 dBAs.
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