• Five are seated in comfort
• Well-shaped boot with electric tailgate
• Lighter trims add to feeling of spaciousness 

How much space is there?

Front seat passengers have loads of room to stretch out – and the driving position is great. There’s plenty of adjustment in the seats and the steering column so, even if you’re more than six feet tall, you won’t be overreaching for the wheel or scrunching into the dashboard.

The rear bench feels like a business class cabin on a posh airliner. Leg and head room is very generous and the seats are electrically adjustable, heated and cooled, which is a very nice touch. Those in the rear also get their own climate controls and a four charging ports.

Boot space and storage

The roomy interior theme continues with the luggage area. You get a 461-litre (seats up) to 621-litre (seats up, loaded to the roof) boot, which puts it in the middle of the pack, and reflects the high load floor. With the rear seats folded luggage space increases to 1,678 litres.

It is well shaped, being square with high sides and minimal suspension intrusion. Sadly, the loading lip is high, and ultimately it’s less accommodating than the Audi Q5, BMW X3 and Mercedes-Benz GLC.

All versions of the RX get an electric tailgate, which you can ‘kick’ open by waving your foot under the rear bumper. However, it’s slow to operate, so you’ll need to be patient.

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Is it easy to park?

This is a large car, but in the city, it never really feels intimidating to drive or put up much of a figtht when squeezing it in to a small gap. All-round visibility isn’t great, but it’s no better or worse than its full-sized SUV rivals. However, the Lexus RX is easy enough to park thanks to a suite of driver aids and cameras.

All models come with parking sensors as well as offering a crystal clear view delivered by a very efficient camera set-up. As well as that, the image is displayed on the huge infotainment system, so you won’t miss a thing.

Safety

• Lots of active safety as standard
• Five-star Euro NCAP rating
• Too many annoying warning chimes

Here’s where the Lexus gets into its stride. The RX achieved a five-star safety rating from Euro NCAP, thanks in equal part to its strong crash structure and its comprehensive suite of driver assistance technology.

Key features include rear-cross traffic alert, dynamic radar-guided cruise control and emergency steering assist which will provide steering and braking assistance to help keep the car stable if you swerve to avoid an obstacle. There’s even a camera-based driver monitoring system which will bring the vehicle to a controlled halt and activate the hazard lights if it senses the driver has become unresponsive or unwell.

It’s all very impressive technology, but it can be a little overbearing. There’s a warning buzzer to accompany most of these safety features – and there’s an additional system that chimes each time the speed limit changes.

So, if you drive through a complicated city with lots of speed limit changes, wobbly cyclists, kamikaze moped rides and enraged local motorists, the dashboard will be constantly chirping at you until you’re back on the main road. Thankfully, you can turn off the chimes in the infotainment system.

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