Sports utility vehicles get a mixed press these days. They are famous for being fat and ugly and for looking like they ought to carry 11 people, while in fact only having seats and belts for five, and in the main actually carrying between two and four. We had been through a phase in which, even in America, cars got smaller and rounder and generally more embarrassed about being cars. The rise of the SUV suggests that some people are at ease again with shameless heft - much to the annoyance of some other people.
In their American homeland, SUVs have been blamed for everything from ecological depletion to September 11. Over here, resistance is less organised but still tangible. To British eyes, SUVs looked kind of feisty and desirable in Hollywood films or when carrying Bill Clinton between golfing engagements. Harassing their way to school down the UK's traffic-choked roads, they can be much harder to like. Especially if it is you who is being harassed.
Owners, of course, who enjoy their SUVs' amazing levels of comfort and a view of the road otherwise obtainable only from a hillside, swear by them. Everybody else swears at them. It may not be only coincidence that we didn't start using the phrase "road rage" before we were comfortably familiar with the expression "sports utility vehicle".
And even if you are broadly of the opinion that people should be allowed to drive what they like, it's hard not to concede that the anti-SUV lobby makes some cogent points, not least about the SUV's antisociableness, which comes as standard on all models, along with air conditioning, CD-changer and remote-control locking. They simply bulk unnecessarily large.
If you are driving a standard-sized car and heading for a speedy front-on collision with an SUV, the last thing you will see is the badge on its radiator grille bearing down on your windscreen. Of course, it would be fine if everyone drove one. But if everybody drove one, the world would run out of petrol by November.
Clearly, all things considered, a charm offensive on behalf of the SUV wouldn't hurt. And perhaps the new Lexus RX300 is that charm offensive. Lexus is the elite division of Toyota and the idea of making an SUV that was less like a chariot for deer-hunting rednecks and more like a company director's fleet car can be traced directly back to them.
In the mid-90s Lexus developed the RX300, which was essentially a truck but with leather seats and thick carpets where the spent rifle cartridges and crushed beer cans used to go. BMW and Mercedes, among others, promptly followed suit to create what we now almost automatically think of as a high-end SUV - which is to say, a steroidal saloon car.
The latest RX300 has been redesigned to look, comparatively speaking, sleek and sporty - condensed, even, though this is, of course, an optical illusion having to do with the flow of the roofline and the way in which the rear windows abruptly taper. It's more aerodynamic and faster than the old one, but it's still a big block of metal. Getting in to the car at one point, I reached up to rest something on the roof and found myself on tiptoe.
There's an entry-level RX300 and a mid-range SE, but I was sent the maximally tooled-up SE-L version of the car. All have a 3.0-litre, six-cylinder engine with an automatic gearbox, but the SE-L's additional gifts are numerous. It has an 11-speaker hi-fi. Eight different aspects of the driver's seat are adjustable - about five more aspects than I knew existed. If you can't get comfortable in this car, then only an osteopath can help you.
The tailgate goes up automatically and the luggage cover retracts at the same time. Using a dashboard button, you can raise the suspension by 3.5cm to decrease your chances of decapitating wildlife, or lower it by 2.5cm to increase them. The car automatically drops to its lowest point to make climbing out that little more dignified.
Shift into reverse and the 18cm satellite navigation screen shows you a full-colour live broadcast from the back of your car, courtesy of the wide-angle lens concealed in the boot catch. If someone steps off the pavement while you are reversing, you will be able to see exactly what they are wearing before you hit them.
Especially nervous parkers can press a button for additional guidance lines showing where the vehicle is heading. The resulting image, with its rough strokes of virtual ink, looks a little like a television picture after the football analyst Andy Gray has finished doing his business with the light-pen. Except that it makes sense in accordance with the laws of logic and physics.
Furthermore, the interior is an acoustic masterpiece. Lexus has filled the body with all kinds of cunningly developed foams and insulators. But given the pin-drop silence of the cabin and the pampering smoothness of the ride, you will assume its cavities are stuffed with A-grade goose feathers.
The RX300 is currently appearing on billboards looking very handsome indeed above the legend "It Changes Everything", which, I would humbly submit, is a slight exaggeration, but one containing an element of truth. I certainly didn't want to give it back. Yes, I know: it's an SUV. So sue me.
