Lexus RX ‘L’ with a third row of seats set for Tokyo debut say Japanese press

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The Lexus RX – Lexus’s largest SUV in the UK – is set to get a third row of seats with a debut for the RX ‘L’ at the Tokyo Motor Show in October.

The Lexus RX was one of the very first ‘Premium’ SUVs, and over the years it’s been transformed in to a very appealing way for better-off buyers to move around.

It doesn’t have the space of an XC90, the off-road ability of a Range Rover or the dynamics of a Porsche Cayenne, but it does hold real appeal and, just like the XC90, it dares to offer a different recipe for a premium SUV than the German offerings.

But one area lacking for the RX is the option of a third row of seats, something you can have on the Range Rover Sport and BMW X5 – and as standard on the XC90 – and with buyers moving en masse from high-end MPVs and People Carriers to SUVs, that’s a bit of a sales obstacle for Lexus.

But it seems plans are afoot – at least according to the Japanese press – with an RX ‘L’ arriving at the Tokyo Motor Show in October and offering that elusive third row.

That sounds like a plan, but it seems the third row option is going to be something of a compromise, with no extension of the wheelbase, but an extra bit stretching out the back to make room for seats and luggage.

That would suggest the seats in the very back of the RX will be little more than emergency ‘Dickie’ seats, just for times when you really must cram in extra bodies, rather than making rearmost passengers comfortable.

It’s probably something Lexus need to do – especially for the US market, where the RX is a huge seller – and we’ll have to wait and see until it arrives just how successful Lexus’s efforts with a people-carrying RX are.