We'll start in the back for this one, because the Lexus LM is one of those cars where the driving experience feels more than a little inconsequential.
Nine times out of 10, the buyer and driver, you have to imagine, are separate people – and the one signing on the dotted line won't be spending much time in the front seat.
Once you've stopped chuckling at the sheer incongruity of a Lexus van with a £113k price tag, eased yourself into one of those sumptuous rear armchairs, fired up the 48in screen and selected a beverage from the mini bar, the LM actually starts to make a lot of sense.
Lexus, for so long the last word in understated opulence (imbued with a subtle touch of bling), has felt rather under-represented in the highest echelons of the car market, and now that it's introducing its most affordable car in decades in the form of the sub-£30k Lexus LBX crossover, it feels like the time is right to go after the oligarchs once again with a car whose soul focus is simply to eradicate any discomfort from the act of travelling from A to B.
The formula is clearly an enticing one: Lexus says it has taken around 170 orders in the UK so far and forecasts another 300 through 2024. Obviously, most are specified with four seats (because why ever not?) and four-wheel drive, but there's also a slightly less ostentatious seven-seater with optional front-wheel drive for £89,995.
That's still comfortably more expensive than any other similarly conceived MPV on the market, but to create a comparably specified Mercedes-Benz V-Class, for example, you would have to enlist the services of an aftermarket modifier, which would cost a similar premium.