By Roger Boylan

The Lexus CT200h is a luxury economy car. At first I didn’t know what to make of it. In the old days, this would have been a contradiction in terms. If you had the dough, you bought a luxury car with a purring V8 and plush leather sofa in front, and if you were poor,like most of us, you pedaled your econobox to and from the workhouse. In the first instance, you were resigned to having a gas guzzler on your hands, because that was the price of luxury; in the latter case, “economy” meant a raucous interior and bouncy ride, but at least you were getting good mileage. And that was that, for a long time. True, there were attempts over the years to winch faux “luxury” onto an economy platform: ”Cimarron by Cadillac” and the Chrysler-Maserati TC come to mind, although I wish they wouldn’t.

Then, in the ‘90s and early ‘00s, the market expanded and SUVs became crossovers and pickups acquired leather interiors and suddenly just about every form of automotive cross-fertilization was fermenting in the lab, from the Suzuki X90 to the Porsche Cayenne. But the CT200h trumps all thosebecause it’s not only a luxury economy car, it’s a luxury hybrid economy car, and a cheap—or should I say “inexpensive?”—Lexus, to boot, with a starting sticker price a hair under $30K (and going up to just under $40K, with all the bells and whistles). OK, that’srelatively inexpensive, but it’s still miles less thanother Lexi.

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