Spendid Isolation - The Asphalt Jungle - Editorial

I want to live alone in the desert
I want to be like Georgia O'Keefe
I want to live on the Upper East Side
And never go down in the street.
-Warren Zevon, "Splendid Isolation"

Most of the time, I manage to look on the bright side of driving in L.A. For instance, when a Hummer H1 nearly crushes my car into a chewing-gum wrapper because its driver is steering with his Frappuccino while munching on an arugula burger, I remind myself that the palm trees here don't ever get buried in snow like they do in Buffalo. Or if I'm hit by a wave of nausea after seeing a vanity plate like "SGRDADY" or "QTPIE4U," I calmly redirect my eyes to the pristine 1967 Shelby GT350 rumbling in the next lane - which in just about any other city you'd only see indoors, locked away behind a velvet rope and a gift shop.

Lately, though-perhaps due to a recent crush of deadlines or maybe because my martini shaker needs a valve job - I can't handle the truth. Rather than face the maddening realities of L.A. driving, I feel a strong urge to lock myself away someplace dark, let my fingernails grow into yardsticks, and spend all day watching Turner Classic Movies in the nude.

Fortunately, before I'd descended into the ninth circle of Hughes, I discovered the perfect antidote to L.A.'s roadgoing toxins: our long-term Lexus LS 460. If there's an automobile that better defends its driver from the slings and arrows of outrageous things that happen on the other side of the windshield, I haven't driven it.

Mind you, the LS 460 is not a sensory-deprivation chamber in the grand tradition of Bygone Detroit - i.e., steering ratio inspired by lottery odds, body panels stuffed full of old issues of National Geographic, shock absorbers set on "Brie." Instead, it's almost as if the Lexus injects its occupants with an invisible dose of Prozac: You still notice the annoying things going on around you, but you just don't care.

The lengths to which Lexus's engineers have gone to create this effect is mind-blowing. The doors, for instance, have been tuned by a Takumi - a "feeling master" - so that they shut with a sound that calls to mind an expensive hardwood home door. Lexus developed a new heater mechanism for the steering wheel that provides instant warmth, lest your defenseless fingers spend even one second in mortal contact with chilled cowhide. The one-touch power windows are designed to slow down a split-second before they close fully-sealing with a pleasing "ssshhheeeeeppp" instead of a nerve-rattling "whump." Indeed, Lexus even optimized the tone of every cockpit motor (seats, telescoping wheel, etc.) to create an interior that hums in perfect pitch.

Under the bodywork lies another miracle of modern stress-reduction: the world's first eight-speed automatic. The benefit of a transmission that slices up torque into julienne fries is an engine that works about as hard as a bouncer at a Sunday school. The eight-speed itself incorporates a new transmission-control system that releases and connects the appropriate clutches simultaneously, all but eliminating shift shock. The result: You'll strain to hear or feel this powertrain at work. The tachometer may actually be connected to the New York Stock Exchange.

Thanks to these and other engineering wonders - plus amenities like LED interior lighting, a rear-window sunshade that retracts automatically above nine mph, and an optional, 19-speaker Mark Levinson audio system that can almost reproduce the waft of a conductor's baton - I'm ready to face L.A.'s mean streets again. Stress? Me? If I drive the LS much longer, I'll probably get a bill from Club Med.