The Absurdity Index begins where a luxury car’s explanation becomes less convincing than the car itself. It is not a reliability ranking or a disguised list of bad purchases. Engineering excess, theatrical equipment, commercial miscalculation, and elaborate indifference to ordinary use can all raise the score. The numbers are judgments, not measurements, and a high score may be a recommendation to admire something rather than own it. Our control car supplies the necessary baseline: an extravagant development effort devoted to making extravagance seem unnecessary.
[Control] 0/10: Lexus LS400. Anhedonia as perfection.
The LS400 refuses to cooperate with the entertainment. Its conventional shape conceals a serious effort to make a large sedan quiet, smooth, and easy to live with. These are entirely reasonable objectives, achieved without a public display of mechanical distress. The absence of drama can feel like an absence of character, but that is the driver’s objection rather than a defect in the machine. The LS400 scores zero because its effort and its purpose point in the same direction. A control car that converts enormous development effort into an almost uneventful journey is inconveniently difficult to mock.
Lexus’ own project history counts 1,400 engineers alongside designers, technicians, and other contributors, not 4,000 engineers working alone. The result included a new aluminum V8 and an unusually resolved approach to noise and vibration. The famous champagne glass demonstration made a memorable advertisement for that work; it did not prove the car generated no vibration under every condition. The more interesting achievement was making an expensive engineering program disappear into an ordinary journey. A Rolex comparison works, provided the watch has declined to tell anyone what it cost.
Even the illuminated instruments support that disciplined purpose. They make information clear rather than staging a small technological event every time the ignition is switched on. For a driver seeking mechanical theater, the LS400 can seem almost aggressively correct. For a passenger trying to read, that may be the highest compliment available.
2/10: Mazda 929. Luxury witness protection.
The final American 929 is less rational in its relationship with the market than in its construction. Its broad C-pillars and soft curves give it a distinctive shape without the immediate identity of a Lexus, BMW, or Acura flagship. It asks the observer to notice how restrained it is, then provides very little reason for the observer to keep looking. This is anonymity pursued with enough care to become conspicuous to the few people paying attention.
It was not, however, a Japanese spaceship stripped of every interesting feature for America. The 1992 U.S. brochure offered a solar-powered ventilation system using cells in the sliding glass moonroof. Sunlight could help exhaust hot cabin air while the car sat parked. That is ventilation, not solar air conditioning, and it is a genuinely thoughtful luxury feature. The same brochure lists a 3.0-liter V6 and rear-wheel drive. Japanese Sentia specifications should not be used to award every U.S. car four-wheel steering, but nor should they be used to pretend Americans were denied the solar roof.
The score therefore comes from the awkwardness of the proposition, not a lack of engineering. The 929 could deliver comfort and a modestly futuristic appearance while making its owner explain why it existed between more familiar alternatives. Buying something understated is easy. Buying something so understated that even its good ideas require an introduction is a more specialized pleasure.
5/10: 1988–1994 BMW 750iL. The last outpost of rational extravagance. Beyond, there be dragons.
The E32 750iL escalated with considerably more confidence. Twelve cylinders provided both an engineering advantage and an instantly legible answer to the question of where the model sat in the range. The regular 7 Series supplied a restrained body; the V12 supplied the extravagance beneath it. This is excess with a coherent assignment: more effortless performance and a level of mechanical distinction that does not require a different car-shaped announcement.
The M70 was a purpose-built V12, not two complete straight-sixes welded together. Its bank-specific control arrangements made the architecture feel unusually elaborate, while the cabin could extend the excess in a more literal direction. The Highline refrigerator is a particularly clear example. Someone had already provided a perfectly effective means of reaching a restaurant; BMW then addressed the unacceptable interval before arrival. Rare equipment and conversions require their own build records, so the fridge need not drag a supposedly universal fax machine, second alternator, and powered writing desk into every Highline.
Five points recognize the doubling without pretending it had no benefit. A V12 can deliver a different kind of refinement from a six or an eight. What it cannot do is make every additional component disappear from the maintenance inventory. The E32 is still on the rational side of the border because the engine’s character supplies an answer proportionate to the complication. The refrigerator is an accessory to the argument, not its load-bearing member.
