30 Minutes With: The 2017 Lexus IS 200t F SPORT

The 2017 Lexus IS 200t F SPORT.

Publisher's note:  Normally, the cars you read about here at TireKicker are loaned to us by the press fleets of the various manufacturers for several days.  Seven is typical.  Occasionally, we'll get a longer period of time, and sometimes it'll only be three or four days.  Our "30 Minutes With" series are cars that we spent half an hour behind the wheel of during the just-concluded Western Automotive Journalists Media Days in Monterey, California.

Day one of Media Days is a driving program, with journalists taking cars from the staging area at Quail Lodge in Carmel Valley to Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca via Laureles Grade.  Once there, you swap cars with another journalist for the drive back, and then swap cars again once back at the Quail. Apart from an hour's lunch, this is your day from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.  Each run is about half an hour, and driving 10 to 12 cars back-to-back-to-back gives you interesting points of reference about the next one.

My fourth car of the day was one the Phoenix Bureau liked a lot when they reviewed it at the beginning of last year...the Lexus IS 200t.

Addition Through Subtraction: The 2016 Lexus IS 200t

The 2016 Lexus IS 200t.

Ours is a numbers-oriented society.  And the bigger the number, usually, the better.  It is certainly that way with car model numbers, with the number generally corresponding in some way to the size of the engine under the hood.

So why did Lexus make the IS 250 the IS 200t and how is that actually an improvement?