Land yachts are amazingly useful if you have a large family like me. You can pack in all your camping gear, a few tents, and still have room left over for humans large and small. The only challenge—like taking a real yacht out on a lake—is that they can be a bit hard to park. Fortunately, the Lexus LX 700h Overtrail has several advanced driver-assist and camera features that make it much easier to navigate into a parking spot, even in a crowded mall lot—all without taking a million years.
That’s about how long it used to take me to park a Chevy Suburban I once owned. You couldn’t see all around the vehicle, so I often parked at the far edge of the lot just to make it easier—and then hoofed it over to my destination. The kids would complain the whole time. There had to be an easier way, I thought at the time.
The Lexus LX 700h Overtrail measures 16.72 feet long—about the width of a standard garage and roughly the length of a large canoe. I love it. The LX has plenty of space for my family, and knowing I could pack 20 medium-sized boxes in the cargo area is oddly comforting.
But I don’t like parking a canoe. Fortunately, the LX offers a helpful overhead 360-degree camera view, stitched together from multiple side cameras. It shows exactly where the vehicle is positioned and even highlights the parking lane markers.
I headed to a crowded Barnes & Noble in my area and tried parking a few times—both forward and backward. As you can see from the photos, it was surprisingly easy, and I was able to line up the LX perfectly every time. The bookstore is brand new and popular, but the parking spaces are tight. I’m not a fan of automated parking features since it often takes less time to just do it myself, and this overhead view makes it much faster.
So fast that I decided to time myself. Using the stopwatch on my phone, I found I could park the LX in about 14 seconds total, from start to finish. Not bad for a vehicle I had never driven before that day.
What this kind of technology ultimately does is build confidence. It makes you more comfortable driving larger SUVs because you know that when you arrive at a mall or grocery store—something I do often—you don’t have to hunt for a wide-open space or park in the boonies. Each time I tested myself at the bookstore, I found I didn’t need to stress about the size of the LX.
I also liked the overhead camera view and used it constantly. Not only can you see the parking spot from the sides, but you can also monitor traffic around the LX to check if anyone is driving too close. It only activates at low speeds, but it tends to impress anyone riding with me.
The truth is, that bird’s-eye camera view has been around for years, but it’s still one of the most useful features in modern SUVs.
The Lexus LX 700h Overtrail ended up being one of my favorite test vehicles in recent months—mostly because parking was such a breeze. I had no trouble finding a spot, pulling in quickly, and heading inside to start my book browsing.
