It has been a couple of months since Toyota Motor Philippines launched the all-new Alphard. And despite the scarcity of units and the exorbitant prices of the luxury van, we’ve seen quite a few samples being driven around our roads. Lexus Philippines believes that those two months are enough leeway for it to officially bring the king of luxury vans, the all-new LM.

Debuting globally last April, the LM was launched much earlier than the Alphard, but this order was flipped for our market.

And just like what TMP did with the Alphard, Lexus has silently added the all-new LM to its vehicle lineup. There were no official launch events or press releases. We only learned about this when we checked on Lexus Philippines’ official website.

We’ve already shared with you what to expect with the LM. So we’ll only talk about what features and equipment made it to the Philippine-market version of the flagship MPV.

There are two variants of the LM available: A seven– or a four-seater version. There are no distinct exterior differences between the two. In fact, both have Lexus’s reimagined spindle body design language.

All of the trims including the 19-inch multi-spoke aluminum wheels are shared by both variants. The same goes for the available finishes as both can come in Graphite Black, Sonic Quartz, Sonic Agate, and Sonic Titanium.

Inside is where obvious differences can be seen. While the driver and the front passenger get the same materials, features, and trims, it’s in the rear passenger compartment where the two are dramatically different.

The seven-seater option has a third-row bench seat behind the two captain’s seats, while the four-seater version only comes with two seats in the back.

The seven-seater has six-way power captain seats with memory function, stowable tables, heating and ventilation, and two-way power-adjustable ottomans.

There is a 14-inch ceiling-mounted display for the rear seats, and there is a 21-speaker Mark Levinson audio system for your listening pleasure. It also has a boot capacity of up to 110L behind the third row. All of these features make its sibling, the Alphard, too pedestrian.

But as loaded as the seven-seat version is, the four-seat variant pushes luxury to a whole new level.

For starters, the two captain’s seats may be down to just four ways of electric power adjustment—because you can’t move them fore and aft with the two-way power ottoman—but they gain massaging functionality.

There’s a ginormous 48-inch ultrawide display with dual-screen display and a 23-speaker Mark Levinson audio system.

It also gets a rear console box, a privacy glass partition necessitating the addition of a digital rearview mirror, and a large-capacity refrigerator. The deletion of the third row expands the boot space to 752L.

Both share the same dimensions, with the seven-seater being heavier by 10kg. The same goes with the 2.5-liter four-cylinder A25A-FXS hybrid powerplant producing 188hp. However, the seven-seater has 4Nm more torque at 243Nm compared to the four-seater’s 239Nm.

The LM also comes with the complete suite of Lexus Safety System+ 3.0 features, including the Safe Exit Assist. All of this helps make it easier for the chauffeur to protect all of the important passengers of this van, and to keep them all safe from harm.

The biggest difference is in the pricing. The seven-seater version sells for ‘just’ P7,578,000, while the four-seater can be had for an eye-watering P11,808,000. That’s a whopping P4.2-million difference between the two variants. This makes the P4-million Alphard seem like a bargain.

The affluent few will probably line up to get one for themselves, and the politicians will get theirs, too (after all, they have confidential funds at their disposal). For us mere mortals, the proposition of owning an LM is something that we can only dream of.