Another new member

[monster]

Haha, I like it. Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately it's got to be one or the other as my wife has just bought a 3 series Gt.

I've had an RX in the past albeit not the hybrid model and I've had an is250 and is220d. My initial thoughts were to get an RX as there's still a burst of speed with practicality (same reason I'm looking at the Cayenne). However, no other car has put a smile on my face like my Aristo did which has drawn me to the ISF.

[mike m]

Hi,

As mrfunex says you cant really compare the two but what he says is spot on in my mind.

I've owned a 10 plate RX450 SEL spec with air suspension / media hard drive / heated & cooled seats and now have a 62 plate F sport with Mark Levinson and both cars are easy to live with. The air suspension on the SEL was more comfy on a long run but i was never happy with the front end looks which is why i bought the F sport. MPG is always above 30 usually 33 but long journeys with twisty roads / hills it will climb to 37 / 38mpg. Depending on the roads you can get a few miles on electric.

Its certainly practical enough and great for long distances. Drove mine from the Lakes to Looe in one day.

Power wise it has about 300hp and with the electric motors giving a low down shove from standstill i've given a few cheeky folk in their VAG TDI's something to think about. Where i live there's lots of twisty roads and i can honestly say the handling is spot on. For such a big heavy car it can be pushed hard into corners quite far - usually with the tyres yelping but its safe and quick. Handles more car like than an SUV is what i'm trying to say.

The AWD also works great in the snow. I was unfortunate enough to get caught in snow coming home from Applecross one November going over the bealach na ba mountain pass. Had normal tyres on following a van with snow socks and the Rx pulled up the hill no problem while the van was struggling on the bends. Coming back down the otherside of the pass was terrifying lol but kept it slow and steady with no problems.

Reliability  / running costs. They will easily get 40k on the original disks and pads in fact i think mine is still on two original tyres. Never had any issues with the F sport but the SEL had an air strut replaced under warranty, windscreen wiper mechanism ball joint failed causing the wipers to stick across the screen and the A/C kept loosing gas. I traded it at that point.

 

The ISF i'm just getting used to so i wont really comment. What i will say though is the Mark Levinson stereo is the ISF is fairly ordinary sounding compared to the RX.

Cheers

 

Mike

[mrfunex]

An interesting point raised by Mike - the ML stereo in my previous GS450h was a class above the ML in the ISF. Bit of a shame, but there's a different type of music to listen to now... :-)