My first Lexus - IS 250 SE-L

[Quince99]

My first Japanese car - Lexus IS 250 SE-L in Brechin Slate, 71K miles, 3 owners on a 55 plate. Extremely good condition, refurbed alloys and not a stonechip that I could find on the front end. Have detailed the boot and interior (front) so far and cut and polished woodwork; rear at the weekend and under bonnet - not much to do - and then proper exterior wash, clay (if needed), polish and wax. Of course that depends on the weather in Lincolnshire cooperating. We've had sun nearly all this week so when I want to wash the car it's bound to rain.

Anyway, some amusing reading - my car history to date:

Morris Ital    - my first car, from my uncle who worked at BL. At just over 3 years old when I got it, it was already pre-rusted.

Opel Manta   - in... GOLD!!! Talk about bling in the 1980s!

Jensen Interceptor - stunning car - about two lamp posts to the gallon and was costing me £5 a day to commute 20 miles in 1987! Shame when the auto box died - would only drive in reverse!  

Ford Capris - black 2.0S; beige 3.0S - whatever possessed me?! - then two blue 2.8i models. Lovely but one was nicked and used to hold up a petrol station in Leighton Buzzard. The police found it before I had realised it was gone - minus alloys - which they recovered from a barn near Luton six months later. Got alloys back, shame no car!

Porsche 924 - nice in blue, mingy brown upholstery and intermittent horn which cost me two MoT failures! Oh, and the pop-up lights generously melted the switch with the result that occasionally one would pop up and wink. Not a lot of night driving done there...

Fiesta XR2 - nice but within a week it was half-inched by some chavs in the so-called respectable town of Berkhamsted. Reported it, claimed insurance, never heard anything more.

Vauxhall Cavalier Convertible - Harsh drive - maybe just my particular car - roof didn't leak much... honest! Nice with top down, couldn't see out of back window when hood up.

Daimler Vanden Plas - Gorgeous sage green with cream leather, healthy appetite for 4-star (in those days!) and only offloaded this beauty when inboard rear brakes proved too much for me. 

Ford Granada Scorpio - couple of these - both in dark green, lack of imagination or what? - both comfortable and swift. Both autoboxes died... not much luck here with autos!

Jaguar 3.2S - lovely shade of Kingfisher. Added numerous original Jaguar options and had all leather out and refinished. Boot carpet better than those in the house! Sold for £300 profit!  

Ford Cougar V6 - Kept for 5 years - longest period of ownership - in mint condition, never been through car wash (no swirls or scratches), rarely taken into a public car park unless early morning or dead of night to avoid rampaging trolleys and careless door-openers. Fabulous drive and performance, only thing missing was the comfort of the Granada's "armchairs".

After than an Omega 3.0 Elite - more of a stopgap than anything else. Comfortable but a barge to maneuver and park.

Went back to another V6 Cougar after that and only reluctantly got rid of that when it appeared that the head gasket was on the way out. Not quite as nice as the previous Cougar, and that always niggled me.

That was replaced by a very swift - but lairy - Volvo S60 T5 in Maya Yellow Pearl! Lovely car, VERY quick with manual box and only reluctantly traded in when starting to exhibit electronic gremlins.

Replaced with a Chrysler 300C CRD that had been pimped - removed a lot of that back to stock - but for a diesel, badly uneconomical and parking a pain. Did a lot of walking in car parks as it was usually left at the furthest possible point from the shops to avoid trolley dents and door dings.

Then had a new shape S60 T4 but never really bonded with that as I had to buy a car (any car) in a hurry for work and it was black. Hated cleaning it as it invariably gathered dust by the following day and the previous owner obviously had a season ticket at the local car wash as it was swirled to death. Didn't want to spend money correcting that so offloaded the car.

After that spent a few months researching suitable options - the usual German candidates - but many were pricey and finding the right options was a nightmare. People pay all that money for, say, a BMW 7 series and they're too tight to put heated seats on the options list?!

Anyway, Lexus cropped up on my AutoTrader/eBay list of watched items and after deciding that the LS was something you didn't park but had to dock, left that off. Went to see a GS450H on which the batteries (hybrid AND regular) had been allowed to go flat by a well-known dealership chain. It was more the dealership that put me off that particular car but they were proving pricey (i.e. hold their value well) and the GS300s more often than not fell into the punitive £500+ road tax bracket. Hence looking at the smaller, nimble and extremely well-equipped IS series.

Once I've cleaned and polished I'll hopefully have time to put pictures up in another thread. Hoping Brechin Slate polishes up well as there's tons of metal flake in it!

[aly-g]

Hi Mark, reading your list of cars you have similar taste to my own, always liked the Jensen but could never afford one although I did spoil myself back in 1974 buying a Lotus 2+2 which was a great car but needed constant maintenance , I also had trouble with ford auto boxes mk3 cortina being the car, it put me off auto boxes up until I got the is250 sel, my best car to date was the is200 without doubt .

Allan

[Quince99]

Jensen was lovely but, as I discovered after selling it to the guys who owned the garage that recovered it (after forward drive plates had been lunched) it had no sills! They'd found the stainless steel sill covers loose so took them off to remount them and there was no metal behind there! Of course I'd bought and driven it and it never occurred to me to look behind the covers!

I always remember the acronym for Lotus: Lots Of Trouble, Usually Serious. A guy at work had two Elises, one in respectable dark blue the next one in lairy orange and black. That one could apparently shift extremely well!

I noticed the IS200 has a cult following and some are highly enhanced and modified. I went for the newer model to get a nice set of toys that can see of my wife's brand new Q3. :D The camera on the Lexus is far better than the German one - even though it dates from more than a decade ago. Likewise the sat nav in the Audi is a nightmare to set up and takes ages and it doesn't have the cooled seats or rear blind.

What does the 'mm' signify in your model description?

[Shahpor]

Welcome Mark.

MM in this case stands for the Multi Media Pack that was an option on our cars.

Basically, it is the sat nav system, along with the Mark Levinson stereo and other bits like Hands Free Bluetooth, etc..

[Quince99]

Thanks Shahpor - I have this installed as well then! :D

[Rebecca]

Hello and a warm welcome to the lexus owners club. 😀

I'm pretty sure you'll be delighted with your first lexus especially as it's the 250 with SE-L trim

Looking forward to seeing some pics of your lovely new lexus 😀