IS250- Almost a year in. My impressions so far.

[Lex_utor]

This is way overdue. But late last summer I got me a 2nd generation IS250. I did so after help from the community here in answering questions and clearing up doubts I had.  

I ended buying a manual IS250. In Black. Car is fully loaded. I might have every single option or feature available, apart from the better cruise control. Not sure if that was available in Europe or only in the U.S. though. But I have leather, navigation, heated and cooled seats, sunroof etc. Really lovely. 

I didn't drive it a whole lot because of lockdown, home office etc. But now after almost a year, well kind of, and after having had a few minor issues, none the car's fault, I think it's time to write my impressions of the car.

Keep in mind this is my first Lexus. My first Toyota in general.

The short story is that I love the car! :)  Very few things I wish was different. 

The pros:

• Well everything really. But specially:
• Loving the Lexus quality. Car feels so solid and well built
• Smooth as butter. Smooth engine, smooth power delivery and I even find the shift smooth, despite reports of otherwise.
• Comfort
• Interior
• Looks. I think it still looks fresh today. Specially with the updated headlights, which came on the car. Some people can't even figure it's a 17 years old design and think it's a new or newer car.
• The drive. I just love driving it! I love shifting it! I enjoy it as much as some of the sports cars I have had. The handling is really nice. It's a heavier saloon after all. 

The cons. These are not really negatives IMO. More like nice to haves:

• A bit more space. It's actually quite a small car. Specially noticeable when it's parked beside new cars. Next to a Mercedes A it kind of looks smaller even though it belongs to a larger class. 
• A bit more power. The IS350 with a manual would have been the perfect IS for me. Wouldn't even need an ISF for a daily. 
• Wish it had a LSD
• A better engine design. This is the only real negative here. What were the engineers smoking? What a total stupid design to work on. You need to take the whole intake manifold to change the right side spark plugs. In its defence, many or most modern cars seem to have little regard to making it easy to work on. Those days are gone I guess. This is bad for the IS as because of that most owners don't change the plugs. Labour is expensive. This is what will kill these cars. 

But as I said, in general I absolutely love the car. Love driving it. I have no idea what I will replace it with yet when the time comes. No idea! I want to keep it all. RWD, manual, 4-doors and not be a BMW. I'm in trouble and spoiled! 

Recently I had a big expense with the car. For those who haven't seen it: IS250 fuel tank replacement? - Lexus IS 250 / Lexus IS 250C Club / Lexus IS 220D & IS 200D Club - Lexus Owners Club

But I had to replace the fuel tank, heat shield and bands. BIG expense! Wish you never have to do that. But honestly, I don't mind that much. I think this is the first car since my Alfa Romeos where I don't mind spending money on to keep it on the road.  Probably because I know I would have a very difficult time replacing it, unless with another IS250 or letting go of one of my requisites, RWD, manual, 4 doors no BMWs. Although I must say, I expected to spend money on the Alfas but not on a Lexus. But I hear this is a very isolated problem.  

Now the car has a new tank and is fully MOTed again. Ready to keep on going: 

 

 

 

[Lex_utor]

Thanks to everyone who has helped me along my Lexus journey so far! 😊

[SeanR]

I dont mind the engine, nippy enough for me thesedays.

[Mr Vlad]

Nice write up Lex. Wow that photo makes your car look really 'moody'. Gorgeous. 

[Texas]

👍fyi ACC ( adaptive cruise control ) was an option for Uk cars but quite expensive and therefore quite rare🙄

so your excessive, and I would say it was excessive to require a replacement  fuel tank, rust problem do you think was down to what? Was it a Scottish car or did it live by the coast with a previous owner?
As for the problematic plug change, yes agree it is quite involved for a plug change but bear in mind if you use iridium’s then they should be good for 100,000 miles! So not exactly a ‘regular’ job😀

[Linas.P]

2 hours ago, Lex_utor said:

• A better engine design. This is the only real negative here. What were the engineers smoking? What a total stupid design to work on. You need to take the whole intake manifold to change the right side spark plugs. In its defence, many or most modern cars seem to have little regard to making it easy to work on. Those days are gone I guess. This is bad for the IS as because of that most owners don't change the plugs. Labour is expensive. This is what will kill these cars. 

Good write up and happy to see you enjoying the car.

Trust me - spark plug replacement is breeze compared to everything else. I reckon I could do all spark plugs in 5 minutes now, because I have taken the intake plenum like out like dozen times already. At first it looks scary and there is one extremely nasty bolt behind throttle body, but apart of that is really not that bad.

But when you try to work proper on this car is real pain and most annoying project car I ever had. I wanted to remove engine power harness, because I had short in it, removed like 90% in 2 hours.. and was left with 7 plugs - crank sensor, starter, oil level and 4 plugs going towards gearbox. The starter plug requires removal of alternator and belt, the crank sensor requires removal of A/C compressor, but have blind bolts where you can neither see, nor reach them, so basically have to be undone by blindly pushing sockets with multiple extensions and a lot of hope. So took me another 8 hours to undo those 2 plugs. I can't even see where oil level sensor is, somehow you need to fish it out from under the car... but the worst are 4 connectors going to gearbox - I was able to undo one by blindly reaching behind the engine, but other 3 realistically requires gearbox removal.

So overall - I agree, this car is not meant to be worked on by owner and not designed for DIY.

[Texas]

👍agree on the ‘worked on by owner’ bit

note: When the first Lexus (LS400) was released to the press to review, some mentioned the lack of a toolkit! The Lexus response was that the owner/driver is not going to need one because the car will be so reliable! But they ended up putting a token toolkit in for good measure.

[LenT]

 

• This is the only real negative here. What were the engineers smoking? What a total stupid design to work on. You need to take the whole intake manifold to change the right side spark plugs. In its defence, many or most modern cars seem to have little regard to making it easy to work on. Those days are gone I guess. This is bad for the IS as because of that most owners don't change the plugs. Labour is expensive. This is what will kill these cars. 

 

I’m delighted that you’re enjoying the car and hope it will give you many more years of driving pleasure.  But there was just one point about your criticism of the engine design.

I think you got it right when you observed that ‘many or most modern cars seem to have little regard to making it easy to work on’.  I certainly don’t think that ‘this is what will kill these cars.’ - by which I take it you mean a current Lexus.

Surely the majority buyers of new - or newish - Lexis will be spending significant sums and would prefer to let well-trained professionals look after the oily bits.  Modern engines and their ancillaries are too complex to encourage owners’ attention.  The Manuals make clear what Lexus believe is acceptable.

I am constantly impressed by the skill and knowledge demonstrated by many of the LOC members and the competency with which they can tackle serious rebuilds.  But these are invariably on older vehicles.  

In fact, as EVs become more common, I can see it being made even harder for owners to delve into the power plants.  After all, unlike petrol or diesel, it could prove fatal!

[Lex_utor]

4 hours ago, SeanR said:

I dont mind the engine, nippy enough for me thesedays.

Indeed. I don't find it underpowered at all. Nippy enough is right. It goes well when you step on it. It goes even better if you drop a gear. Like I said, more of a nice to have than a must have. But the ISF is a bit too much for me in a daily driver. So a IS350 would be the sweet spot and the IS250 is good enough. Lots of fun!

[Lex_utor]

3 hours ago, Mr Vlad said:

Nice write up Lex. Wow that photo makes your car look really 'moody'. Gorgeous. 

Yeah, I walked away as it was filling up to stretch my legs and when I looked back I had to take a photo. The light was so cool. 

[Lex_utor]

3 hours ago, Texas said:

👍fyi ACC ( adaptive cruise control ) was an option for Uk cars but quite expensive and therefore quite rare🙄

so your excessive, and I would say it was excessive to require a replacement  fuel tank, rust problem do you think was down to what? Was it a Scottish car or did it live by the coast with a previous owner?
As for the problematic plug change, yes agree it is quite involved for a plug change but bear in mind if you use iridium’s then they should be good for 100,000 miles! So not exactly a ‘regular’ job😀

Everybody has a theory about the tank. One is that the car has lived part of its life parked over a loan or grass. Plus frequent trips to harsh winter places.

I'm still glad I bought it. I'm still watching and there hasn't been any other IS250 for sale around me since, which I would have liked to buy. They were all the wrong spec, wrong interior or wrong condition cosmetically and so on.  This means had I not bought this one I would still not have one.

They have now treated the rust and sealed the whole underside of the car, including floor plan differential, suspension etc and then put wax over it. Should be protected for years to come.  Cost me a lot. But if nothing else goes wrong, should be worth it. 

[Lex_utor]

3 hours ago, Linas.P said:

Good write up and happy to see you enjoying the car.

Trust me - spark plug replacement is breeze compared to everything else. I reckon I could do all spark plugs in 5 minutes now, because I have taken the intake plenum like out like dozen times already. At first it looks scary and there is one extremely nasty bolt behind throttle body, but apart of that is really not that bad.

But when you try to work proper on this car is real pain and most annoying project car I ever had. I wanted to remove engine power harness, because I had short in it, removed like 90% in 2 hours.. and was left with 7 plugs - crank sensor, starter, oil level and 4 plugs going towards gearbox. The starter plug requires removal of alternator and belt, the crank sensor requires removal of A/C compressor, but have blind bolts where you can neither see, nor reach them, so basically have to be undone by blindly pushing sockets with multiple extensions and a lot of hope. So took me another 8 hours to undo those 2 plugs. I can't even see where oil level sensor is, somehow you need to fish it out from under the car... but the worst are 4 connectors going to gearbox - I was able to undo one by blindly reaching behind the engine, but other 3 realistically requires gearbox removal.

So overall - I agree, this car is not meant to be worked on by owner and not designed for DIY.

The problem is that even if you don't want to do it yourself, the time consuming labour makes it more expensive to have the spark plugs done in a garage as well.  

[Linas.P]

Agreed, As I said I have not worked quite extensively on IS250 and it is certainly one of the most painful cars to work on. So it would be reasonable to assume anyone working on them would charge extra. The good side of that - most of the time nothing goes wrong, so if you have car in good condition that should be big concern. As it happened to me - I got auction car for cheap, hoping it is going to be the case of scanning the codes and maybe replacing few sensors... boy I was wrong!

[Lex_utor]

2 hours ago, LenT said:

 

 

• This is the only real negative here. What were the engineers smoking? What a total stupid design to work on. You need to take the whole intake manifold to change the right side spark plugs. In its defence, many or most modern cars seem to have little regard to making it easy to work on. Those days are gone I guess. This is bad for the IS as because of that most owners don't change the plugs. Labour is expensive. This is what will kill these cars. 

 

I’m delighted that you’re enjoying the car and hope it will give you many more years of driving pleasure.  But there was just one point about your criticism of the engine design.

I think you got it right when you observed that ‘many or most modern cars seem to have little regard to making it easy to work on’.  I certainly don’t think that ‘this is what will kill these cars.’ - by which I take it you mean a current Lexus.

Surely the majority buyers of new - or newish - Lexis will be spending significant sums and would prefer to let well-trained professionals look after the oily bits.  Modern engines and their ancillaries are too complex to encourage owners’ attention.  The Manuals make clear what Lexus believe is acceptable.

I am constantly impressed by the skill and knowledge demonstrated by many of the LOC members and the competency with which they can tackle serious rebuilds.  But these are invariably on older vehicles.  

In fact, as EVs become more common, I can see it being made even harder for owners to delve into the power plants.  After all, unlike petrol or diesel, it could prove fatal!

I think you misunderstood me. :)

I meant this is what will kill the IS250s which are left. Meaning cars like mine. Second generation, which are now getting older. The spark plugs are not cheap. Then it's very hard to change it yourself and expensive to have it done at a garage because it's labour intensive. So many owners will just neglect it and sell the car on. This eventually will cause the engine to burn oil etc and then engine failure. 

[Lex_utor]

2 minutes ago, Linas.P said:

Agreed, As I said I have not worked quite extensively on IS250 and it is certainly one of the most painful cars to work on. So it would be reasonable to assume anyone working on them would charge extra. The good side of that - most of the time nothing goes wrong, so if you have car in good condition that should be big concern. As it happened to me - I got auction car for cheap, hoping it is going to be the case of scanning the codes and maybe replacing few sensors... boy I was wrong!

Sorry to hear that. Hope you have managed to put it right. They are great cars. 

[Linas.P]

not yet, but I hope I going to be able to do it eventually.

[SeanR]

With all this talk of regular maintenance to keep things happy and not go off on too much of a tangent 

If your car is 12 years old and only ever been serviced at Lexus, would you carry on taking it to Lexus for services, a dilemma i have been thinking about.

 

I could do oil changes and plugs myself but be nice to keep the book stamped 

[Texas]

If you intend keeping the car until it’s very end then the cost of Lexus doing the servicing against DIY is a killer at this age, the stamps in the book only serve to impress the next owner and the ‘free coffee & biscuits’ work out not so cheap, if you use genuine parts sourced from reputable sellers and log all your interactions with the car it will impress any future buyer ( if there is one!) also the satisfaction of DIY is a great feeling and don’t forget  the calipers slide pins are not touched in any Lexus schedule! But they do fit new calipers (£££££’s) when, not if yours go wonky 🙄

[Linas.P]

28 minutes ago, Texas said:

If you intend keeping the car until it’s very end then the cost of Lexus doing the servicing against DIY is a killer at this age, the stamps in the book only serve to impress the next owner and the ‘free coffee & biscuits’ work out not so cheap, if you use genuine parts sourced from reputable sellers and log all your interactions with the car it will impress any future buyer ( if there is one!) also the satisfaction of DIY is a great feeling and don’t forget  the calipers slide pins are not touched in any Lexus schedule! But they do fit new calipers (£££££’s) when, not if yours go wonky 🙄

Partially agree - when car is 12 years old the stamps in the book adds no value to the car, not even when selling. However, I disagree that servicing at Lexus is a killer, if anything it is hard to beat their price and that is why my car was serviced there all the way to 200k (I think last service was 188k). Not because I think stamped service book adds value, but because it was simply the cheapest and most convenient service to use. Obviously, I used Lexus Essential Care plan (which seems to be to officially available anymore) and I would get 1 Minor and 1 Major service for like £480. Thinking about it I probably could have got away with just doing minor services all along for £160.

You right as well - there are many things that Lexus do not touch during the service, unless you pay them additionally, or do them yourself. So that was always my plan, I would split the year in sort of 3 parts - Lexus service, Intermediate service and MOT. So let's say my MOT is September, then I would take car to Lexus in February, get standard service and the list of items they advise to do, sometimes it was BS, sometimes it was actually good information and parts I would not have thought to check myself (or could not do without lifting the car). Now obviously, I would not authorise any repairs at Lexus, because their labour rate is what is the killer. Then I would have good 6 months before MOT to research the best fix and sort out the car. Sometimes it would be things like brake pads, so I can just order set and swap it in 15 minutes myself, sometimes it was something more involved and I would have to take it to mechanic. Obviously, something like greasing callipers you just have to do yourself. Then just before MOT, say in August, I would take car to independent mechanic, just to do quick oil and filter change, and if required other stuff which Lexus pointed out and in case I was not able to sort them out myself. As well I would do things like tyres at the time... as such my car would always be at it's best just before MOT. And as I was doing ~12/14k miles a year previously, this would always nicely coincide with oil change every 6k miles, once by Lexus and once by independent garage. 

3 hours ago, SeanR said:

With all this talk of regular maintenance to keep things happy and not go off on too much of a tangent 

If your car is 12 years old and only ever been serviced at Lexus, would you carry on taking it to Lexus for services, a dilemma i have been thinking about.

I could do oil changes and plugs myself but be nice to keep the book stamped 

And above is pretty much the answer to your dilemma - I just use both (or three things), Lexus to do annual service and inspection, independent to just change oil in between services and for jobs I can't do myself on driveway, and finally smaller maintenance jobs myself. 

[iRossi]

Hi Lex,

I'm new to this forum and I hope to get my IS 250 next week. Your headlights look terrific. Can you tell me more about them?

[Linas.P]

3 hours ago, iRossi said:

Hi Lex,

I'm new to this forum and I hope to get my IS 250 next week. Your headlights look terrific. Can you tell me more about them?

They are called VLAND, everyone to their own when it comes to style and as far as how good they do their single job of illuminating the road... kind f depends. They are better than standard halogen, but probably not as good as Xenon. And then there are VLAND lookalikes, which can be anything from acceptable to outright terrifyingly bad. 

[Lex_utor]

On 7/10/2022 at 11:55 AM, iRossi said:

Hi Lex,

I'm new to this forum and I hope to get my IS 250 next week. Your headlights look terrific. Can you tell me more about them?

Yep, Linas is right. Vland.

They came with the car. I'm not sure I would have bought them, as they are not necessarily cheap for the pair.

But I love them. IMO looks way better than stock and also illuminates way better than the 2005 stock ones at least. I think only the very late 2011 and newer can compete in illumination.

The Vlands make the car look like a current car. Most people can't even figure it's 15 years old. It also has the "Audi" style indicators, which again makes the car look very modern. It helps that my car is black, so they blend in and look like the LED portion is the whole headlight. But I saw them on a silver car recently and it didn't look as nice. As you can clearly see the contours of the large light housing, which looks more old fashioned.

I had thought of buying the Vland taillights. But I probably won't. 

Style is a matter of opinion. I go back and forth between the Vland and the last facelift headlights which also have the Audi indicators. The Vland makes the car look more modern, but the last facelift ones are also very nice looking.  The second gen IS still looks great and the styling still looks modern. One thing which dates the body are the early headlights. 

[Lex_utor]

Another thing about the Vlands is they come in different styles. Mine is fully monochromatic, which suits the black car really well. But they also have them with amber indicators and I think some other styles. 

[H3XME]

On 7/16/2022 at 7:28 AM, Lex_utor said:

Another thing about the Vlands is they come in different styles. Mine is fully monochromatic, which suits the black car really well. But they also have them with amber indicators and I think some other styles. 

They only do the two types IIRC. Clear reflector and amber reflectors. The indicators are the same. HC Motion / Spec-D are other companies that do different styles.