Hello all - just bought a 2006 GS450h

[BennyDub]

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to introduce myself as the very happy new owner of a 2006 GS450h SE-L. I work at a Lexus dealership and when I heard about this car coming in as a well-priced part exchange I snapped it up as quick as I could.

159k miles but it's got full Lexus service history up to this year, the hybrid Battery was replaced under warranty in 2019 and other than a few very minor scratches and marks it's basically mint. One of those rare finds where the previous owner has had it for donkeys years, loved it to bits and continued to maintain it regardless of cost even though it's almost 20 years old now!

 

Really happy with it, and it goes with my manual swapped GS430 drift car quite nicely 😉

 

I've already ordered the GROM apple CarPlay box of tricks which will be going in soon and I've got a few questions about upgrading certain things (rear camera for example) as well as looking at some different wheels but I'll leave those to separate threads.

 

Just wanted to say Hi and introduce myself really!

 

Cheers
Ben

[AJ450H]

Hi Ben, good choice, jealous that you work at a dealers.....if its Leicester then you're my new best mate !!

[BennyDub]

58 minutes ago, AJ450H said:

Hi Ben, good choice, jealous that you work at a dealers.....if its Leicester then you're my new best mate !!

Thanks Alan, yeah really happy with it. I've spent the last 18 months driving a mixture of the current gen NX, RX and RZ all of which I love, but decided to come out of the company car scheme and go back to having my own daily and this fits the bill perfectly. 

Not Leicester I'm afraid, further South than that!

[Mr Vlad]

Hi Ben and welcome to the best Lexus forum there is. 

Lovely set of cars you have. Good matching too. A drifter 430 eh? Nice.

Grom. Not bad a unit but has/had flaws. Lots on here about it. See if you can get a Teyes unit. I know you can get a unit to turn your infotainment into Android auto and apple carplay. It's about £450 but wioes the floor with Grom. 

[BennyDub]

On 8/3/2024 at 1:44 PM, Mr Vlad said:

Hi Ben and welcome to the best Lexus forum there is. 

Lovely set of cars you have. Good matching too. A drifter 430 eh? Nice.

Grom. Not bad a unit but has/had flaws. Lots on here about it. See if you can get a Teyes unit. I know you can get a unit to turn your infotainment into Android auto and Apple carplay. It's about £450 but wioes the floor with Grom. 

Thanks mate, the 430 "Drift Barge" as it's affectionately known has been a bit of a pig to be honest but that's mainly down to the previous owner not being as honest as I'd have liked. Bought already manual swapped and with a welded diff and coilovers it was quickly discovered that actually we should've just bought a clean 430 and done the swap ourselves. Lots of issues hiding under the surface that we've had to tackle but it's now in a pretty good place. Very tatty and pretty crusty in places but it's reliable and skids well (and makes a great noise)! 

I did order the Grom on Friday evening and it's now here ready to be fitted which I'll try and do over the next couple weeks. I did a fair bit of research and most of the early issues seem to have been ironed out. The one I was concerned about was audio quality but seems like this was sorted via a firmware update a few years back. Also with mine having the Mark Levinson system it seems like that did restrict what options I had when messing with the infotainment! Looking forward to getting it installed and seeing what it can offer. 

 

Did a few hundred miles in the new beast over the weekend - really impressed with the performance and it drives spot on with no knocks or bangs. Managed to average 30.9mpg over 3/4 of a tank as well which I was reasonably happy with, mainly motorway but a fair bit of town driving too so not too bad.

 

Will keep you all updated how I get on

 

[Chris111]

My first Lexus was also a 2006 GS 450h SE-L, in Nordic Blue (the one that was either described as purple or silver, although I did get plenty of compliments about the colour) with the grey interior (a wonderful combination in my personal opinion). Now owning a Mk4 GS it constantly puts a smile on my face regarding the performance and economy of both these models and I believe that this was a greatly under appreciated car due to all of the motoring press being fixated with whatever comes out of Germany. These early SE-L models were also fully loaded before loosing previously standard spec like ACC after the 2008 facelift.

Your car looks great Ben and has obviously been well cared for. I hope you enjoy it for many years to come.

[BennyDub]

On 8/5/2024 at 6:58 PM, Chris111 said:

My first Lexus was also a 2006 GS 450h SE-L, in Nordic Blue (the one that was either described as purple or silver, although I did get plenty of compliments about the colour) with the grey interior (a wonderful combination in my personal opinion). Now owning a Mk4 GS it constantly puts a smile on my face regarding the performance and economy of both these models and I believe that this was a greatly under appreciated car due to all of the motoring press being fixated with whatever comes out of Germany. These early SE-L models were also fully loaded before loosing previously standard spec like ACC after the 2008 facelift.

Your car looks great Ben and has obviously been well cared for. I hope you enjoy it for many years to come.

Thanks Chris, yours sounds like it was a beaut - the only thing I'd change about mine really is the colour combo as the silver isn't it's best colour but hey ho, beggars can't be choosers so I'm still very happy with it!

I couldn't believe it when I read the original spec list, ACC in a 06 car! Madness. 

[BennyDub]

The GROM CarPlay unit is in and working! Still need to install the microphone and tidy up the glovebox install a bit but I’m really happy with the result. 

Responsive, fairly stable (I’ve only been using it wirelessly, I’m assuming it’ll be even better if wired in), standard screen resolution is good enough - all in all it genuinely seems to work as good if not better than a lot of OEM systems.

All in all really happy, well worth it IMO. Next thing to try and improve is the quality of the reverse camera.

 

After a couple of weeks in the car now I’m absolutely loving it!

[AndyLXus]

Hi Ben,

Please let us know how the microphone works after you install it. I'm just looking for a good one.