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I've been a member here for a little while, learning about the cars, but today I became a Lexus owner for the first time. Bought a 2008 (facelift) IS 250 SE-L with Multimedia and 16,999 miles in Caspian Sky (which, despite the V5 saying the colour is "blue", is actually a pearlescent white). I also paid for an extra 24 months warranty, so it covered under the 5+ warranty for the next 3 years. Difficult to really give an impression at this stage (my previous/current cars have been mostly Porsche and BMW M-Power) as the drive back from the West Midlands to Hampshire was mostly on motorway in the pouring rain today :-( Expect lots of questions as I get to grips with the various gadgets in the car.

You're welcome Ganesh and good luck on Monday !

Hi thanks RX Jason i seem to have been hijacked hybrid problems are nothing to do with what i posted!

We don't buy these cars for fuel economy. Iv owned many big engined barges and found them all to be much of a muchness....some as low as 17-18mpg round town but most over 30 mpg on long runs....the ls belies it's barn door looks with a cd of .29 as far as I know and this makes it one of the more acceptable long haul cruisers...town driving kills big engined cars....the lowest I have had behaving round town is still 19-21 mpg but as I said 23-27 seems to be my average depending on the ratio town to open road....this is a heavy car with a 4 litre v8 and almost what, 280hp?....pretty good, I expected much less to be fair.... Worst I owed was a '72 volvo 164 3 litre on carbs....it seemed to return 14-16mpg regardless!...my old jag xj /series 3 4.2 rarely saw the SUNY side of 20 mpg either, but it was, in my opinion, the most beautiful salon car of all time so i forgave it daily...

In your case I would go for the 2008. Mileage does not bother a 400H they will easily do 200k. If it's had the inverter recall done there are no worries over the hybrid system. Plus in the case of the RX it had an upgrade in 2008 (Smoked lights, chrome handles etc)

That looks beautiful! I can't advise on your specific points, but good luck with your test drive and inspection. Do let us know what the outcome is too!

Thanks to you both. As an aside how do the engines of the 1st generation IS200 2nd IS250 and 3rd (current) IS250/300h compare in terms of the smoothness and floaty feeling you describe to each other? My 1st generation IS200 auto still feels so smooth and has this feeling of a hovercraft - like eating Galaxy milk chocolate slowly.

Hello and welcome to the LOC. From what you describe it sounds like your heater matrix is leaking, this would explain steam from the vents, loss of coolant and a wet floor.