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I'm all for badge snobbery - it leaves the old Lexuses for us!

brands indy from late 2013... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEaamKz5GaU&list=UUXbX-C6aRflzxo7heO9gw1A

So on GT tracks it's great, Bedford's Sen circuit was mighty but you'll struggle more on twisty stuff like Brands where the weight of the car and the short gearing counts against you. This is a little bit of my GoPro footage from a wet day at bedford in the IS-F http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glhNTnLIy4E Not happy with that...wanted to watch more of it It just makes me want to do a track meet even more now. It's well worth it, I did 4 during the time I had the car. I'd say do them but that you need to pick your tracks, Bedford was great, Rockingham on the international circuit was also good - Brands Hatch on the smaller circuit was fun but not a great circuit for the car as you've not really got the chance to stretch it's legs. Fundamentally the biggest problem i used to have was getting the car turned in, it's heavy and that shows sometimes. But if you're going to do a couple of days a year then you'll be absolutely fine, the brakes and tyres both held up really well. So can't remember which setting the TC was in for that Bedford day but normally I did some runs with it in sport and some with it switched off. Sometimes in sport it was a bit conservative coming out of the corners so you'd struggle a little to get the power down as early as you'd want.

A 10 year old Civic, Corolla or Micra will give less trouble than any BMTroubleyou or Merc of the same age. Nowadays it's all down to 'Badge Snobbery' as to which car you buy. So-called 'premium brands' are not any guarantee of better reliability. Far from it.

I have never owned a diesel, but have owned three moderately thirsty lexus petrols - an is200 sport and two is250 SEL autos. All one previous owner. They were all refined and reliable, although the first of the 250s had to have some rattles fixed before I was happy with it, and was written off after about a year, while stationary. None of them ever failed to start or broke down, or needed urgent repairs of any kind, and that of course is worth more than a few pounds off the fuel bill. A diesel offering 40 mpg instead of the 30 I used to get in mixed driving might have saved me about £50 a month, but one modest repair job would have cancelled that out The motoring mags do push diesel, especially in this kind of price and model range. at least one used to recommend the Is220d as the only IS worth considering ( no doubt assuming they would all be company cars) but no private buyer would agree with that. Well, I now get to have my cake and eat it - my ex dem Is300h lux is giving me 50 mpg or more (display says 53) and is the quietest yet. Pulling away in total silence is quite something. And yes, the diesel c lass that pulled up next to me yesterday sounded positively agricultural in comparison

Phil, the Top Gear team are totally brainwashed in favour of any German marque and biased against anything Lexus. You'll never convince them of what we know to be true.

Good question, cant see why not as their the same car up to the rear doors, so imo i'd say yes. *stands back and waits for someone to blow that theory out the water!*

Sadly, I quickly discovered that although it's a lovely place to be, a 10 year old LS430 is a very different purchase to a 15-20 year old LS400. So many extra things to not-quite-work-right. I wonder if the LS will become like the Mercedes S class? What I mean by that is that successive generations W126 -> W140 -> W220 were each better than the previous model when bought as a new car. But the downside of the ever-increasing complexity is that the newer they were the more they are liabilities as a used-car buy.