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.......... little point my buying a Ls430 to spend the coilover conversion costs, gearbox/radiator changes, steering column fixes, delaminated window fixes and mild steel back boxes fix ........... when one day my car just expires then I guess will be the time to make the change .............. after all, I do still have my torch in the toolkit ! ...................... probably about 25 years time I guess

Is nothing secret anymore?!!! Rather than scrap it when the suspension collapsed, I decided the daily runabout deserved a comfortable retirement. Got a guy coming tomorrow to fit that drop-down tv parked behind the sofa into the 430's roof.

Happily take you out in mine so you can hear it.

I wouldn't touch a modern used german car with a barge pole. I know too many people who've owned one who have spent fortunes on repairs. I'm not talking about basic replacement of worn out components here, (as in most older Lexus cars), but catastrophic untimely failure of parts that should last for many, many years .i.e autoboxes, dual mass flywheels, A/C systems, timing chain adjusters, swirl flaps, and Diesel particulate filters to name but a few. You would have thought that any buyer after a second hand motor would learn to avoid German makes but the 'kudos' is too strong obviously. Top Gear did an excellent propaganda job.

I bought my RX 450 from Inchcape Lexus, Guildford in March this year . It's a 2010 car with 60000+ miles on the clock with full Lexus history . Having owned an RX 300 for 5 years before , I knew the price of servicing , so took out their Four Year Service Plan that covers two full services and two intermediates including parts for just over £1400 . It's interest free and repayments were just over £40 a month .

Hi Ryan and welcome to the LOC, we are a friendly bunch and some of us even know how to pull them to bits and put them back together again, with of course the one bolt and washer left over. I cant help you with your model choice but I am sure you will get plenty of good advice and tips Regards Mike.

Saw that on ebay last night, nice car but, as you say, top money, and I didn't much care for the attitude of the dealer on the ebay listing.Don't bother coming to look unless you've got the money in your pocket, don't ask for a price for your part ex, we're not here to give free valuations, that type of thing. I know time wasters are annoying, but they're part of the job. My mark 4 was in much better condition than that and I thought I did well at £2k! Think he is dreaming a bit with that price. Took me a good few weeks before I finally got a sale too. I hate that though when eBay sellers put that in the description, I boycott sellers now purely because of it.

The bits you need are out there it is just a case of finding them,keep in mind that the player in the boot is a CD player and cannot be revised much after 03 but whatever you get will be the good enough for the UK main routes. If the centre console as been coded I have the sequential dance required to recode it.

Despite cars getting better in most ways, it is getting difficult to accurately forecast what many cars will cost to run. I agree with Carl that many owners get stung for thousands for repairs, and as I pay for my own repairs, it would be brutal to get hit with a bill like that. Journalists obsess about this car being a second faster to 60 than that car, and about fuel consumption, but never seem to explore long term ownership costs, or build quality. Car makers don't appear to care about the albatrosses they hang around owners' necks. When I read about problems on newish cars with DPFs, dual mass flywheels, failed turbos, air suspension systems, EGRs, timing chain and tensioner failures, catastrophic engine failures (Mazda 6), power steering failures (Vauxhall) pedestrian airbags going off while driving over potholes and costing a fortune to repair (Jag XF), cars that car thieves are able to effortlessly steal with a laptop and a bit of software (BMW and others) I wonder where the JD Power team get their data from. Some forums for quality, executive cars are just a litany of expensive sob stories. Many owners seem to lose their cars for weeks for repairs, having paid a fortune for them in the first place. Clearly, it is dissatisfied owners that tend to post, but the sheer scale of problems is staggering. I remember going on a holiday with mates and the engine failing in our cortina mk 1. Two of the lads had it towed to a scrapyard, found a suitable engine, and replaced it within a couple of hours, and probably with just two or three spanners. I sometimes think we would be better going back to basics. Or here's an idea. What about manufacturers not waste any more time on their current efforts to gain 1 mpg, so that they can advertise a better headline rate of fuel consumption, which is never remotely achievable anyway. Why not stop wasting time trying to reduce emissions with clumsy devices like filters, which by their very nature, will inevitably get blocked and land people with a big bill,. Why don't manufactures stop concealing from drivers the fact that they cannot take short journeys, only long ones, thus ignoring the driving habits of the vast majority of car owners. Why not stop wasting time trying to add more and more technology to cars, to the point where driving needs more concentration than docking a Shuttle at the International Space Station. Why not instead focus on what drivers really want, which is refinement, low levels of noise, vibration and harshness, components that last years before they wear out or fail, rather than months. Why not, as road surfaces deteriorate before our eyes, focus on ride comfort instead of the ability to shave off half a second at the Nurburgring. People can opt for sportier models if they wish, but I'm pretty sure most of us value our vertebrae over a few minutes off a typical journey. I'm pretty sure a 1960 Morris Oxford rode more comfortably than the majority of modern cars. Just watch some old films of the 50s to the 80s and you can see, as cars pull up, the lovely soft suspension settling. Do all these things and perhaps, after owning over 70 cars, and currently being in the market for a 2 - 3 year old car, preferably a hatch or estate for daily use, I might be able to think of one car, at any price point, that I can truly say I aspire to, because I can honestly say there is not one car that fits the bill at the moment. For many years, I could not afford a decent car, but now that I can, I'm stumped. (My 400 is a weekend/hobby car btw)

Gtechniq P1 polish Gtechniq C2v3 (UV protector) Newspaper Microfibre cloth 15-20mins per headlight I don't agree that it's primarily the sun which yellows plastic headlamp lenses - not over 9-10 years anyway. It's mainly UV from headlight bulbs which don't have a UV filter (typically cheap high power ones). And I guess the yellowing is more intense on the insides, which means that to restore them properly you need to get the lenses off the light units and reseal them afterwards. Good luck with both of those. Always use branded quality bulbs of standard correct power rating incorporating a UV filter. There was no yellowing inside these lenses at all. In fact the only reason they were off the housings is because I was modifying the headlights. (and just FYI - toothpaste did not remove that, and the UV damage was not on the inside. It's simply about using the correct tools, in this case products, for the job)