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as a LS400 driver, and a clean example at that, i find it extremely easy to forget sometimes that im driving a 20 year old car. i have 3 of them. a 95, 99, and 00 but have been activley looking for a clean 90 for years. ill find one, someday hopefully. anyway, the car i do the most travling in is my 99 thats just a tick over 200k although youd never know it. everything works, its silent as the tomb on the highway and feels like its a pillow floating on air at 100 mph. i drive around town and notice the few other cars of its vintage which are completely clapped out smoke belching turds, that seriously look the part. last weekend i went to go see a friend of mine and he had a mid 90s Cadillac Deville he recently picked up as a project thats about the same age, with about the same mileage and in the same condition as my LS400 and we compared our rides. after driving my LS400 he is obsessed with finding one now and wants my help to look for one which of course i will lol. what really struck me was just how absolutely ancient that caddy felt in comparison! everything from the clunky door handles to the interior finish to the way it rode on the ride, -antiquated by todays standards and even by my LS400s standards. it felt like i was driving something out of the 1960s. ive driven a few other folks 20+ year old cars recently and its kinda the same deal. they feel like antiques! is it that the LS400 really was that well built to that it still feels modern in the 21st century or have i just gotten so used to the way they drive that everything else i drive feels like a wheelbarrow full of dog poop after it? my buddy's caddy was nice, REAL nice and had all if not more features then my LS400 has, but it felt like junk! even alot of other more modern cars feel like junk after driving it. thing is, i have driven and owned plenty of really tired LS400s over the years. my 95 for example, feels and looks old but not almost 25 years, but the experience of one thats right, and i mean really right is something thats completely different and honestly vanishing these days as more and more are abused and crushed. another reality check is when im driving around town or driving even long distances between large cities, not passing very much on the road from the 90s and not passing a single other LS400 for weeks sometimes. yes, these cars are a dying breed, and its all of them really and you can see it here on CL even. early Lexus vehicles are finally dying off and in alarming numbers. they have finally reached the age of not old enough to be an antique but almost, and too old to be taken seriously and just written off by most. hell even the enthusiasts have grown bored and moved on to newer cars. i go to the junkyard to get parts for my cars and its not a mad dash to get to the recently totaled one that just hit the yard. last 3 LS400s i pulled parts from were 90% intact shortly before being crushed. why? people just arent interested in them anymore and the few that are still hanging around people are not fixing. not enough supply to really even be a demand. even more so on the other models. 2GS are vanishing and 1GS are almost extinct as i really dont see them at all anymore outside well worn junkyard examples. i dont ever see early es300s anymore and i thought the 250s were all long gone till a fresh one went cruising by me in traffic a few days ago and i almost had to blink my eyes at the thought id seen a ghost! these are the greatest cars of the 90s and honestly its sad that there are so few left. they are not bad cars, its just that you can kick an old loyal dog around for so long before they get tired. these cars have fully aged out well past their life expectancy and now their reliability without major work being done to keep them alive. theres a whole adult generation that doesn't know a world without Lexus, but also have never experienced just how amazing the old ones really were, and if they do get a chance to drive an old one, its usually some friend of theirs absolutely clapped out bomb, therefore ruining the whole experience of what these cars really represented. i work at a lexus dealership as a Technology Specialist. one of my co-workers drives a 07 ES350 but was having trouble with it so he hitched a ride home with me and he had only ridden in one LS400 years before that was absolutely on its last leg and kept saying, "wait, THIS is an LS400??!?" REALLY I CANT BELIEVE THIS IS AN LS400!!" -basically assuming they were all horrible bombs like his friends was. first impressions can mean everything i guess.. for those of us that drive the older models, especially the nice ones, bravo to you all! someones gotta keep these cars around for future generations to experience. and its sad that so many never will....

here are 2 images of a dash panel i wrapped in my partners Auris, just be patient and use some heat when its needed.

After cleaning out battery fan filter I’ve had over 60mpg in the 70 miles since last I last filled up. Mainly motorway commutes to work but some local roads too.

We went to see the film at "The Kinema in the woods" at Woodhall Spa last night. Not a film I would go out of my way to watch a second time. Nice to see the Lexus in the film though.

Happen to agree with just about all of that Herbie. I did a 4 year apprenticeship too. Although I was more than good enough that they shortened it by 4 months and still gave me my indentures. Not much call for mining engineers though these days. This total lack of proper training is going to hit this country very hard soon. And then you'll find people my age doing stuff i thought I'd forgotten because no-one else knows how...

I'll be honest, I wouldn't take my own car there - but that's only because I value 'proper' training. When I left school I was taken on as an apprentice electrician at a local factory. The apprenticeship was four years long and I came out of it fully qualified to City & Guilds standard. I have various friends from school who also went into apprenticeships, including motor mechanics, plumbers, carpenters etc., and all apprenticeships had a four-year duration. My main concern with places like Halfords, and KwikFit is that I don't think their staff are trained to anywhere near such standards and have merely attended in-house training courses for a couple of weeks. I know that they aren't doing anywhere near as complicated a job or such a range of jobs that a fully-qualified mechanic would do and that a two-week training course may well suffice, but it's horses for courses - if it's a job I can't do myself then it's my trusted mechanic, and if he can't do it then I go to a specialist. Now that really does worry me!

Funny you should say that - we moved into a new build estate a few years ago made by Bellway and not a single house on the estate can get their car into the garage easily and literally almost every one has been converted to a room (while mine is full of junk!) It all looked good on the plans - every house had a garage and a parking spot but in reality they all had two cars so every frontage over time has converted the front from grass to extra parking. They build them like doll houses. I'm on the 4th car now since I've lived here - if I managed to squeeze them in the garage I wouldn't be able to get out of the car! Most houses around here have SUVs as is the current fashion - we got rid of the Volvo XC90 a month back as although it was the best family car I've ever driven it was just hard work finding spaces big enough. It literally picked up three parking dings in the first few weeks I had it although they all stopped right away when I added the metal side steps. They were the best thing I've ever had for stopping people damaging the side of the car.

I used a baby wipe or 2 to remove scratched film completely and permanently. Looks fine without it.

It's shiny...

New one out in a year or so based on the new RAV4

I'm with Herbie on this. The manufacturers don't actually make the filters. In fact in Europe, most Japanese manufacturers source filters from suppliers in Europe rather than supply all the way from Japan. It helps avoid long lead times for supply and keeps costs down. You're still getting an OEM-spec filter and it comes with the backup of the car's manufacturer. But you could probably buy the exact same filter in the aftermarket cheaper. For instance I know that Mahle in Germany supply filters to one Japanese manufacturer (not Lexus before you ask). I also agree that you should avoid the Chinese no-name filters you often see on eBay. No backup, no quality control, no thanks. My RX has a Bosch filter supplied by the local motor factor.

Very occasionally you'll get a huge surprise and find that the main dealers are actually competitive on price and if that happens to be the case then fair enough, I'd go for it. However, Toyota/Lexus don't make such things as batteries, tyres, wipers and exhausts, to name just a few of the 'wear and tear' items. They just buy in from whoever does make them, put them in a Toy/Lex box, add a markup and sell them out again, so you're not getting "genuine Lexus" parts anyway. Of course, I don't advocate going to 'Slippery Sid's' back-street shop where they're selling cheap Chinese knock-offs, but as long as you buy from reputable motor factors who sell to the trade and deal in well-known and respected brands, you can save yourself a few quid and still be safe in the knowledge that you're fitting high quality parts - possibly even from the same people who made the 'genuine Lexus' parts in the first place. I suppose it also depends on what you're going to do with the car, to a degree. If you're the sort of person who changes their car every year or two then you may want to keep it as close to factory as you can for the next owner and I suppose I can see the rationale behind that. However, we're the sort of people who buy a car and run it until it can be run no more and it goes to that great scrapyard in the sky, so any perceived value in having everything supplied and/or done by Lexus is lost on us and I'm more than happy to put in other high quality aftermarket parts.

I'm not used to being right, double check those numbers just in case! 😄

How boring - a bunch of Lexus cars of which none will break down. Pah !!! 😂

Low riding aside, those window things look sodding awful on every car I’ve ever seen them fitted to. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Kindred spirits...couldn’t help park next to it at Sainsbury’s

All cleaned ready for TunerFest South at Brands Hatch tomorrow. 👍😎

Thank you for opening this thread. It gave me courage to start and look at mine. I went a bit further and took apart the motor and greased the axle(this is the reason for the noise).I've attached some photos for the people who really don't want to spend money

I take those roads when delays on A1 but in a artic.... spend 3 days snowed in last year just a mile from Coldstream