Mincey

I've looked through Carista and can't see a setting to turn lane assist off by default (I managed this in Betsy, clearly some interfering busy body in the EU has decreed that's impossible now). If I were to splash out one of those Techstream things on Amazon (https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=techstream+lexus&crid=9J1LUXN6GKOB&sprefix=techstream%2Caps%2C98&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_3_10) could that do it? I don't want to end up with a faded Lane Assist button on Tiff's steering wheel!

A fair point! 😆

Was it The Beast? https://www.topgear.com/car-news/retro/beast-auction-john-dodds-famous-merlin-engined-monster-sale

And to me too!

That thought did cross my mind too. Looks like it's fake news. I just tried to configure a McLaren GT and I didn't see an option for ultrasonic windscreen cleaning on offer.

Apparently McLaren have sussed it: https://www.driving.co.uk/news/news-mclaren-waves-goodbye-to-windscreen-wipers-with-ultrasonic-tech/

Didn't BMW try something with ultrasonic cleaning but it just shattered the glass?

I've had this twice in the past fortnight. I'd consider my password to be strong. I'm using biometric authentication in the app and it's set to remember me. I've just changed the timeout to 12h from 15 mins so thanks @szhrmpfor that tip. Hopefully this will be a thing of the past now as it's bloody annoying!

Thankfully the access point still works....

I'll take that 😁

Shock horror - Mincey is dissing the ES! Oh no - Wall Street will crash, KFC will run out of chicken and the BBC will become impartial - whatever next? What have I always moaned about on the ES? Yes, the fact that the boot struts don't disappear into the top of the boot as they do on the 3IS. That's bad. What makes it even worse? I'll tell you. Powered closing. I'm away on business and it was chucking it down earlier. I needed a meal deal for tomorrow and the hotel car park was rammed. Tiff was parked safely (I hope) away from the hoi polloi so the only option was to walk to the supermarket. My Lexus Cambridge brolley was at the back of my boot. Not at the front for some reason. This would have been the sensible place to put it. Anyway, I digress. I pulled the storage boxes I have for all my IT gubbins forward, retrieved the brolley, pressed the close button and went on my merry way. When I returned 40 minutes later, Tiff's boot was up. "Oh bother" I said, or something very similar to that. I went to have a look and pressed the close button. Down came her shapely bottom. It then stopped. I realised why. I had not pushed one of my boxes of IT gubbins back to the safety of the darker parts of her boot. The strut had come down on a Unifi wireless access point which I had placed on top of the box. Sadly it's one I had prepared for a customer. I hope it still works after being crushed, or I'll have to buy them another one. Come on Lexus, why oh why oh why didn't you design the ES boot so that the struts were like the IS's? If this was impossible, why didn't you put an alarm in? Something like "Help! Help! I can't close my boot" at 90 decibels would have done the trick. B- see me after class.

Most German cars wouldn't feature on it, by virtue of having fallen to bits by then.

Test drive an ES. You'll be surrpised at how soon you get used to the size (parking is admittedly another issue!). Of course our resident Lexus disser will say otherwise, but I think the ES has enough oomph.

You won't, trust me!

When I was fiddling around with Carista, one of the options was to turn off the communication between key and car after a number of days (I think it was 0-5). I set mine to 0. I've no idea if this makes any difference but I still turn the key off when I get home.

Sssshhh! 😉

Götterdämmerung! I always forget about them...

Just for balance, what were the cars most likely to break down (to save me buying the magazine!). Would they contain cars made by manufacturers beginning with "B", "M" and "A"?

You're not wrong - I remember mine going off just as I was about to start a 90 minute journey to Thetford. All the way I was trying to think of where I could stop to get some water. Bong! "Washer fluid low" every few minutes. It was one of the few times I was glad to get to work...

The first of my Dad's cars I remember was an Austin Westminster UNK 582E. He had this for many years until he got onto the Company Car ladder and brought home an Sand Glow Yellow Austin Princess 1700HL PAV 132R (with brown velour seats). At that time, it was verboten to have anything other than an Austin, Ford, Chrysler or Vauxhall. None of that foreign tat was allowed. The Princess spent a lot of its time back at the local Marshalls dealership with Hydrolastic issues. This meant that Dad had to endure one of the pool 1750 Maxis while it was fixed (which was a long time) Mum hated this car and whilst Dad was on one of his many business trips abroad, bashed the front wing in a local car park. It was also extremely reticent about going into second gear. I hated the vinyl seats. Being a young 'un at that time I wore shorts a lot. Summer, shorts, vinyl seats - you know the rest. The Princess was eventually changed for a bright yellow Chrysler Alpine S XFL 283T which was fitted with headlamp wipers. Not those crappy wiper blade wipers like those awful German cars had, but proper scrubby things. The car had numerous electronic ignition woes and despite Dad working at least a mile away, we could always hear him coming home due to the noise the tappets made. The Alpine then went and in came a Rover 2300. I was gutted that he wasn't able to get a 2300S with the front spoiler and better wheel trims, but this was still a lot of fun. Dad went to his grave unaware of the japes which my friends and I got up to when he foolishly lent it to me for nights out. Sadly this too was afflicted with many woes. The worst of which was having to have a new back section welded on because the original welding cracked. During this time he was lent this beast - a 3500SE - by the manager of the local Marshalls while he went on holiday: My lasting memory of this car was Dad getting into a panic because my sister had tried to put all four electric windows down and once and it had tripped a fuse or something. This was late at night and there was no handbook (or Internet) to refer to so he had to gingerly squeeze it into the garage to stop it getting soaked in the rain. When the time came to replace the 2300, Rovers were off the company car list due to reliability issues. Along came a Granada 2.0 GL C693 JBO. Again, I was miffed that he wasn't able to get a GLS with better wheels and a rev counter instead of a humungous clock in the middle of the dash: My Sixth Form friends and I liked this because we discovered that you could get lots of us in it at once, thus saving on taxi fares and disturbing other parents. It didn't have power steering but I remember the lights were great. Moving on a few years, Rovers were back on the list. Along came F717 YAV which was an 827SLi Fastback. I really enjoyed this car. It was bright red and went like **** off the proverbial stick. My first experience of torque steer. This was the car which I took to Silverstone after graduating and had the episode with the Lotus Esprit on the Oundle Bypass on the way home (it's on here somewhere). F717 YAV was replaced by H693 EWD which was another 827SLi Fastback but the facelifted model. I wasn't so keen on this one - mainly because I wasn't allowed to drive it because the company car insurance scheme had been tightened up. It also had a spoiler on the tailgate which looked very naff. Dad retired at 55 and stuck to Rovers. I wanted him to have a Jag but he wouldn't listen. He had a 420SLi which was a rocket ship. I remember totally humbling a 323 on acceleration in it. He wasn't happy. The 420SLi was then swapped for a succession of 620SLi's then he went onto 75s. With advancing age, he then decided that the 75 would best be replaced by Satan, the Toyota iQ which has been featured on here too (the one with the battery issue). Mum had a few cars - a number of Rover 200's (she did as she was told), an iQ and a series 2 Nissan Micra (which was great to hurl around), but there were two cars which stuck out. The first was her Suzuki SC100: I think she only got this because I'd just passed my test and my parents thought it would save them ferrying me around. I managed to get seven Sixth Formers inside. Progress wasn't rapid, and bumps weren't comfortable but I did make a bit of money out of the journey. The Suzuki was replaced by a Vauxhall Nova: This was a sporty little number with SR style seats, wheel trims, an FM stereo, sunroof and side stripes. This became my first car. I did 80,000 miles in it before trading it in for a Rover 623SLi. 1999 and the Gen 1 IS arrived and the rest, as they say, is history!

White would definitely suit an ES - people would be in no doubt that it was a taxi or an airport transfer vehicle.

I like your thinking!

Criminals have clearly worked out that they're more likely to escape in a Lexus than a mechanically fragile Scheissewagen or Range Rover.