Rabbers

The last few posters must be glad for their anonymity, otherwise nobody would buy cars previously owned by them.

I also agree, based on experience, but I have never seen or heard objective evidence of it. Were such evidence to exist, I don’t know how popular it would be with technicians, dealers, manufacturers of maintenance products etc. Interestingly, if my memory serves me right, Lexus states in in its manuals that you can keep the AC on permanently if you like but does not go so far as to recommend you do so.

The thing is that if they don’t come out in one piece the cost of original replacements won’t ruin you but nevertheless be intrinsically exorbitant.

And nor is it specified as a standard servicing operation for the RC300h. Nor do I recall seeing any mention of it in the owner’s manual. It was, I was given to believe at the time, a dealer recommendation intended as a response to customer reports of issues due to non-cleaning. And, of course, if accepted, as in my case, it provided (provides) the dealer with an extra source of servicing income.

See my post Hybrid Battery Fan Cleaning of 14 January 2022 on the RC Forum. The cleaning job was recommended and carried out with the 45000km service, and I was told at the time that this was the interval recommended by Lexus internationally and not just by Lexus Italy. Checking back, I now notice that I was not asked if I wanted it done with the 90000km service last year (or, indeed, with the 105000km one only two weeks ago). I’ve made a note to enquire next time, but I have the feeling there may be different schools of thought about it within Toyota/Lexus.

Grounds for divorce, I would say.

I think that most purchasers of new cars give a lot of thought to their choice of colour but that a significant number of others, to their subsequent regret, fail to make an adequate distinction between the appeal of a colour as it strikes them in the showroom and the probable diminishing appeal it will have in the years that follow. If this is true it would be interesting to know if there is a correlation between individual colour choices and the predicted or predictable lengths of ownership at the time of purchase. I would bet on mainstream colour choices being favoured in firm predictions of long-term ownership.

My sincere thanks for the advice. I am able to confirm that the boot and the amplifier were checked at the time, and that I also had a peep under the lining myself before and after and saw no signs of wet or damp or anything visibly untoward. I am glad to say, touch wood, that I have had no detectable issues of any sort after more than a month now. I should add that car was in for routine servicing last week and, to my continuing relief, the same mechanic as originally inspected the car again gave it a clean bill of health.

Purely as an observer I've always rather liked Mazda's signature premium red. I believe they charge extra for it in respect of other metallic colours in the range, touting it as proprietary and consequently as desirable and exclusive, which is clever but cheeky. Occasionally they reformulate it for added depth and sparkle and give it a new name. Originally called Soul Red, it then became Soul Red Crystal, and now, either as a replacement or as a further option, I'm not sure which, it's called Artisan Premium Red. Not unlike Lexus' "Sonic" colours, it has the reputation of being difficult to match in body repairs.

Very kind of you, Dave, but you flatter me 😳🙂!

I could’nt agree more. On occasion you need to be a bit ruthless in overcoming a natural reluctance to open fine, rare and possibly costly bottles that might be getting past their peak but that you know you’ll never be lucky enough to see again. In such cases it is as well to try and ensure that the food the wine is going to accompany won’t be disappointing.

No, whoever designed the doors made sure bottles would not fit through them and thus defeat the object of locking them away in the first place, presumably to thwart temptation on the part of thirsty members of the staff. The original lock is unfortunately no longer present and I have no plans to replace it in case I would lose the key.

Strongly recommend a DeLonghi top-of-the-range Magnifica Plus model, retailing in Italy at around €850 full-price. Mine is now around five years old and is still going strong although I suppose the company would claim to have made improvements since.

TBH Vlad, a cellar of 250-300 bottles is no big deal in my neck of the woods, which is a wine-growing area. In fact, many houses have proper below-ground cellaring facilities for thousands of bottles. In my own case I am limited to three alcoves of single-bottle depth, each sufficient for approx. 100 bottles, built into the stonework and dating from c. 1500-1550. I attach a photo of one of them, and I think you’ll agree it would be a shame to leave it empty. Yes, sooner or later, all the bottles I lay up will have been consumed at an average minimum rate of one a day. The bottles are usually almost immediately replaced, not out of any urgency on my part but because looking at full shelves gives me a feeling of contentment and, perhaps, of some sort of security.

In my recollection the campaign was revived several times until at least the 60s with posters in the trains and stations of the Paris Métro. Many true Parisians were totally against the campaign, arguing (wrongly in my view) that the elimination of cheap red vin ordinaire from its combination with garlic and Gauloises on the breath of your fellow Métro passengers would reduce the city’s traditional charm for visitors.

Although I cherish the memory of some wines and distillates I have found exceptionally good and always buy again when I have the chance, I nowadays resist singling out super-favourites for the simple reason that the availability of high-quality choices in recent years has become so vast that I have come to regard the buying of unfamiliar products as an enjoyable adventure. I can quantify this by referring to my personal wine cellar, which contains at any one time 250-300 bottles. I doubt if ten years ago the majority of these consisted, excluding a few oddments, of more than twelve or so different labels. Today I would guess the labels to be upwards of thirty, and the temptation to widen my options is growing all the time.

I had to read that twice to understand you didn’t necessarily mean with the same meal. On the other hand a cold post-prandial beer can have a quite rapid diuretic effect if so desired.

Yes, especially the ‘82, wouldn’t you say?

I first heard of a “fatbike” two or three years ago in Denmark, where the people are not far behind the Dutch in their fondness for bikes and the social and behavioral practices pertaining thereto. I was in a car with a Danish friend when we were overtaken by a huge Valkyrie-like woman occupying far more than her fair share of a bike lane on what appeared to be a motorbike but was not. “Look”, exclaimed my companion, “there’s a Fatbike!” Our conversation ended there, and I was left with the impression, which I did not understand to be wrong until much later, that such bikes were specifically designed for fat persons or, at any rate, to carry the weight of exceptionally heavy ones. Nowadays I see quite a few of them being ridden especially by members of organized cycling clubs, apparently as improved replacements for traditional mountain bikes. All I can say is that they give the impression of having been chosen to provide a performance that is in one way or another superior to that of normal bikes. As such I instinctively give them a wide berth.

Bernard, there is no need for the experiment. It requires no feat of the imagination to understand how and why cars are a danger to bikes. If the relationship between motorists and cyclists have worsened in recent years it is because the latter have been made to feel privileged by regulatory and media sympathy, leading to a situation where the cyclist population has increased in numbers (and average age) even in places where it was traditionally always very large. The general result, it seems to me, is that cyclists have developed unjustified degrees of self-confidence and self-righteousness that too often puts them in harm’s way with little or no awareness of the fact, and manifestly with an irritatingly excessive, albeit unconscious, reliance on the good sense of motorists.

While confessing to a certain moral embarrassment, I am taking the opportunity offered by this thread to record an increasingly negative evolution in my attitude towards cyclists. There was a time when my primary - indeed my only - concern as a driver was for their safety. Today, my ethical standards seem to have sunk so low that I find the objective of not hitting a cyclist to be secondary to that of avoiding the expensive repair of my activated pop-up hood mechanism were I to do so.

This was the colour of one of only four LCs I have seen on the road in Italy, and I thought it looked beautiful, not least because it was in a countryside landscape on a sunny day. This was two or three years ago, and I remember looking it up at the time and seeing that it was one of a "Limited Edition" marketed, I think, in 2021.

Yes, I think I really did dodge a bullet, though I suspect the RC’s shape and build played a role. I stayed in NORMAL mode as is my wont, not from conscious choice but as a form of non-choice in that I was totally focused on steering.

This is to record a somewhat harrowing test the RC recently survived with flying colours. Faced with a flooded road caused by torrential rain when driving home the other evening, I decided to turn back and detour to an alternative route. This I did only to be faced with another flooded stretch that was, if anything, even worse. I therefore decided to turn back yet again, and almost immediately ran into new flooding in the direction from which I had just come. As a consequence I was faced with the alternatives of trying to negotiate a wheels-high flood some 70-80m long or abandon the car at the risk of it being swept away if the two areas of flooding were to merge (which I later learned they did soon after). I decided on the first alternative knowing full well that I risked seriously damaging the engine and the electrics. So, with the level of the water now getting higher than my wheels and the situation not helped by successive bow waves from two SUVs that came towards me and threw water over my bonnet and windscreen, I drove through the water slowly and as steadily as I could. Once I was through, I saw a police car up ahead in the process of setting up a no-entry barrier, and the officers informed me that there was more flooding ahead but hopefully less severe than that I had just experienced. And fortunately they were right insofar as the flooded areas I encountered were no higher than half-wheel height. To cut a long story short, the RC got me through the next 15km to my home, not exactly without further excitement but safely. Once home, I anxiously checked under the hood and saw no traces of wet other than a small area of muddy spray and a few leaves and bits of grass on the plastic apron above the radiator. The next day I drove the 50km to my Lexus dealer, and, upon further inspection, the engine, the electrics and the brakes were all given a clean bill of health.

This also happened recently with my RC. There was no damage whatsoever, and I could find no explanation other than to suspect, because the car was one of a row parked parallel to the pavement, a direct and fortunately very slight bump from another parking vehicle or perhaps a pram or bike squeezing through.