Rabbers

Why is that?

No question about it. Privately I’ve always dreamed of employing a chauffeur (or perhaps a chauffeuse) to relieve me of the strain of carrying a fat key for my fat car around with me.

Sorry for any confusion that might arise from my mention of the battery size for the RC (and other models) in the mistaken belief that all Lexus keys take the same.

Strangest thing, but the only time I have had the KEY BATTERY LOW message was, rather alarmingly, upon starting an IS300h immediately after I had just changed the battery. I then restarted the car and, to my relief, saw the message disappear after a few seconds never to be seen again. I habitually buy the CR2032 battery (which also suits my house gate controller) in a x4 or x6 economy pack and tend to replace it, I admit probably unnecessarily, every 20K km or so “just in case”.

Nowadays when I need to replace wipers I use Bosch. This is because I find it convenient to pop into one of their garages and not because of any objective belief that their wipers are any better than the many others I have used over the years, e.g. Denso, Valeo, Michelin etc., etc. In fact, based on the simple observation that the useful life of any of these brands, including Bosch, can vary enormously from one purchase to the next, I have long since come to believe that durability and performance is far less dependent on intrinsic product quality than such largely unpredictable and ungovernable factors of damage and wear as frequency of use, weather-related or otherwise, exposure to heat or cold, cleanliness of windscreen, nature and amount of environmental dirt etc. As a consequence it could very well happen that one set of wipers is subjected to different amounts of stress than your previous or successive purchases, making comparisons meaningless.

The ACC is a very useful thing to have in motorway driving, no question about it. And insofar as its reaction time might be superior to yours, its value increases in proportion to your speed. The only thing I dislike about it is purely subjective and relates to my personal nature as a worrier, in this case about the reliability of technology and my ever increasing reliance on it. Specifically, at high speed, as the obstacle ahead comes closer and the ACC (which I generally set to the closest distance mark unless the traffic thickens) starts slowing the car, I am often unable to suppress the fleeting thought of what would happen in the event of a system malfunction. And the answer is that however remote the possibility thereof might be, I am nevertheless putting myself at risk of imminently kissing my **s goodbye.

I have a fairly eccentric Swiss friend who mixes E5 and E10 50/50 when he fills up his Morgan. When I enquired why he does this, his not unreasonable reply was that he gets a nice feeling from the thought that he is the only driver in the country using E7.5.

Driving on motorways, almost invariably with the simple utilitarian intent of getting to a destination, can be so boring and intellectually unchallenging as to lead some drivers to seek sources of mild excitement. Regrettably but perhaps not unnaturally, this might include in one form or another and more or less unconsciously, the wish to irritate other drivers.

I'm guessing he means with your arms hanging straight and loose at the sides so as to be quicker on the draw. Stay good, Piers.

I would suppose the product simply contains some kind of mild acid in a quantity and concentration sufficient to substantially reduce the lime content of hard water. In other words, it is in this regard similar to common domestic limescale removers which, when added to rinse water, leave no visible spots on dried-off surfaces as would happen if the same water were to be used neat. Personally, I don't let my car air dry but apply a drying cloth immediately after rinsing one manageable section at a time. That a capful or so of Optimum in my rinse bucket could be substituted by one of any of many brands of domestic descaling product, coffee-machine cleaner etc., is possible, I suppose, but I love my car too much to experiment with them in case they would be too aggressive. I further presume that unlike such products, Optimum, having been developed as a car-specific rinseless shampoo, also contains some kind of gloss agent since the surfaces are left pleasantly but not excessively shiny. I honestly can't say if Optimum's performance as a rinse additive would be as satisfactory on black paintwork since I have only ever used it on my last few cars , all of which have been light or light-ish metallic. However, provided the car is properly dried-off, I don't see why it shouldn't be. Try it and see.

I confess that I've never not even once sat on a horse but have always admired feats of horsemanship as a spectator. During a student year I spent at the University of Seville in the 60s I was befriended by a prominent local family that owned a private box at the local bullring, La Maestranza, and I was often invited to join them to watch the fights (which I would probably enjoy less today than I did then). One of the major events of the season was the rejoneo by the legendary Peralta brothers, Angel and Rafael, who fought and killed the bulls from horseback. The show they put on, with the horses completely unprotected from the bulls' horns, was balletic in its intricacy and all the more amazing since the horses' movements were controlled largely by the pressure of the riders' legs so that the hands could remain free for the fight and kill. Thrilling as this was, the best was yet to come when, a few weeks later the family, with me in tow, was invited by the Peraltas, with whom they were friends, to a wedding at their horse farm and estate not far from Seville. Here, as a gift to the newly-weds, the brothers and their staff and trainees put on a private rejoneo with blunt-horned tame or tame-ish bulls kept for training purposes (and not for killing) together with a riotous exhibition of virtuoso trick riding in which the participants tried to outdo one another. All dangerous good fun with, surprisingly, nobody ending up with a broken neck. The level of horsemanship was simply mind-boggling, and what has stuck in my memory is that the horses seemed to love it too.

It is indeed strange. Or shall we say anomalous for a premium marque like Lexus? It could be that the camera component itself would have needed changing at the same time as the software was modified, and Lexus/Toyota preferred to keep the same system and image size across its entire range for economy’s sake.

One of my favorite capitals. More visitor-friendly than most, architecturally elegant, dense with history, good eating (if hi-cal) marred only by the evil (though avoidable) local white wine. Been to Die Spanische only once and was lucky enough to get centre seats at the end directly opposite to the Imperial gallery and thus admire the perfect geometries of the group events. Enjoy the rest of your stay.

Vienna (Staatsoper)?

I believe, based on my own disappointment when I went from a 2016 to a 2019 RC, that the software update that changed the display functions to a 10.3” configuration on most and maybe all models in the Lexus range during that period did not include the reverse camera image, which remained 7”.

Out of curiosity, Peter, why did you do that?

I don’t know about the “baby” shark bit, Lucky - presumably as distinct from an adult one - but who am I to argue? I have spotted only three or four ESs on the road since launch but it is precisely the grille that makes you first suspect that a car you are seeing in the distance might be an ES. And it is again the grille, gradually recognizable as “big” and “smiling”, that confirms the suspicion as the car comes closer. Were I to buy an ES I would go for the F-Sport, as I have with other models, but I must admit I prefer the vertical bars of the grille of the normal version to the honeycomb F-Sport design.

Sure, the figures you quote are the primary means of formally judging the dimensional differences that could lead one to choose any given car over another, at least from an armchair. What I find the figures don't necessarily express, however, are the differences in physical and optical impressions a driver - by which I mean me - might have in negotiating the sort of tight and winding route briefly described in my last post. For example, 2cm greater width in a 90° turn from one narrow alley into another even narrower one might not in itself greatly affect the timing of when exactly to aim and straighten the car, but the awareness of significantly greater length during the process of completing the manoeuvre with even a slight suspicion of having made a misjudgment can make one fairly nervous - and downright sweaty if for any reason one needs to abort the manoeuvre and reverse out. Or so I find even though I am aware that it is largely a question of familiarity with a car and confidence in one's own skills. In short, if in many circumstances I consider the electronic aids in the RC to be important, I am guessing I would find them well-nigh indispensable in the ES. Incidentally, while on the subject of width, the first ES I drove was fitted with the digital side-view monitors, and I must say that I generally liked them. On the other hand, even without knowing if and by how much they add to the ES' overall width, they certainly give the impression of doing so, thereby adding a further element of possible nervousness (not least because of the potential replacement cost).

My problem with the bulk of the ES has less to do with the car’s manoeuvrability, which is fine - indeed surprisingly so - than with the location of my home. This requires me whenever I come and go to negotiate a series of tight bends and turns in a medieval village and its surrounds. I am accustomed to doing it easily enough in my RC (just as I previously did in the IS) but the thought of getting a scrape from a side wall or an uneven high kerb before getting out onto the open road is nevertheless always somewhere in my mind. So you’ll understand that despite my objective enthusiasm for the ES the extra length and width are factors I need to ponder more than other prospective owners normally might.

James, your enthusiasm for the ES is infectious, and having driven one several times now I understand you completely. The main - perhaps the only - thing preventing me from going for one next time I change car is its size. Don’t you think it could have been maybe 10cm shorter and proportionately narrower with no great loss of space for occupants and bags etc.? Although I reckon it offers among the smoothest and most comfortable rides I have ever had, and is impressively agile for its bulk, I would dread having to frequently manoeuvre it, as I would frequently need to do, through narrow lanes and town alleys. Do you and Betsy have any words of wisdom to offer me?

No doubt Socrates knew of what he spoke, but in his case I would tend to sympathise with the kids he habitually accosted in the street expecting answers to his funny questions.

You are right about that, Phil. Apparently a Babylonian clay vase from 3000 B.C. bears an inscription to the effect that “Youths of today are rotten to the soul. They are evil and lazy and cannot compare with the youths of the past. They are incapable of keeping up the standards of our civilization”. I reckon the thought might be worth reproducing on a coffee mug.

I‘ve noticed this more and more, and I reckon that they are consciously trying to broadcast their green credentials to other road users as much as attempting to conserve enough range to get home or wherever else they are going.

The same thing happened to a fellow Lexus owner I recently chatted with at our dealership here in Italy when our cars were being serviced, with the difference that the message that he had had an accident was received, much to her distress, by his daughter at school. Apparently the message resulted from his reversing into a wall when parking, he said not particularly hard and with only a slight scratch to his bumper. He also deleted the app but not before angrily consulting a lawyer who advised him that taking the matter further was not worth the hassle.

The practice of contracting private mercenaries to spy on prospective speed offenders is socially obnoxious. Of course the broad aim of improving road safety is morally defensible but a de-funding of French institutional police forces may well have something to do with it. Still, the tactic of paying citizens to spy on fellow citizens is probably preferable to the Italian practice, supposedly now less common than it was until quite recently, whereby manufacturers of speed cameras consigned their wares to badly-funded local municipalities in return for a commission on the number and amount of the fines levied. This not unexpectedly led, in some proven cases, to the cameras being calibrated in a municipality’s favour, with a consequent further reduction in the citizenry’s already low level of faith in authority.