Rabbers

My dealership, like other joint Toyota/Lexus ones desirous of keeping the two marque images separate, has set up a well-appointed “walkthrough room” in which customers taking delivery of their cars are tutored and fed canapés etc., in luxurious hi-tech surroundings. I have experienced the process twice, learned little or nothing that I didn’t already know or want to try out for myself at my own leisure, and felt a little embarrassed at feeling obliged to politely listen to the salesman’s well-rehearsed spiel while trying not to interrupt the flow with too many questions to which I already knew the answers. Generally speaking, I find the classic printed user’s manual more useful, not only as a permanent reference source but as a self-teaching aid. Just as useful and educational, both as supplementary aids and as outright substitutes for the manual, are the visual tutorials, each up to two hours long, produced by Lexus Westside of Houston, Tx, covering most current or recent models, and available on YT. Although they are naturally based on U.S.-spec models, most, indeed almost all, of the demonstrations and information provided are no less useful for European and U.K. owners.

I think this thread has strayed a bit OT, but since we’re on the subject of water in Ireland, would I be right in recalling that Guinness successfully lobbied for a lower water rate? Which, of course, would be only right and proper, culturally, sentimentally, and economically.

Some years ago I posted exactly this question on the IS Forum, innocently and, I think, politely. There were no meaningful replies, and one or two barely stopped short of accusing me of misogyny (or whatever the fashionable term was at the time).

Underneath the plastic cover of left-hand strut, which is where the creak comes from, there is a cable contained inside a soft plastic sheath of its own, which can be felt but not seen and possibly needs unwrapping to access and remedy the problem. I’ll wait for my next service, which is fairly imminent and the last under warranty, so that the dealer can take of it.

Excellent news. Stay well.

I am getting an annoying creaking sound from my boot-lid. It starts when the lid is about half-way open and is continuous thereafter, the same sequence occurring in reverse upon closing. I’m sure a drop of oil will take care of it but I don’t know where to aim it. I don’t want to start taking things apart unless I really need to. Any advice?

I just heard a radio interview with an oil industry analyst. 2022 sales of automotive fuels in the U.S. and Europe are significantly up year-on-year but not as much as anticipated, rapid increases in mobility post-Covid being compensated by the higher number of hybrid and electric vehicles, increased reliance on public transport, and apparently successful private and corporate efforts to economise in view of higher prices at the pump.

John, was that intended as a subtle change of subject to the Frequency of Bladder Activity in Lexus Drivers?

Agreed. It’s a view to which I’ve more or less instinctively subscribed all my life, secure in the knowledge that the further I get into my next twenty tankfuls the less I’ll remember what I had been paying for the previous twenty.

When I took delivery of my RC it came with the so-called “Orange Pack” brakes, which I hadn’t ordered and initially thought were unsuited to the Sonic Titanium body - an opinion I have since changed. My dealer offered to repaint them in any colour I liked, and I recall the head of the body shop recommending, as he apparently did to all customers undecided about a new caliper colour, to look to the Porsche range for inspiration.

Piers, please add my own best wishes to the many already received. When former VP Cheney left hospital after a routine colonoscopy he had a sore throat. This led him to suspect his doctors had gone too far and people to discover he had a sense of humour.

Had I been able to predict the future cost of filling up my car I would have envisioned a scenario in which I would today not only be endeavouring to drive more economically but would also be driving less and walking more, thereby cutting out unnecessary journeys and acquiring a series of good habits to place alongside what experts tell me would be a significant reduction of my carbon footprint. However, I regret to say that this has not happened. I drive as much and as often as I did before, and my attempts to drive smarter have been disappointingly short-lived. When I ponder these facts, I don’t know whether I should be glad that I can afford an unchanged lifestyle or be ashamed of my lack of will-power and self-discipline. It would be interesting to know if anybody has succeeded where I have failed.

Absolutely. And if the numbers of used LC500 V8s offered for sale in Germany are a direct reflection of customer preference since launch, which I presume they are, it could be argued that Lexus should be thinking of withdrawing the hybrid like Ford in the case of the 4-cylinder Mustang (though I would think that Lexus Germany has already been shifting unsold inventory across other markets). However, I would doubt that it ever would, simply because the marque’s interests at present and in the immediate future are too deeply rooted in its proprietary hybrid technology.

Not top of the list, or even close to it, but surely it is somewhere in the mix of thoughts about whether to choose the hybrid or the V8?

A few months ago I posted on this Forum after looking on Autoscout.com to see what used LC500s were being offered for sale in continental Europe. More than half of the approximately 60 listed were German-registered and not a single one of the latter was the hybrid model, and the same went for Belgium and Holland. The few hybrids for sale were in Italy, which I supposed was because the bhp-related annual road tax is 40% higher for the V8 (€1231 v. €878) with the bearing on insurance being proportionately similar. I now imagine the picture in favour of the hybrid will become consolidated in Italy and possibly go in the same direction in Germany and elsewhere simply because of vastly increased fuel prices. The difference between 15km/l (35mpg) for the hybrid and 11km/l (25mpg) for the V8, which I understand to be the realistic average consumption figures for each, is now adding up to a lot of money, especially in countries where long drives, even multiple-tank ones, are not uncommon.

Never had a Nano, so my comments are not experience-based, but any sound problems I ever had with a Classic or, more recently a Touch, were to do with the USB connector cables because they were of dubious quality and/or had a short effective life. I finally bought an Anker brand one (black, 20cm length, therefore less obtrusive, and cheaper, than Apple originals) and never had any issues. This is also the brand I use for recharging/non-BT playing from an iPhone, and it has now lasted for over six years.

I thought I'd revisit this thread after reminiscing with a friend about a bizarre incident that occurred during a holiday we took in Provence a few years ago. It was the first day of our stay and we and our wives were enjoying a leisurely lunch in the garden of a hotel overlooking Grasse. The food was good, the sea sparkled on the horizon, and all was well with the world. Our car, a Peugeot 504 rented at Nice airport that morning, was visible in the driveway, not that we were worried about its safety. The vague discomfiture we felt on hearing the crunch of footsteps on gravel suddenly turned to alarm when we saw a man crouched next to the car. Before we could react, he sprang upright and proceeded to head-butt - yes, head-butt - the passenger-side front window, shattering it at the second or third attempt before finishing the job with his fist. Wrenching the door open with the alarm screeching, he grabbed rental papers and a pair of sunglasses from the dashboard and, after fixing us with a triumphant smirk on his blood-streaked face, disappeared into the trees. "Quick, somebody go after him!", cried my wife, promptly eliciting the suggestion she was joking. We learned from the restaurant staff that the brute in question, instantly identified by his trademark head-butt, had a history of similar offences. He was known among the locals as "Le Bélier" (i.e. The Ram), a somewhat unimaginative nickname that risked elevating him, we felt, to undeserved fabled status while gratuitously insulting a noble animal. He typically operated in broad daylight in up-market restaurant car-parks and, for reasons best known to himself, targeted only white cars. This was according to a police sergeant who cracked a faint smile when we asked if it would therefore not be safer for us to drive a black car and limit our gastronomic adventures to the sort of all-night greasy spoons for which the area was decidedly not famous. Fearing an excess of red tape, we decided not to take the matter further. A statement countersigned by the police proved good enough for the Hertz agent in Grasse, who viewed the bloodied front passenger seat with surprising equanimity and replaced the 504 that same afternoon - as it happened with another white one.

I hope he’s subtle about it, at least.

Great move, that would have made me a lot more reluctant to part with the car. Did you also get the platform behind the seats re-lined? I remember carpeting it because the surface got so scratched. I guess I was always sensitive to hard suspensions because I remember not being able to sleep after a long day’s autobahn drive in the GT because I would be trembling all over for several hours.

Yes indeed, a 1973 1900cc acquired in Germany together with my Danish wife. I subsequently concluded it was better suited to a bachelor lifestyle and sold it in Denmark (with my wife’s consent) very gratifyingly at three times the original German price after getting my first company car - another Opel, a Commodore,- which made me understand just how nice a drive the GT had been by comparison. Ours was originally yellow and resprayed anthracite grey after a minor but unsightly accident we had in Hamburg. Although it was unkindly known as “the poor man’s Corvette” and was frankly downright uncomfortable and a bit noisy, I too wish we had kept it. No question that it had a lot of personality.

Horses for courses, Each to his own, etc., etc. Evidence for me that faux-leather can be a good choice in terms of physical durability and long-term appearance, especially in cars that see a lot of use with cabins subject to soiling and wear, is provided not by any car I have personally owned (though I once had an otherwise very nice Opel GT with vinyl seats and the less said about them the better) but by a sofa in tan “Naugahyde” that stands in the reception area of a hotel where I sometimes stop, more out of habit and sentiment than preference, when driving through Germany. This truly hideous specimen of American-influenced Fifties taste probably originated in a military base and already qualified as a vintage piece when I first clapped eyes on it more than thirty years ago. Unlike the hotel’s owners, their guests and the rest of the furnishings, this monstrosity still looks in pristine condition, and when one thinks of the abuse to which it must have at least occasionally been subjected down the years, one can only admire the survival capability of a high-quality low-maintenance easy-to-clean industrial product.

Which could well explain why one sees so many cars, even quite decent ones, with side-window screens of the type held by suction-cups.

And already was in the 2016 model too.

Insofar as the material in question absorbs the cleaning liquid I occasionally use on it, the level of porosity thus evidenced is so akin to that of real leather as to lead me to believe it actually is. This, to all intents and purposes, is good enough for me regardless of whether or not it came from a dead animal. 🤔

Same here. No discolouration whatsoever. But the backs of the rear headrests and the tops of the seatbacks feel a little harder and drier to the touch than the unexposed surfaces. Also, the surface of the black leather-covered "dome" on the dashboard seems to want more frequent "moisturising" after routine dusting than it originally did.