Rabbers

Before setting out on long drives that include stretches of autobahn I add 0.2BAR to the recommended pressures. This follows the advice I got several decades ago from a trusted BMW mechanic, and it became a habit with every car I have had ever since. Supposedly one gets better high-speed fuel consumption (something to do with reduced surface attrition?), but if so, I must admit I have never been able to quantify it. On the subject of autobahn speeds, it should be borne in mind that speedometers overstate actual speeds by a significant amount. In my present RC300h I have calculated the overstatement to be as much as 10-11% with an average of 9% in my normal everyday driving mix. The car’s electronic limitation is 190kmh, although on occasional drives on the autobahn I have seen the speedometer touch 215kmh on fairly gentle downhill stretches and maintain readings of 205-210kmh for long stretches on the flat.

When it’s in the kitchen?

I see what you mean. There are some quite potent premium cleaning/conditioning products out there, including Angelwax ones, and I find it best to go easy when first trying them.

Sounds good, but I don’t quite understand the ”maybe too well” comment.

That’s also what I would have thought but I suspect they were either too proud to ask for help or figured it would take too long for any colleagues to arrive.

A neighbour of mine tells the story of how he was recently pulled over and breathalysed (with a negative result) by police who didn't believe he had been swerving in order to avoid potholes and the occasional loose kerbstone on a road near where we live. Driving back along the same stretch an hour later, and suppressing his instinct to honk and wave in recognition, he saw, to his joy and delight, the same two policemen replacing what looked like a burst tyre on their car.

Personally I’ve never been in the market for an NX but, in general chats with my dealer and some of his sales people over the years, I have several times heard that owners have almost invariably been disappointed by the fuel consumption, so much so that the substantial improvement offered by the 350h has become the main element in the sales pitch to prospective repeat customers. It appears, however, that there continue to be less repeat customers for the NX than first-time ones.

The OEM rims for the RC300h F Sport are 19”. Two of the maybe seven or eight other RCs I have spotted over the years have had 20” rims. Oddly enough both had Swiss plates, leading me to suspect something of a trend among local owners.

Try Angelwax Enigma Interno. It will remove stickiness and most surface marks and, unless the damage is deep, bring back something like the original mat factory finish on all the cabin plastics.

I have always preferred the F-Sport version because of four main features specific to it: * The superbly engineered moveable instrument cluster. * The design of the seats, which are more firmly padded with no loss of comfort, and are, in my experience, less prone to lateral creasing because of the stitching pattern. * The 19" rims (and fatter though, alas, costlier rear tyres) which, in both the original and facelift models, improve the car's appearance with, IMO, no loss of ride comfort. * The AVS (Adaptive Variable Suspension) system, which gives an appreciably firmer ride while providing better handling, especially in cornering.

Or maybe the guy on the bike had his headphones on ….

Stephen & Gray & Anybody else interested: I'm not really a connoisseur of cobblestones but I thought I'd share some pics of those I face every time I drive out from my house (downhill, first photo, and uphill, second photo). According to local parish records they date from c. 1400 almost certainly using materials recycled from a few centuries before. So, excellent choice if you're looking for durability. They are probably less affected by car tyres today than they were by cartwheels in centuries past, so maintenance is low. A few stones occasionally lift after heavy rain and frost but not dangerously, and the local road people promptly hammer them back in place. Having said that, I think I can safely say on behalf of my car and my back that a smoother surface would be preferable if less picturesque.

Episodes of road rage of a level where anger and violence overlap or threaten to overlap as distinct from remaining suppressed or confined to verbal or manual gestures of displeasure have become so frequent (especially in northern Europe and the U.S. according to my own observations, though I would be reluctant to make too many distinctions) as to be a societal problem without a solution. This is because it is simply not human nature to acknowledge personal incompetence or error or proneness to error and forgive these things in others, especially when the scenario, as in the case of public roads, is one of equalised privilege. The only protection is the avoidance of physical confrontation, and if one feels the onset of potentially excessive anger and frustration in oneself, the best course of action might well be to get off the road as soon as feasible.

Or just pop the fob into a blocker pouch kept for that specific purpose.

If you want a nice smell from your windscreen fluid (as well as effectiveness) pop into your nearest BMW dealer and get a bottle of their winter or summer strengths as necessary. I drove BMWs before converting to Lexus nearly two decades ago but I still use their windscreen wash. The stuff has occasionally been reformulated but the smell has remained basically unchanged - mildly antiseptic with a hint of violets, my nose tells me. Not that I’ve tried, but It would probably work as an after-shave.

And so it is just about everywhere in Europe, which doesn’t mean everybody knows it.

When you remove snow from the car don’t be lazy and leave any significant amount on the roof. If you brake suddenly it may slide down onto your windscreen and block your view. Or if it blows off onto the road behind it could turn out to be even more of a danger than a discourtesy to other cars.

Times change, not always for the better. There was a time when it was not unknown for Lexus salesmen to include a statistically demonstrable mention of the low likelihood of theft in their spiel to prospective customers. Nowadays, sad to say, it would perhaps be more reasonable for them to admit that theft, even more than imitation, is the sincerest form of flattery.

You can on the RC300h by turning the mechanical key clockwise in the door if the battery is flat or if the smart-entry system is de-activated. I don’t know about the CT.

I decided not to directly respond to the question because it does not allow for a nuanced opinion. If I drove slower - which I probably generally did - when I first had a hybrid, which was a Lexus, and still do now that I have a fourth hybrid, which is also a Lexus, it was and is not because of the type of powertrain but because I have always found the experience of driving a Lexus so pleasant that I more or less consciously feel encouraged, within the bounds of practicality, to prolong it.

Sorry about that, truly I am. Wish him a Happy New Year from me, and give him an extra biscuit. All the Best, R.

As an RC owner of many years’ standing my advice to prospective pet transporters would be for them to get a hamster.

TBH I’m not too well versed in the niceties of generational changes to the LS430 but, based on a certain “boxiness” of appearance, I would bet on the “Danish” example being an early model. What I remember about the ghastly “Rumania/Milan” example since it was parked with its tail to me, is that it had twin exhausts, which, unless I’m mistaken, would make it a facelift model. I would think your best chance, even though it’s a very slim one, of clapping eyes on an early LS in Italy would be in the Rome area. It is said that the original Rome Lexus dealership in its early days sold more cars to the local diplomatic community alone than were sold by all other dealers in Italy put together.

On several occasions over more than a decade on visits to Denmark I have seen what I assume to be the same silver LS430. My sightings of it have all been along Strandvejen, namely the coast road north of Copenhagen which includes some of the country's wealthiest suburbs. If, as seems likely, it was imported new, the list price would have been upwards of DKK1.5 mio., which, if memory serves, was the equivalent of £125K in the early 2000s. At that price it would have been a top manager's company car and certainly not privately owned. At any rate, there would have been very few. The only LS430 I have ever seen in Italy was a couple of years ago in a car-park in Milan and it had Rumanian plates. It was white, refurbished inside in red velvet with tassels and fringes, and I suspect it belonged to a gypsy. Hopefully it was only passing through on its way to somewhere else. I don't recall ever seeing one in Germany, which I find strange given that long autobahn drives often result in the sighting of a quite comprehensive cross-section of the past and present European car population including a few rarities.

I’ve never owned one but know quite a few people who have. Leaving aside whether you can afford to buy, tax and insure one in the first place, you could, if you lived in Italy and preferably within a 100km radius of the Maranello factory near Modena, quite easily find independent garages or individual mechanics capable of properly servicing and generally maintaining your Ferrari with reasonable charges for labour. The sting is in the mechanical and body spare parts, which are almost all model-specific and so mind-bogglingly costly as make Lexus appear cheap. The same goes for Lamborghini.