Rabbers

Right. Especially if you are believed, rightly or wrongly, to be thinking of buying the model requested, but also if you are a loyal and valued customer. I too requested and was given an LC even when the dealer knew I wasn't in the market for it. And it strengthened my loyalty to the dealership.

Oh to be 100 with all that surrounds you perfectly green. Personally I’d also happily settle for a bit of yellow around the edges, and I’m sure Malc would too.

Surely no Lexus dealer would consider 220 miles excessive for a courtesy loan over a whole weekend.

Malcolm: Sorry to disappoint, but my knowledge of them is limited to what I read in gossip rags - or used to read in pre-Covid days when my barber risked infecting his customers. I did, however, once bump into the late Prince Rainier, no less, in an antiquarian bookshop in Geneva. Admittedly he was no longer a young man but I remember being a trifle disillusioned after having been led to believe that he spent all his spare time chasing girls.

To be fair, wear and tear on the royal cars, and fuel bills, would include the need to pop over to Nice or even Cannes for better supermarket deals than you get in Monte. Not to mention drives in the other direction as the result of the family’s occasional hankering for a good pizza.

Check the headlights for possible condensation. One was changed for this reason under warranty on a MY 2009 I owned, and I was given to understand the issue was not unique to my car. Also, out of nostalgia, I recently looked quite closely at an apparently well-preserved model of indeterminate age parked in the street and was surprised to see blistering in the paintwork at the base of one of the rear doors. Of course this might have been the result of a bad repair, but you might want to check the doors and boot of the car you are thinking of buying. Incidentally, I didn’t know the IS250 was ever made with a manual box, but I had one in an IS200 and it was excellent.

Almost certainly not, the Prince of Monaco and his forebears especially. Makes me quite envious.🤢

Yes, the number of people who come up and admire the RC has, if anything, increased in my five years of ownership, evidencing that the car has remained, beyond its rarity, ahead of the pack in terms of design. When approached by admirers I try and project an impression of polite urbanity accompanied by the merest hint of self-deprecatory nonchalance. My wife, when present on such occasions, is highly amused and accuses me, perhaps not unjustly, of being a hypocritical narcissist, albeit a harmless one. I would add that the only country where admiration for the RC differs slightly from elsewhere is, in my experience, Germany. There, people in hotel car-parks and filling station forecourts etc., tend to sidle up with a vague show of reticence and nod their head in approval of the car’s visible quality, implying that looks come second.

Not sure if the French, for example, wouldn't judge their double entendres to be an equally skilful form of wit.

Maybe “Cringeworthiness” should substitute “Negativity” in the title of this thread.

I reckon, in disagreement with some of the foregoing posts, that eyes are overrated compared to parking sensors. Before my cars had parking sensors and I was forced to rely on my own perfectly good vision I averaged at least a couple of bumper scrapes of varying severity per year. With sensors my average has dropped by at least half, not unnaturally since none of the scrapes have involved fixed obstacles and all have been the fault of people whose cars, I would bet, lacked sensors.

I am guessing that you keep the park assist function permanently switched on. This was also my habit until, like you, though only occasionally, I would get the warning to clean the sensors when driving in bad weather. I have now disciplined myself to use the function only when I actually need it, and not seen the warning since. Try leaving the park assist off for a time and see if the problem has gone away when you switch it back on. (I should mention that the problem is similar in the case of the ACC in my RC, when the need-to-clean warning not infrequently appears in rainy weather on the motorway, as alternatively does the non-function message in fog or snow or particularly heavy rain).

?????

Following is a quick selection of summary quotes from this thread: “Well said…” “… respectful…” “…no place for the ‘anger and tension’ … “…witty banter…” “…well informed and articulate…” “…lot of positivity…” “…mild manner[ed]…” “friendly and helpful…” “…nicely put…” “…civilised…” Yes, the LOC is a nice and useful institution clearly supported by nice, helpful and justifiably enthusiastic people, no question about it, but do I detect a self-congratulatory note creeping in?

I love my RC but lust after an LC.

To engage in eristic argumentation whereby the aim is to have the last word rather than try to reach a shared conclusion is not unusual in online forums since it takes only two willing participants out of potentially many. Threads based on a desire for controversy for controversy’s sake are easy to recognize after the first few posts and equally easy to ignore thereafter. The LOC has changed little over the years and generally retains its characteristic civility and helpfulness despite the membership having Increased enormously apace with the number of Lexus owners. Certainly, despite the survival of pockets of earnestness, the tone has become lighter, and if you are looking for entertainment there is plenty available.

Linas: thanks for the prompt reply. Agree that covers are a pain, not to mention that hail-proof ones are very expensive and even less easy to handle. My purchase will be based purely on the thought that anything will be better than nothing in an emergency.

By luck rather than design I have on two recent occasions avoided damage to the car from violent hailstorms, the first time by covering it just in time with blankets and the second by quickly finding shelter before the storm broke. My insurance covers damage from weather, which is comforting, but I frankly prefer not to have to use it. Does anybody use or know of a brand of protective cover suitable for the RC? I have done a quick online search without too much success. One Amazon supplier, for example, specifies suitability for the RC but on closer reading seems to mean RX …

The fact of the matter is that if the repair is less than perfect you will never be able to “unsee” the residual blemish, resulting in your permanent irritation. Were one to cause this type of damage oneself, it might eventually be possible to live at peace with it as a reminder of one’s own clumsiness. Dealer clumsiness is less acceptable, and the culprit should be held to the highest standard when the quality of the repair comes to be judged. I remember a time when Lexus would not have questioned this principle.

This thread has brought back the memory of what for me was one of life’s major annoyances in pre-satnav days, namely my inability to correctly re-fold a single-sheet map after spreading it out. I’m not sure I ever managed it at the first attempt. Maps in book form were better, but the need to find the route again after turning a page could also be pretty irritating.

I think car satnav, irrespective of the quality of individual systems, is a truly remarkable item of technology. I haven’t used a paper map since I had my first car with satnav upwards of twenty years ago, and its functionality still occasionally inspires a child-like wonder in me. I used to hate stopping to safely read a paper map or otherwise asking a passenger to do so - and when the passenger was my wife the result was usually a quarrel. Only very occasionally have I experienced the satnav’s failure to correctly pinpoint a destination, and have usually solved the problem by rolling down my window and asking somebody the way, just as in the good old days, though I have recently discovered that I also have a phone app that does the same thing if I need to walk.

Got it. Size doesn’t matter.

Suggest you try and park outside a school at go-home time and see if you are more nervous in the vicinity of a mom in a Smart or one in a Q5. Fail to see why you state the obvious and say that the quality of driving has no relation to the type of car, or have you experience to the contrary?

Disagree. Just watch the moms in SUVs jostling for space when delivering or picking up their kids in front of any school.

The inches noticeably being added to the length and width of many saloons is no more than a natural but largely ineffectual market response to the vastly increased invasion of our roads by SUVs and other voluminous vehicles such as vans, mini-trucks, people-carriers, etc. The smaller the saloon, the less comfortable and secure its driver feels when an SUV looms menacingly in his rear-view mirror or pulls up alongside stealing his daylight. And the bulkier and more powerful the SUV, the greater is the likelihood that its driver, who may normally be the nicest and mildest of people, will momentarily take on the characteristics of a bully and enjoy the feeling. Could it be, therefore, that the popularity of SUVs rests, in some measure and independently of any merits they might objectively offer, on their appeal to people’s worst instincts?