Rabbers

Hi, Colin and David and other IS-to-NX converts out there. Strange how opinions vary. I just had an NX300h Luxury for two days as a courtesy car and did about 450km in it on a variety of roads. While appreciating the NX's many merits as a posh compact SUV - and its unmistakeable identity as a Lexus - not to mention the fact that my ageing bones didn't creak upon getting in and out like they do with the IS, I was frankly disappointed with the quality of the ride over road surfaces that were less than good, any bumps and pot-holes appearing to be magnified. Also, I got an overall consumption of 13.8km/l (= about 39mpg), which my dealer surprisingly tells me is better than average but is at least 15% less than I customarily manage in the IS. Be all this as it may, I guess the NX is the sort of car that improves with longer acquaintance, and sincerely hope you continue to enjoy yours.

I wish they did, but, in my experience, they don't.

.... and nor does the present range include 18" diameter, so no good for me. Also, while any brand of all-season tyres would have been fine this last winter because of the mild weather over much of Europe, not even the CrossClimate model, supposedly the best of its type, would be as effective as proper winter tyres were harsh conditions to be encountered, particularly in mountainous areas.

Having discarded the OEM Bridgestones (with alarming wear on the inside treads of the rears) after 37,000km when switching to winters last November, I had a new set of summers fitted last month. My choice had fallen on Goodyear Eagle Asymmetric 3s but, because the 255/35 rears were not immediately available, I decided to take advantage of an introductory deal on new-generation Pirelli PZeros. I must say that I have been very impressed with their quietness, stability in both dry and wet conditions (my opinion being based on 200km driven in torrential rain only last week), especially in fast cornering, and, not least, their good looks.

Bring back the death penalty.

I once left the 300h parked for exactly four weeks in cold weather and it started first time. As regards the petrol in the tank, I believe conventional wisdom is not to leave unleaded petrol unused beyond a couple of months whether in a tank or jerry-can.

Good for you, Rayaan, if your hands can reach all the inside surfaces. I wish mine could. Personally, I find the angle of the glass is such as to require the skills of a contortionist (which I am not) in order to keep up an adequate and uniform pressure when wiping, and this is why, to my irritation, I need to use a gadget like the Invisible Glass stick to get anything like a satisfactory and by no means effort-free result.

Any advice about reaching the awkward extremities when cleaning the inside of the 300h's rear window? I have an Invisible Glass Reach & Clean pivot-head stick and another similar but smaller device whose brand-name I don't remember. Both work quite well but leave untouched areas particularly along the bottom edge of the window. These I try to reach with a mf cloth wrapped around a thin piece of stiff cardboard, not always satisfactorily.

Try plain warm water applied with a mf cloth and then immediately and energetically wipe dry with another separate one.

Interesting post, Bernard. Although I am very happy with the 300h, I must admit without being able to put my finger on exactly why, that I get an occasional twinge of nostalgia for the 250, of which I owned two. But, then again, I tend to get nostalgic about just about every nice thing I have ever had: cars, shoes and other items of clothing, old girlfriends etc., and this despite the subsequent availability of improved versions. Certainly, the 250 gave a more immediate impression of quality than the 300h. The "clunkiness" of the doors, boot- and bonnet-lids and fuel-flap, and, internally, of the door-pockets and glove-compartment was always pleasing. Not that the equivalents in the 300h can reasonably be faulted except for the exposed boot-hinges, which look and feel flimsy. And it still rankles that the top-spec 300h lacks the back-lit door-sills and rear-window sunscreen, standard on the 250 and eliminated, no doubt, by the bean-counters. As regards the overall design, the 250 has aged well and still looks surprisingly nice and solid on the road whereas the 300h, being longer and sleeker, looks lighter and perhaps less reassuring. Also, I am starting to wonder if the 300h's design, including that of the cabin, is not ageing a little too quickly, though this could be a case of familiarity breeding a tiny bit of contempt on my part after three years of ownership. As regards performance, and leaving aside the 250's alarmingly high fuel consumption, I much prefer the 300h for its quietness and smoothness in all situations, largely attributable to the CVT, of which I have become a big fan, but most especially during long motorway trips when I find the car to be a well-nigh perfect all-day high-speed cruiser.

I once read a letter in a motoring magazine suggesting that owners of luxury cars with rattles or squeaks should take them to down-market workshops which, being accustomed to lower build quality, are generally better able to handle this kind of problem. The author, I seem to recall, was an irate Class E owner who had ended up using a KIA garage to rectify a dashboard rattle after several unsuccessful attempts by his own dealer. The 300h, I am glad to say, has never given me cause to test the soundness of this advice, but I do remember an occasion in a first-generation 250 when, suspecting a slow puncture, I reluctantly pulled into a seedy one-pump garage specialising in tractor repairs somewhere in the middle of France. After efficiently changing a wheel, the proprietor, complete with greasy overalls and a Gauloise permanently stuck to his lower lip, took only five minutes to permanently sort out a maddening rattle in a door which my Lexus dealer back home had not managed to do after keeping the car for a whole day.

I too have been using Dr Leather wipes for many years, and have always been satisfied with its cleaning ability, especially as regards denim stains. The leather smell is also nice but not very long-lasting. Good as the product is, I would recommend to use it only sparingly and not too often because, despite the manufacturer's claims, there can be some slight surface accumulation and consequent undesirable shine - undesirable, that is, if you want to maintain the original matt finish of the leather. Also, for this same reason, it is best to let the product dry by itself after application without any further wiping.

I'm happy to say my wheel-nuts are showing no signs of rust. Also, I'm still using the same set of Toyota-branded anti-theft nuts fitted to the first IS I bought twelve years=approx. 350K km=ago, and they are still look as good as new after being transferred to my present fifth! Tore, I think you have grounds for asking for free replacements unless the rust is superficial or simply attributable to "normal" heavy road-salting in your part of the world.

I don't know how true it is but I have heard somewhere that Lexus and Toyota lowered the seat heating temperature in all their models because of concerns, particularly in the Far East, that overheated seats could pose a health risk in very young children and pregnant women.

Steve: Touch wood, I have so far managed not to kerb my wheels. This I attribute as much to my good luck as to having taken normal precautions such as keeping an adequate distance from kerbs, avoiding abnormally high ones and, generally, forcing myself to take a proper amount of time when parking despite possible irate honks from other cars (and resisting the temptation of showing them a finger, which would be unbecoming for a Lexus driver). The self-dipping mirrors are also a great help. Be this as it may, my satisfaction with the Bridgestones in terms of rim protection is based on the observation that on the several occasions when I lightly but perceptibly grazed a parallel kerb, for example when passing stationary turning vehicles on the inside, and fearing the worst, I was always relieved to find that the vertical geometry of the tyre walls was such as to have prevented the area of scuffing from extending from the rubber to the metal.

I too will be taking the 300h for its 48K miles (=60K km) service within the next couple of months or so, and will coincidentally be needing a new set of tyres having already discarded the OEM Bridgestone Turanzas because of serious - indeed alarming - wear to the rears at 38K km (= 24K miles) discovered when I routinely changed to winters back in November. I am thinking of ordering a set of Goodyear Eagle Asymmetrics, having heard nothing but good about them in terms of quietness, durability and rim-protection (this latter factor being the only positive thing I would attribute to the Bridgestones), but have not yet made up my mind. Any advice would be much appreciated.

I have noticed that the sluggish response on cold-weather starts does not always occur, and if and when it does, I have always judged it to be the result of lower-than-usual temperatures during the period of inactivity (e.g. overnight freezes), and, like Steve, I believe it has more to do with the coldness of the transmission and engine fluids than the batteries - though it is difficult to tell one way or the other. In any case, I place my trust in the hybrid system's reassuring beep into life and the manual's recommended non-observance of any warm-up time.

Like Ross (see #42 above), I confirm there is a problem of wear to the rear tyres. Since I had never pressed my head to the ground in order to look, the wear was only discovered when I changed to winter tyres. Alarmingly, the metal was visible on parts of the inside treads of both the OEM Bridgestone Turanzas (255/35/18), which had then done 33,000km (=20,5K miles). Because the front ones were still looking good with a remaining tread of 6mm, I had been expecting to do at least another 5,000km. The winters (Yokohama W.Drives 245/45/18) had done 18,000km (=11K miles) and all four were still looking good and evenly worn with plenty of meat left on them. They have now reached 22,500km (=14K miles), and I will almost certainly get one more winter out of them. What especially disturbed me when I was shown the extent of the wear to the Bridgestones is that I had not felt any decline to the car's road-holding and performance. This presumably means that I am either not a sensitive driver or that I place too much reliance on the 300h's driveability - which could also mean that the car has lulled me into a state of false security. According to the Lexus mechanics, relatively quick wear to the 300h's rear tyres of whatever brand is not unusual, though they had not previously seen any as bad as mine.

Rather than use classic clay, I use a Dodo Juice Square Sponge Clay Pad for both the front and rear windows and get the same excellent result with fine or medium grades, though I prefer the fine for the bodywork. The product is not only easy to use but can be re-used over and over again. I think I paid around £17 online.

I often drive on long stretches of motorway with lots of tunnels where daylight and relative darkness alternate in variably quick succession, most notably in Switzerland. More often than not I turn on the headlights and leave them on, but I sometimes let the auto function do its work and must say that the factory default light sensitivity setting has always proved effective enough, by which I mean that the lights come on practically simultaneously with entry into a tunnel at normal speeds. If you are driving significantly over the speed limit there is a slight but noticeable time lapse which, if it worries you, could no doubt be eliminated by customising the sensor's sensitivity.

This happened to me on a hot day last July when I was stuck in a long queue at roadworks and a huge and flthy earth removal caterpillar went past on a parallel lane covering us all in a thick layer of dust. The inappropriateness of the ice crystal symbols provided a bit of amusement in an unamusing situation.

The possibility of getting ripped off when any car I've ever owned has gone in for scheduled servicing at a dealership has always given me a bad stomach, the reason being that you can never be 100% sure that everything that should be done will be done - and done properly - despite the higher bill in respect of an independent workshop. And, given my mistrustful nature, so it will always be. However, I have to some extent factored my stomach pains into the cost of ownership, and, as specifically regards Lexus, I take comfort from the fact that, after religiously following the recommended service schedules, I have had remarkably few reliability problems with any of the five ISs I have bought from, and had serviced by, three different dealerships. How much of this has been attributable to the cars' intrinsic reliability and how much to the regularity and goodness of the specialist servicing I don't know. And since I have no basis for technical and financial comparisons, I never will. What I do know is that after buying my first Lexus I have kept going back.

If you drop the car off at 8 a.m., it would be unacceptable to have it back later than 11 a.m., and not unreasonable for you to show up around 10.30 and start pacing about impatiently.

Unless you want to analyse your consumption in detail, or your driving mix and conditions vary a lot from one tankful to the next, you can get a convenient and accurate indication of how economically (or not) you are driving from the range distance figure shown on the multi-information display immediately after refueling to the brim. This tells you, based on your average consumption, how far you can expect the next 56 litres (=12.3 gals) to take you before the low-fuel warning comes on leaving you with 10 litres (=2.2 gals) or so still in the tank. Just how satisfactory the range may be depends entirely on you and your style of driving. As for me, I am disappointed nowadays if I see less than 950km (=590 miles), which would mean that I have been achieving worse than 17km/l (=48mpg). However, when I remember that I was customarily seeing a figure closer to 800km (=500 miles) for a consumption of about 14km/l (=40mpg), or worse, when I first had the car, I am today well enough pleased to think that I have learned to drive it more efficiently than I formerly did.

My first job, many decades ago, was as a trainee in the Supply & Distribution department of a major oil company which shall be nameless. Whenever any of our filling stations were at risk of running dry and we were unable to supply them in time, we simply contacted one of our competitors to help us out by sending tanker trucks of their own and would return the favour when they themselves had a similar problem. In other words, not all customers were putting a Large Striped Cat in their Tank all of the time while others sometimes did without knowing it. This was in France and Benelux but I think it happened everywhere in the world. No doubt advertising ethics have improved since.