Rabbers

All true, Bill. And admirably put. Personal interactions between buyers and sellers have undergone so much change in recent years - indeed generations - as to have made phrases such as “the customer is always right” or “the customer is king” almost laughable. And yet, although few prospective or actual customers would feel comfortable with an excess of obsequiousness on the part of someone selling them a car or providing a service connected to a car, the majority would certainly be upset upon getting the impression they are being done a favour rather than the other way round. In other words, although courtesy and respect can and should be shown by both parties in a transaction, it is the role of the seller to persuade and satisfy a buyer within the bounds of reason even when this might necessitate the suppression of personal dislike. This, I feel, is a professional duty where the seller or provider of a service is the representative of a premium marque such as Lexus, whose reputation and image in a highly competitive business requires constant protection.

I habitually change to rubber mats when I change from summer to winter tyres despite the fact that logic and weather rarely overlap. Although Lexus rubber mats don’t look or feel as good as their carpet counterparts, their quality is undeniably high, their weight, as Steve notes in his OP, being particularly impressive. Unfortunately in my experience the driver-side mat tends to whiten in the area of the pedals because of slight surface wear caused by a swiveling heel. Rubber reviving products such as GummiPflege can help but the discolouration inevitably returns. Incidentally, although Lexus may once have offered rear rubber mats for some models, I’m not sure if it has done so for any car in recent years.

I was once given a beautiful brand new ES as a courtesy car on a day of filthy weather with rain and sleet. When I pointed out that there were no rubber mats in the back the service manager half-jokingly but not unintelligently suggested I should tell rear passengers to wipe their feet before getting in.

This thread illustrates how the general standard of service provided by the same dealer can be condemned by some customers and praised by others. Some dealerships are mentioned several times and at length, but I doubt if there are any dealerships anywhere that have at one time or another and to a greater or lesser extent not been the object of diverging customer opinions. Unless they don’t acknowledge the existence of a customer dissatisfaction issue in the first place it seems to me that the people running dealerships are faced with two behavioural alternatives. They can either (a) try harder to justify what they charge for their services and do their best to be seen to be doing so, or (b) simply accept that there is no prospect of pleasing most customers all of the time and that there is consequently little to be gained by trying. Whether one likes it or not, it is implicit in the thinking of the latter type of dealer that the reason people - especially first-time customers - buy a Lexus is because it is a good car and not because they like the dealer or are able to judge the quality and honesty of the services offered.

A bit of dirt or mud or perhaps something like a wet leaf momentarily blocking the radar? I’ve had it happen during heavy rain and even light snow, in which cases the explanation is more obvious.

Bernard, you paint a bleak picture of young persons who follow their chosen career paths with all the radiant enthusiasm of youth. Not that I entirely disagree with it. Unfortunately I long ago concluded that even the most bored of junior mechanics among bored junior mechanics is less likely than I am to damage car components when fiddling with them.

You must be right, David, but I confess I’m reluctant to take a look in case I’m tempted to do something I shouldn’t. I’ll probably end up popping in at my dealership next time I’m in the neighbourhood. The holiday season being upon us I’ll be sure to find a bored junior mechanic willing to help.

I would think spiders prefer their wasps served fresh.

I’ll see how long my patience holds out before I try anything serious.

Knowing that the USB sockets are not live when the motor is off, I have always wondered, as a non-technical person, how mini-fridges plugged in to one the sockets (most appropriately in the boot, if present) continue to keep the contents cool. As a matter of fact this is what has long prevented me from getting a socket installed in my boot since I don’t want to use one of the armrest pair for this purpose.

I attach a photo of a wasp carcass stuck inside the left-hand rear lights cluster of my RC. It looks dried out, so there is a chance the sun will turn it to dust and save me the trouble of trying to get it out. This would be a good thing since I have no idea of how to do it myself. I don't know how the creature got in there in the first place since the seal is intact and looks perfectly sound. I can only imagine it somehow got in from the rear some three years ago when the lights units were checked during repairs to the boot area. Perhaps it also perished around that time and only recently became dislodged from its original resting place. Which is where I wish it had stayed.

Elvis might have liked it if it wasn’t so small.

I once had a similar problem caused by a faulty sensor. I had changed tyres shortly before and, being about to leave on a long trip, couldn’t wait for the replacement sensor ordered by my dealer - this not being a regularly stocked item. There was nothing to worry about since the pressure of the relative tyre was OK, but a month’s driving with the TPMS warning light on was extremely irritating.

???

I don’t think so, Phil, though I know what you mean. The Englishmen of whom I spoke were not the sort who would upset themselves about not having a monopoly of their own language. In my experience the French are far more sensitive on the subject. As Duff Cooper observed on looking back at his years as the British Ambassador to France, he never met any French person who admitted their French was worse than his. As regards English-speaking Italians, the late Gianni Agnelli, the Chairman of Fiat, deserves a mention. So good was his English that he thought it best to cultivate a slight Italian inflection in order to avoid embarrassing his interlocutors, even though these tended, by his own admission, to be mainly Americans. In this, he apparently followed the advice of his friend Henry Kissinger who, it is said, needlessly affects a German accent.

Peter, I truly feel for you. I had what appears to have been similar damage involving replacement of the rear bumper and the boot-lid of my RC - see my RC Forum post “Rear-ended in Copenhagen”, started 1 July 2020. The total repair cost was €3400 negotiated directly without my involvement by my insurance company with the repairer, an authorized Lexus body shop. Presumably a new tailgate for an RX will cost more than a boot-lid for an RC, so, considering that other component and labour costs will also have increased since 2020, I guess you will be looking at £5000 at the very least. Looking back, my own irritation was compounded by the slowness of communications between insurance companies in two countries. I realize it’s not much consolation, but at least you won’t have this problem.

I recently drove from Denmark to Italy, all motorway, starting with a full tank of E5 (which is the grade I customarily use). The low-fuel warning light came on after 806km. I then filled up with E10 and, having driven at much the same speed on the same type of road in much the same weather and traffic conditions, the light came on after 742km. This indicates that E10 is 8% less economical than E5 - and I presume this figure is somewhat understated since my tank must have contained at least 8-9 litres of E5 when I put in the E10.

Actually, Steve, now you mention it …

I am reminded of a company which, to my intense disappointment at the time, didn't offer me a job. This was in the early eighties, and the job was as a member of a small London-based team working directly for the Chairman and CEO of a highly profitable pharmaceuticals/medical supplies company and tasked with monitoring the performances of its overseas subsidiaries. This the team did from a magnificent Georgian building located between the Strand and the Embankment that otherwise served for board meetings and as occasional offices for senior managers. The property, containing superb period furnishings and art, enjoyed sweeping views over the Thames, and was permanently staffed by a butler, a housekeeper, and a cook. My sixth and last interview for the job took the form of a dinner with the Chairman and four of the directors, and although I thought it had gone well when I returned to my room at the nearby Savoy, where the company had put me up, it obviously could have gone better. Since no explanations were forthcoming about my failure to get the job, I was obliged to console my bruised ego with the thought that I might have kept the port decanter for too long or maybe passed it along in the wrong direction. Anyway, I strongly suspect that the sort of conspicuously self-indulgent management style I witnessed no longer exists or has become very rare, more's the pity, partly because of probable objections from shareholders but mainly because top managers these days seem to strive to appear democratic, shunning pinstripes in favour of rolled-up shirtsleeves. The directors of the aforementioned company appear, in retrospect, to have been among the last representatives of a breed that hid a steely-eyed attention to the bottom line behind a languid elegance of demeanour which stated that opulent fringe benefits were not a subject for debate but something to be taken for granted as long as the business prospered.

So do I, but it doesn’t necessarily mean I believe them.

Another item of archaic office technology that inspires almost as much nostalgia in me as the Telex is the Dictaphone - not, I hasten to add, the small and sleek portable types that used dinky-looking mini-cassettes but the earlier and clunkier models that worked with floppy plastic bands (?-"Dicta-Bands") and occupied most of one's desk surface. My experience of one of these latter contraptions was brief but memorable, and involved a typing pool consisting of a small regiment of young ladies whose collective disregard for correct spelling and punctuation was only partly compensated by individual levels of comeliness well above the company average. Among them was a spectacularly bouncy Barbara Windsor lookalike called Cynthia who, on a recent holiday in Mallorca, had enjoyed a fling with a waiter called Enrique whose subsequent letters to her were in Spanish, thus evidencing that the basis for the relationship had been less verbal than physical. This I immediately understood from a cursory reading of the first of what was to become a series of weekly letters she rather touchingly asked me to translate and dictate onto one of the aforementioned bands which I would then mark for delivery to her personal attention down in the typing pool. While unremittingly cringeworthy in style and content, the letters nevertheless provided amounts of mildly titillating adult entertainment of a quality sufficient to secure my best efforts as translator and editor. While ironing out the many asperities in Enrique's prose and where possible toning down some of his more outlandish flights of erotic fancy, I also cultivated and developed a deepish baritone combined with a breathlessness of delivery that I deemed appropriate to Enrique's intentions. In short, I thought I did Enrique proud. All this diligence on my part paid off handsomely in terms of the speed and efficiency of the service my departmental colleagues and I now received from the typing pool, but my greatest reward came at the company Xmas party when, much as I struggled with my conscience, I was unable to resist a slightly tipsy but fully functioning Cynthia's treatment of me as an Enrique substitute. Sadly, Enrique's letters became less and less frequent and then finally ceased altogether. Not that this appeared to upset Cynthia, who remained as perky as ever. The last time we spoke she said her next holiday was going to be in Greece.

Surely an email to info@hornicox.com would give equal pleasure, or didn’t they survive the Telex Age?

The British were once famous for moaning when there was little to moan about. Part of the nation’s charm, I always thought. Nowadays, to judge by this thread, there may well be a few genuine reasons for it. I too remember the Telex Age with more than a hint of nostalgia. The machines were usually housed in their own rooms at the end of corridors, and when they started clicking and clattering you got the impression that something requiring immediate attention was happening somewhere in the company or with your customers. Also, for reasons I was never able to fathom, the “telex room” was, in days when personal and social sensitivities were less acute, the place where unprofessional behaviour involving secretaries was likeliest to occur - although of course this depended on the level of discipline and sobriety characterizing the individual workplace.

Not a bad idea, and likely to appeal to German Lexus owners whose appreciation of the autobahn network is not primarily based on the enjoyment of sphincter-tightening rates of deceleration as the natural consequence of driving flat out. Observing the behaviour of big BMWs and Audis (in particular) on the autobahn I have sometimes thought that their cruise systems must be calibrated to allow much closer pre-overtaking distances than those of most other comparable cars. Where a one-bar ACC setting won't bring my RC closer to a preceding vehicle than an estimated 60-40m depending on relative speeds, the aforementioned German marques often give the impression when approaching fast that they are going to collide with the preceding vehicle before braking violently and easing to something like a 20m distance. To me this looks alarming but, obviously, alongside the drivers' apparently unexercised choice of "softer" settings, their systems are perfectly able - and are officially homologated - to handle such tight speed/distance ratios. What, unfortunately, the systems cannot do is to monitor the state of the brakes and tyres.

My opinion of the Conti SC7s after twice driving the length of Germany in recent weeks remains high, their performance under frequent hard braking having been more than satisfactory. As usual at the start of long autobahn drives I set the ACC at 180kmh, not in the realistic expectation of frequently reaching and maintaining this speed for long stretches given the density of the traffic and the numerous 80~120kmh limits, but so as to quickly regain speed after being overtaken by cars travelling at 200>kmh. In situations of strong or very strong deceleration caused by slow or slowing vehicles ahead, I found myself initially obeying what remains, despite my long familiarity with the ACC, an instinctive - and personally rather embarrassing - impulse to "help" the deceleration by using the brake pedal, thus disengaging the system and retaking human control. Why I feel a need to do this is not easy to analyse but, clearly, an objectively unjustified mistrust of the car's stopping capability in situations with potentially catastrophic outcomes has something to do with it. However, my confidence in the ACC's ability to do its job without my feeling the need to interfere always returns as the autobahn drives proceed and I become re-accustomed to high speeds. On these recent drives my confidence undoubtedly returned more quickly than it usually does, and although I have no means of quantifying if and to what extent this might have been attributable to the feeling of effectiveness and stability transmitted by my tyres during hard braking, I was nevertheless certainly pleased by it.