Steve44

Well car has arrived 2 weeks ahead of schedule at the dealer and in plenty time to beat the 1st April tax changes. The Naguri trim is very nice to the touch. Its a bit, well, erm, black, behold the DarthVaderMobile................

Very nice indeed - any pics of the interior? Last time I sat in one, I liked the tech and layout, but the trim quality put me off, it was just too American in it's "premium" feel. Has it improved? be interested to hear how you get on with range, recharging, etc - good luck!

I can heartily recommend the Michelin Pilot Sport 4's fitted to my current F-Sport, much much better than the Bridgestone ER33. The PS4's are the current AutoExpress tyre champion. The Continental SC5's that were fitted to the rear of mine were fitted by the Lexus Dealer and they were ok, slightly less noisy than the ER33's, but wore prematurely on the inside edge at 20k miles. Just been to see the new car this afternoon at the dealer and it has Dunlop Sport Maxx fitted as std, so it will be interesting to see how they feel. They look more like the Bridgestones with a rounded profile and shoulder, whereas the Conti and Michelin's have a more square shoulder. Maybe this squarer shoulder is why they wear quickly on the inside edge compared to the Bridgestone?!?

I think current firmware is at least VD12103C or possibly D, there was a thread on it recently. It's available on the Lexus Tech page, not in the Portal for download

I was able to pick mine literally "off the boat" for March delivery in the spec I wanted, just had to be flexible on colour(I did have a choice). That's the benefit of a Lexus as there isn't many spec/colour/model combinations and they do make for stock. It's sat in the dealer now awaiting prep and will be registered before April, so £10 tax for me. There has also been an across the board price increase at start of Feb, adding £795 to most IS.

I secured 9.9% discount and finance at 2.9% with mine, matching Carwow discount, after a bit of haggling. F-Sport with Premier pack.

Yep they've changed it on the facelift. Previously you could spec AVS separately but only in conjunction with Premium Nav. Mine has it it makes a slight difference to ride, bringing a step back in softness in eCO/normal and a firming up in Sport+ It is a real unicorn option though not many about.

Some of the pronunciations when we were in continental Europe were hilarious!

Everything except Blind Spot Monitoring and Rear traffic cross alert is now standard on all models above SE on MY17. These two options are still only available on either the Premier or F-Sport when order with the Premier pack.

Just had 4 Michelin Pilot Sport 4 put on my car, really like them, quiet, grippy and better on bumps than Bridgestones.

The gunk is able to be cleaned away but it is a horrible job and the tyre fitter will try and dissuade you and get you to buy a new tyre. I'd try and get it repaired by either taking it off or getting enough air in it to get to the nearest centre. you could get a mobile tyre fitter to come to you?

Just rounding the tip of Sri Lanka en route to Suez canal! - http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:369654/mmsi:309108000/imo:9357298/vessel:GLORIOUS_LEADER You'll be watching this every day from now on.....

Do lots and lots of boring motorway miles in straight lines, using what can only be described as Bridgestone "Hard as nails" Tyres! The rears lasted 55k!

I've just had my 4 tyres changed on the IS to Michelin Pilot Sport 4's. The lease company really winced as the lease is up in 5wks! They had got their money's worth though, as the front Bridgestone's had done 70k miles. The rear continentals looked good, but had worn excessively on the rear inside edge, so looks like I was also suffering from F-Sport camber wear, watch out fellow F-Sport drivers! New tyres have transformed the car, it is so much quieter and rides potholes and ridges & gulleys in road much better now.

As other posters have said, your friend of a friend obviously knows little about cars and less about Hybrids! The Hybrid warranty can be extended for a another year/10k miles by paying Lexus £59 for a Hybrid health check. This is up to a further 5 years/50k miles. So that protects any Hybrid battery/motor bits. The details are on the Lexus Website. Battery issues are very rare, there are plenty of old Prius and Lexus running round with greater than 150k miles without issues. Rest of the car is pretty reliable and normal premium exec car, so awkward to get to stuff, could be expensive for bits if it goes wrong etc. However nothing to stop you getting an independent dealer to service it, or doing it yourself with the correct tools/experience, though you might struggle with some of the more advanced technical bits, though that is true for most modern cars now I guess. If I was buying used, depends on your budget, but I'd want a lower mileage, slightly older (IS300h first on market in late 2013 early 2014) approved used car from a Lexus dealer with a full history.

On longish trip from Scotland back to Northumberland tonight, had Traffic info on, updated using mobile phone on Bluetooth and connected services on Premium nav. Turned voice on. Was seeing traffic info on Nav, colours next to roads, signs where there are roadworks, accident info etc etc, plus getting announcements for slow traffic from Nav on breakdowns, incidents etc too. Also getting FM traffic reports from local BBC radio stations breaking into IPod music. i then turned off the connected services bit for traffic in the Nav settings, forced it to RDS TMC and Classic FM. I lost all the traffic flow graphics, any signs on the screen and didn't get anymore announcements from the Nav system for traffic events. FM traffic reports on the radio still worked fine. Re enabled the connected services bit and all came back again. my car is on latest firmware for the Nav system. Can only conclude either it is a bug in the system or Classic FM doesn't transmit any useful info for the Nav to decode.

Mine don't illuminate, I assume it is by design.

Which FM channel? Only certain ones give traffic report using RDS TMC. Classic FM does, as do most local BBC ones. the sat Nav announcements are dependent on recieving either a RDS TMC message via FM, or an internet download via a tethered mobile phone and registered connected services account, though this is I think a premium Nav feature only. Can someone confirm? If you run into an issue but the radio station or ITIS isn't aware of it you won't get announcements. most reliable method is via a connected services tethered mobile on either Bluetooth or wifi.

Another reasonably good review of the facelift. http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-reviews/lexus/lexus-is300h-2017-review/

300h models outsell 200t (and before that 250's) by about 10:1. so your used options on these will be very limited, given there were only circa 10k IS models registered in the UK last year.

And what was the average speed to achieve such MPG?

So does the IS version, but I've never had the DAB traffic info. Either stations don't broadcast it (I think this is the reason), or its a bug in the system! My previous car got traffic interrupts when listening to DAB, but it was FM station signals, not DAB.

As I've said in another thread, I know of many Taxi company's using Lexus, Toyota and Nissan Hybrid/EV's, all with more than 100k miles and none have had battery/hybrid issues. I think on this forum, there has only been a couple of issues reported for people with hybrid issues on GS. Compare it to the number of issues reported by other manufacturers with Turbo, DPF, injection system, electrical faults etc, the cars are reliable. Only you can say if the F-Sport or gearbox is not for you, with an extended test drive. You should be easily able to get one from a dealer, up to 24hrs. I don't think it is bad at all, no worse than a dithering VAG DSG. The "rubber band" style of engine rev's I don't mind at all. The drone most mags mention is due to leaving the Active Sound Control switched on. Turn it off and the car is silent. The F-Sport version has slightly worse economy and increased road noise due to the wide and staggered tyres, also ride is marginally worse, due to thin sidewalls and sporty suspension. Again a full test drive will sort it out in your mind.

There are lots of minor detail changes. The Toyota Lexus UK media page has a full press pack which outlines all the changes and updates. As well as all the cosmetic bits, the suspension front and rear is quite heavily revised to improve ride, noise and steering feel.

Do you mean the screen returns to the home page after a period of time? There is a setting in Setup I think which turns off the 'change back to home' setting and keeps the screen on whichever function you've selected for as long as you like. DAB text and FM text has never scrolled for me, it is iffy as well and seems to only be reliable on BBC station. The whole layout of the radio screen is giant waste of screen space to me, the buttons are too big and the info box has a font which is not efficiently using the space. As for why they didn't allow the info to be displayed on the home page when there is plenty space.......