dutchie01

Oil has brought us decades of prosperity just look at the rise of the western world in the last century. It created possibilities to travel by car boat plane is the basis for numerous products and was the driving force of many economies. The dark side is the drilling can be a pretty horrible story with human rights issues and slave labour and wars have started because of oil. The slogan Stop Oil is naive as we just cant. Looking for alternatives yes fine great idea nobody will debate this but it is not as simple as it sounds.

I think you are correct Renato. Lexus or a dealer will enter a forest of potential horror if they would participate. Lexus hq will have a marketing strategy and budget and then dealer x takes a different position or places a silly sentence that could lead to headlines in the press ( canbus issue for instance).

Todays moan is about people gluing themselves to something in order to create havoc and disturbe events or traffic in order to generate publicity. Just a bunch of selfish spoilt brats pushing their worldview on to the majority. I was a student once and demonstrated against nuclear and even Franco would you believe. Still remember the slogan Their struggle Our struggle International solidarity!!. Franco died one year later so i guess it worked.. it was all with a bit of tongue in cheek and a drink or two but today is just sheer agression and without any respect whatsoever.

Old vs young. So true. I would always call to speak to someone. My son or daughter? Forget it all on internet. Then there is another issue the true meaning of owning a car is different they really dont care and if there would be a goog alternative they would go for it. Just look at the success of Lynk & Co. Only available on subscription pay per month and uou can cancel per month. All over the place those cars in Holland. Volvo last year had 28% of global sales internet based. So, what is the role of the dealer. Would you buy a car through the internet? No salespeople fixed price etc? I would.

Are you not aware of hyper expensive designerfridges in black or red?? The smegs of the world. Or the american fridges big enough to host a family( well propably not an american family..) its not easy to be a dealer i know. You need to have the hyperexpensive building, the suits the staff have to sell the x number of cars or no end of year bonus. On top maintenance intervals are getting longer manufacturers want to go direct over the internet and all thats left is a maintenance hub on comissionbasis. Large dealers buy smaller ones and its cost cutting everywhere just to survive. Just not a healthy business environment. However, that does not excuse a sub par attitude as far as i am concerned. If you dont know the details of the car you are selling, if you are not interested in long term relationships. Are blatantly arrogant and full of yourself. I can go on and on. I really think dealers will disappear and the village garage and the true specialists will survive. Volvo announced to go full internet only in the UK. Ford will restructure the network and will go comission only and Tesla? Well the propably started all this

Too much credit given to most dealers i think. They see their job as selling something thats it. Could be fridges or shoes but in this case its cars. I honestly cannot recall one person in my 30 years of buying new cars that had much interest in the automotive landscape. The job stops at five. Needless to say i am not impressed by the overall commercial knowledge of car dealers.

interesting statistical exercise, but even without one can draw the conclusion that the laws of supply and demand are at work here. Everybody wants a small SUV or crossover and nobody a saloon. As demand is so high one can easily inflate the purchaseprice and try to earn more money. Prime example and even admitting is Range Rover. When introducing the latest model the pricehike was considerable and in an interview i think in Car magazine the top exec told the interviewer that was because they could. High pricing will turn around when A) customers stop buying so demand falls, or B) some large competitor starts to decrease prices to push sales dragging the entire market down. That is now happening in BEV world where Tesla and BYD started a full out war in China with cars becoming cheaper every month. Anyway back to the LBX. All depends on the price i guess which we dont know yet As Lexus intends this to be a volume seller in Europe it must be competitive enough to do so. If more expensive than for instance the new Volvo EX30 i think it will remain niche. Time will tell.

2 things. The above i find difficult to believe, any sources to back this up? then i fully utterly agree to your long read thesis of the core values of the Lexus brand. From the beginning Lexus was set out to give the most sophisticated experience and be the absolute champion in NVH. For this 6 pots were the absolute minimum. No 4 cylinders allowed as the vibrations were too rough. Diesel? forget it. Anyway those values were left behind pretty soon as i guess they were too expensive and profits are an important byproduct of car manufacturung. So you have cars that have more Lexus than Toyota in them and the other way around. Prime example is my IS250. Superior buildquality to the level of the glovebox or silky smooth 6 pot. Then my IS300H. Apart from the great looks the quality is just not thesame,more toyota than Lexus. I drove an ES as i needed a new car but to me it just felt like a Toyota. NOT a Lexus. So where from here? Having NVH as core value the current electric wave is a big threat as all EVs are silent. So Superior Technology? Forget it with the first Lexus EVs beeing sub par and the infotainment still behind the competion. Looks? well..... I see Lexus become a USA brand alltogether and would not be surprised if they leave Europe/UK alltogether.

How about Spain? ferry up north like A Coruna, then take it easy. San sebastian and especially Logrono deserve a sleep over. Food is the best you can get on this globe. Drive towards Barcelona and you will see nature around you change into bizarre Mars like views. If needed stay one night in Barcelona but better stay in the village of Sitges just South or LLafranc just north. Then head south towards Valencia, Then Madrid, Salamaca and back to the ferry in A Coruna. May or October is best dont go in July/August. Just and idea...

Not sure if that is totally correct Linas. The Yaris of old had a 998cc 4 cylinder and did weigh 830 kg. Great car, friend of us has one from new in a pretty pink color, was used a family hauler, schoolcar, shoppingtrolley was given to the kids when they left the house, given back and still used as second car. 20 years on and over 200k km. Never stopped working a real toyota. Thing is it will not pass todays safety tests nor the emission tests, it would not be allowed on the road as a new car. The majority of car manufacturers have stopped building their smallest models as they think they will not sell as too expensive if they have to engineer it to pass emission and safety tests, So no more Fiesta, C1, Aygo, 109 and so on. The only thing the Yaris has in common with the old one is the name. It is bigger, heavier, more complicated and subsequently more expensive. Toyota could have chosen to terminate as well but they didnt. Is it too expensive? Thats for each individual to decide but i personally think cars have become shockingly expensive. In case of the yaris cross there is another thing. Where is the competition? The more competition the lower the price, so, where is it?

Isnt that typical you pay in time without problem for decades then miss one payment and they come to arrest you with a swat team.

Seems way too expensive to me. They want to sell 100.000 of these in Europe and i wonder how. They will have thought this through but to me it seems another car coming out of Lexusland. A product the market is not asking for. Too expensive, too small, not an EV. I just cannot see this work. Average price will be around 40K? Its too small/expensive for a companycar and most companies demand 0 Co2 so an EV nowadays so forget the fleetmarket. Private buyers buying a tiny 40k threecilinder CVT cannot be found on every streetcorner and just have a look at what you can buy as a one year old with full warranty for 40k.

https://www.lexus.de/customer/reserve/lbx

OH NOOO, not the bored junior mechanic! Last time i did that he was to change a lightbulb on my wife's car and at a certain moment had 2 mtrs of wiring in his hand with the light at the end. I desperately asked him to put everything back where it belonged please...

I see pricing in Germany starting at 34300 euro for the base model which is 9000 up on the toyota. Top model at 45600

Personal detail are left behind on all sorts of websites. Book something on for instance booking.com. This site is then hacked which gives them name/address/bankdetails and that can be the start of it all. This can also be used to open an account that is used to receive the money. If money in they close account immediately and run. And repeat, and repeat. No need to rob a a bank anymore.

Correct Len, the scammers are getting more professional. The scam you describe is well known, they pretend to be your bank and likely have your name, full address and bank account nr already. This likely from a dataleak these details are sold in the bucketloads. They then call with a civilized educated bankvoice asking, are you Mr X living on XYZ? You say yes, they then ask to verify if accountnr is yours which you acknowledge. Then follows some story to draw you into their systems. Thing to do is to tell it does not suit for the moment can i call back. They will politely say yes of course and give you a number. Google your bank and contact details if you dont have them and call that number and tell what happened. If you use thesame phone and call the number the scammers gave you you will be connected with one of the scammers pretending to be your bank and the second chapter starts with another person you likely trust as he or she tells thesame story. Banks dont call. Never.

Socialism at its finest!

You are so right Ed. I think internet changed everything. It opened up markets countries. Everything was suddenly available for everyone leading to totally disturbed markets with increased competition. Why print something yourself while you can get it cheaper from a printer in Poland? Just upload your files and 4 days later you have it. Why from Poland as China is half the price? Why China if India is cheaper. Anyway you get the picture. Back in the Good Old Days ( not so sure about that...) there was much more time and profits were higher. Back at ICI we had a restaurant ( not a canteen!) with cooks, waiters and as you say a strict hierarchy in seating as i quickly found out. And 2 Jaguars with chauffeurs to collect people from the airport. ( i remember a lot of unrest as once the rear window just fell out on the highway.) And the jobs long forgotten, Personal Assistants, Typists, Secretaries, Mailroom,( remember tube mail?) Copyroom, Coffee/tea ladies doing the rounds. When we had customers visiting us we went to the board restaurant and as you say at lunch wine, brandy, champagne no problem. Also i was a trainee for six months until they placed me at a certain position. In later jobs as well they took at least three months to bring me up to speed. Now? Hi nice to meet you we are busy here is you laptop get on with it. Correspondence another thing. Strict rules, no mistakes allowed, not one, and every letter( not mail) was checked. And now? do wat jou want averyboddy simply doesnot ccare. I can go on for hours but i do see a comparable trend in todays automotive industry. The traditional manufacturers will face an enormous challenge and i do not expect all to survive. It is a race to the bottom lead by new start ups going full EV like Tesla and the Chinese. They could well wipe out the market in the next decade as they will always be able to produce cheaper than VW, Toyota, GM. Its like the Polish/Chinese printers. VW did already ring the alarmbell this week literally declaring their roof is on fire. Nothing we can do about it i guess but we did experience the old days in full !

I worked at ICI as trainee beginning eightees and they got a new computer. These were tape recorder type things the size of a closet. No idea of the memory but my mobile likely has more.

I thought that happened most in the mailroom. Remember those? Tons of post every day, envelopes for all parts of the company in and out. The place where trainees started and careers were broken before they blossomed. And if too busy there was... The Archieve! remember those? Hundreds of folders in alphabetical order? Dark and quiet. I can go on and on better not to.

I am from the telex age and seen the introduction of the fax. no mobile no internet. no crm systems, no meetings about meetings, no consultants, no large It system that needs to be fed with daily input and seems to controls the entire company. Just a boss that screamed at you when you did something wrong. Companies were profitable and growing in those days? where is the progress?

The cost of airplane tickets and hotels. Unbelievable and all flights and hotels are fully booked!

Regarding BMW and hydro. All major car companies have been experimenting with this as they want to be ready when the market appears. Some ( BMW, Toyota) are more vocal and use it in marketing but for sure this is around the corner.