Linas.P

Sadly it is too late, I test drove it around Jan 2020 🙂 It doesn't really matter, many taxi companies have large fleet on lease, once car reaches say 60k, they simply replace the car with another lease. In short car will get replaced long before reliability becomes relevant. Perhaps this more important for individual taxi drivers who own their own cars, but those does not dictate what market does, nor what common cars are in the fleets.

That is what I thought myself, but I was looking to buy RC for nearly 3 years and it is not the car which is easy to miss or mistake with something else. Perhaps just coincidence and I haven seen another one since (although I barely did like 3000 miles in a year).

Lexus SUVs are selling fairly well to be honest. But try to find something like RC or ES on the road. It was kind of funny, because when I got RC I happen to come across another 2 RCs in my area on the same day and one more next day driving to work... despite not seeing one ever before outside of dealership. Yet to see ES... LC is obviously quite rare as well, but surprisingly have have seen maybe 5-6 driving on the road including one during my LC test drive (what are odds of that)?!

Photo card license never had anything to do with EU, hence leaving EU never had any bearing on this. This is typical BS in UK where every time they ask you to do something unpleasant it is "because of EU rules".... I wonder what is their new scape-goat going to be? However in other hand as John mentioned above - in most countries you would be expected to renew every 5-10 years... so I was surprised when I noticed expiry date on my UK license was 2058...

Dealer customisation is free with first run-in service/check. After they should charge in theory, but it may differ from country to country. Perhaps if it is not the first car you buying from them then they will do it for free to keep you as a customer.

They may want to charge you (like a nominal £100) or they may pretend not to understand what you talking about, so just be prepared to haggle a little bit.

For IS250 I used to pay £680 as well, £1400 was RC200t. Probably not living in London helps, then age... and I had 3 non-fault accidents + windscreen replacement (one of which I didn't even claim at all and none of which I claimed from my insurance directly, except of windscreen) which I feel is unfair to count against me, but insurance companies can do what they want and what can I do about it? Either I am missing the point or it seems you actually disagree with me? What I said is opposite - outcome of your claims does not depend on you providing video evidence, even if you got discount for having dash-cam, unless it is in the contract. This is fairly simple contract law matter without any ambiguity, if discount would depend on you providing the evidence then sales person would be obliged to let you know it and in T&C it would have to say precisely that - something along the lines "The discount is provided on condition that in event of accident you will provide video from dash-cam, failure to do so may invalidate your insurance/affect your claim". For comparison when you have black box insurance that is exactly what it says - the black box has to be present in the car for insurance to be valid. Now... because insurance companies can literally put anything they want in the contract I would not be surprised if some companies would have such clauses, but what I am certain about is that I had this discount from 4 different companies and neither of them had this clause (Esure, Bell, Admiral and Elephant - this technically makes only two because last 3 are all part of the same company). So instead of speculating, I would advise to find your insurance T&Cs and check whenever it does or doesn't require the video.

That is amazing, I am pretty sure callipers comes under wear and tear items and generally would not be covered. Certainly, nobody else does that on the market. I seen so many times that even where owner claims that for example shock absorbers should be replaced in pairs as recommended by workshop manual and even service centre agrees warranty... company would still reject it and only replace the broken one. Lexus Warranty is kind of interesting one, because Warranty is based on dealership estimation, but dealership in this case is interested to support your case and find some more thing to fix while doing so, because that is profitable for them. Yes, adjusted for inflation it is almost exactly 10%. More importantly that would be ~25% of the price car is actually worth. I am still not sure whenever it would have been easier to replace entire seat. And as for having cover or not... it kind of depends. If car is fairly new then (and being as rare as Lexus) then I would say yes indeed - Lexus warranty is great value. When car is over ~5 years old not so much. For example such used seat from US would be £800, so not as astronomical as £4200 it costed to fix it. I would still want to have warranty as long as possible on "F" cars - they are even rarer and if something goes wrong it may be very expensive.

Not sure what you are surprised about - Insurers are ****. It is not like one day I would say "I hate them" and next day I have suddenly forgotten about it. I think you digging far too deep, there are no hidden marxist agenda - the simple matter is that insurance in UK sucks. It is by far the worst value proposition product I use and that I ever had in my life. I will be very clear about this - if I had an option not to insure in UK I would 100% chose not to insure at all, the value of it is just so terrible that I would rather risk not having it. There are reasonable and logical ways of how to measure value and fairness of the service and even beyond my personal opinion it is still terrible. Secondly, this is based on my simple belief that anything that is mandated by law must be provided on the fair terms, indiscriminately and ideally by non-profit (to be fair that is the only way in which it could be done). So if by law I must have insurance, I expect the government to provide it at fair cost. Yes that sounds kind of socialist I agree... but I guess in this case unrestricted and bloodthirsty capitalism (greatly represented by insurance in UK) is not great either. Even in capitalist own terms when it comes to "free market" the way insurance is procured breaches all possible safeguards and red lines. Nowhere near as bad as communism (ask 200 million dead), but still fairly terrible. Finally, instead of attacking strawman I would suggest to read the actual points I made about the topic. Have I said something incorrectly?

That is fair point and I found myself that parking mode didn't help when somebody set nail under my tyre, it would not help either if somebody deliberately "keys" the car. So from that perspective your are correct. However, assuming that one parks car correctly (and that is always reversing in) then at least in theory the only exposed part of your car is the front, and that 25% covers most of outcomes when somebody either reverses into the car or scrapes past it. I personally try to park somewhat strategically, so that behind the car is the wall and on one side is the pillar or something similar i.e. leaving as little as possible space which isn't covered by dashcam. As well if in any doubt I take pictures of the cars from either side - sure it not cover all eventualities, but reduces the risk somewhat. Further, most of current systems could be configured with 2 cameras, so it will cover both front and back, regardless how your park. The future is that all cars will have 360 cameras with automatic recording in case of accident, ANPR and even cloud storage (like new S-Class). In either case what I am saying - chances of having accident where you are not at fault, but could not prove it without dashcam are very slim. I had 3 non-fault accidents and I did have dash cam in all of them. I would have proven innocent in either case, the only difference is that with dash-cam it was far easier and quicker to prove and I had added bonus of using claims management companies (they rarely take cases unless they are clear cut and dash cam makes them very much clear cut). So dash-cam is certainly a time saver and convenience. However, the biggest issue is damage to the car when it is unattended, because as you may know there is usually no way to know who bumped into it unless you have it on the dash cam, as many times as I had some damage and I asked for CCTV I was always refused any evidence (supermarket security could not care less about the scrape on your car).

Without having any meaningful proof, this may as well be placebo. For example, meaningful proof would be before and after dyno chart showing power increase (that could be fudged as well, but that is at least something). First of all the claim here is specifically about increasing the power, and that is very unlikely (closer to impossible). Fuel consumption claim may be possible, but then engine most likely going to loose power not gain it. Secondly, MB S500 from 2000 is not exactly comparable to Lexus RC hybrid. What could be the case is that MB used similar engines in say S500 and SL500 and S500 had detuned version of the same engine (engine was handicapped), in such case yes there could be exception where NA engine could gain some power due to better optimisation (this is more likely to happen on German cars where they "tier" same engine in different models), but generally that is not the case.

Just to clarify few points here. 1. Some insurance companies (certainly not all), will provide discount which will be a joke... ~£20 is actually accurate, the only difference is that £20 on my £1400 insurance is not 5.4%. Further, I have never seen any insurance company promising it, so I suspect it is simply based on sales person discretion. Basically they just knock down £10-30 based on their mood if you raise this point when negotiating the price. 2. You having said you have dash-cam does not make you liable to provide the footage. This is somebodies assumption or invention . What you have to do is laid out in your insurance contract, providing dash-cam footage even if one is fitted and even if you got discount for it is not in contract (unless it is, so check you contracts first) and therefore you have no legal obligation to provide it, nor insurance can deny claim if you didn't provide footage. Again based on the first point, it not rule unless it is in contract and rather based on discretion... and that discretion is not based on promise you will provide footage, but rather on statistical probability that somebody with dash-cam will be following the rules themselves and that in non-fault accident it will be easier to prove non-fault. If you afraid of leaving dash-cam in car then probably don't get it in the first place. Because, parking mode is actually almost the most useful part - it is far more likely that your car will get bumped in the car park on hit and run, than it is for you to disagree whose fault it was in the accident whilst driving. So if you not planning to keep it in the car, then what is the point? Other advise - theft from the cars being on the rise and dash-cams being a target, it may turn out that soon insurance companies will start charging you extra for having one, rather than discounting. Don't forget that dash-cam would be covered under insurance cover and if having one increases risk of your car being broken into, then insurance may actually increase. So if you want that silly £20 off(I say "silly" because it is drop in the ocean compared to ridiculous insurance prices), instead of saying - "I have dash cam", say "would there be any discount if I fit one". This leave the room for your to backtrack if they say no, or if they say that your price would actually increase. Finally, only ask this after they already say that is the best price they can offer, if you say that before it then they may say "yes it is already the best price including dash-cam discount" and you will never know if you got discount. Don't forget - insurance companies are not your friends, they are aggressive for-profit organisations which exists to rip you off and they have strong lobby and backing of government in doing so.

As well more air + more fuel = more power. Where exactly they getting more air on naturally aspirated engine without any other modifications? These companies are "snake oil" sellers. The business of selling power enhancing 12v dongles have stalled, so now they pretend to do chip tuning. Turbo-diesels can be chip-tuned, some turbo-petrol cars could be chip-tuned, but naturally aspirated cars can't be. @hondansxr As well look to my RC200t thread - RC gearbox can be tuned, because Lexus deliberately added delay in ECU because of stupid amurican "unintended acceleration issue", but this is exception - it removes handicap from gearbox, but does not actually enhance performance. Further being turbo-petrol it could be tuned in theory, but after some research I figured out chip-tuning is pointless on factory turbo. Turbo maximum pressure is 1.2Bar/17PSI and that is what turbo already does from the factory, meaning there are no headroom for chip-tuning (no more capacity to get extra air). So even on RC200t one would at very least would need to replace turbo for something bigger and ideally variable geometry before doing any tuning. RC300h on the other hand - cannot be tuned at all... simply because there is nothing to be tuned. As well it is car designed for emissions compliance and fuel economy, so it is inherently not a car for performance and as such Lexus closed all ways to enhance it. Paul - please keep it in one thread.

This is absolute and total nonsense - it is impossible. As per post above - they just put generic text and all car models +10-20% hp claims, because they could not bother uploading the results one by one for each model. In best case scenario when you enquire they going to say "sorry, we can't actually do RC300h", but likely they just going to take advantage of you being naive (believing that NA car can be tuned) and just rip you off. Just to be very clear, RC300h cannot be chiptunned - stop looking for it!

Sure it is silly when 1.1 Fiesta sounds like little cannon with anti-lag on the turbo which is the same size as peanut. But it is not like rally drivers are boys for having 2-spet or anti-lag, those have the purpose on properly built car, but the first one is just for fun. To be fair I liked pops and bangs more when I didn't know why and how they happen, now that I know it is no longer so fascinating 🙂 Actually on IS250 with "sort of 2-step" I was able to do ~7s 0-60, the "sort of" I mean is building some revs whilst holding the brake - say ~3500RPM, then at the same time releasing the brake and pressing accelerator all the way, this rev "boosting" for launch easily shaves off a second. The problem is that you can't hold the car on the brake for more than few seconds without hurting in too much. The difference is that 2-step does it for your consistently and every time - you just press the accelerator all the way and as soon as brake is released car is launches.

Yes, that is fairly simple assuming you car ECU can be tuned, which isn't the case with most Lexus cars. There are 3 basic reasons for this: Oversaturated fuel mix - the pop and bangs happed naturally on old cars when you let off the gas, this would close throttle, but because old cars had carbs or very basic injection they would still deliver some fuel. In short bangs and pops are result of inefficient fuel delivery/delivering fuel after throttle is already closed. Turbo is absolutely not required, this could be achieved on any car by updating fuel maps and programming ECU to incorrectly deliver some fuel after you let off the gas pedal (basically waste it). If you car is diesel then you will get nice puff of black smoke as well 😁 Are race derived technology - so called "anti-lags", these do require turbo and actually have purpose on racing cars (to keep turbo on boost). Mostly on older turbo cars or cars with very large turbos there are loads of "lag" (the time it takes to spool-up the turbo), as such "anti-lag" system would dump the fuel on low throttle input to keep turbo spooling by literally dumping fuel and exploding it in turbo, but they would absolutely destroy factory turbo. Again race technology called "2-step" launch system, this is basically secondary rev limiter which one could engage on start (usually in turbo car, but could be NA), this would be dialled in to RPM at which either engine delivers most torque or car grip limit is. So when you press the accelerator in 1st gear with clutch depressed, instead of going to say 7500RPM, the revs would stop at say 3500RPM - drop the clutch and car is in it's most powerful RPM already. It could as well be dialled for every gear if needed. And this sounds like machine gun firing. Overrun is pretty much same principle, just happens on actual rev limit. I personally think, such tricks sounds cool, but they inherently shows that your car is running rich and inefficiently. The gases rich with fuel would go into hot exhaust (or turbo) then and explode resulting in pops bangs and crackles.

At ~60k miles I have claimed driver seat electric motors on RC, which is basically the same seat as IS, but has hinge to fold and let passengers into the rear. It was still working, but the back was struggling to raise-up, at first I would need to bend myself forward and later even assist it with the hand. Otherwise it would just buzz and would not raise-up To be fair I was surprised with the costs £4200, imagine that without warranty! Secondly, one would think the whole seat is worth less and they could just replace entire seat, but instead they replaced 3 motors and bottom cushion for such amount. Probably I should have been more vocal and demanded seat replacement rather than repair, this would have been far better considering it already had some wear on outside bolster. What I don't know is 1. if Lexus makes whole replacement seats at all 2. if Dealership simply wanted to make some money in labour time and hence decided to repair instead of replacing i.e. maybe new seat is £3000, but replacing it is 1 hour labour for £180, whereas repair parts are £2400, but required 10 hours labour. But overall experience with Lexus warranty was very good and effortless, got the car in to get diagnosed and took the courtesy car out for nearly a week, then they called me again saying they found the issue and made claim, but the parts will take a month to ship. Actually, they didn't even demand the courtesy car back, they gave me option and I just kind of agreed to it. And after the month again they gave me courtesy car and my car was in dealership for nearly a week. During entire process I never needed to negotiate anything, dealership did all that and I don't think Lexus warranty even challenged the claim that much. Compared to third party extended warranty... especially for such cost it would have taken probably a year to reach agreement and I doubt they would have even agreed just to hand over £4200 like that.

Mirror caps comes colour coded when you order them new from Lexus, but they aren't cheap and to be fair I am not sure if they sell them individually or only with whole mirror assembly which is like £700+vat. As for carbon caps, there used to be some for sale for astronomical price ~£500 each + import duties from US, but as the car is now EOL they would be very difficult to source. Perhaps try searching for IS-F Carbon Mirrors and you may find some (because it is the same part), but be prepared to pay "top dollar" for them. When I needed replacement I sent message to every breaker on ebay and eventually somebody had black mirror in stock for ~£100. Perhaps cheapest is just to get them wrapped.

On paper sounds like reasonable upgrade, but I still can't get over the looks. What the **** happened with that car.

Yes indeed, I would not doubt that car build for single purpose as track car is good at corners. Likewise, it seems there are purpose build tack cars which are FWD. I wonder why (deltawing may be exception, but it wasn't very successful either). Yes IS350 and RC350 never made into UK... what a shame.

And I will be laughing at them driving on 3 wheels and squealing like a pigs in every corner. I think perhaps you consider any car will low, hard and uncomfortable suspension as "sports car"? In that case all the cars you mentioned meets the criteria, yet all of them handles terribly... exactly like one would expect FWD trash to handle - if you accelerate in corner they will understeering all the way. I haven't tried Megane RS, but I actually did some "car-park" autocross races in completely gutted and converted Civic Type-R... to be fair in tiny and technical events like that FWDs had an edge, but that is simply because you hardly ever reach 40-50MPH between cones. So indeed cars like Civics, Integras and Megannes were dominating that type of event - they could be considered "right tool for the task"... but I would never daily that horrible Civic as it was atrocious to drive and handle.

GS450h would certainly be closest upgrade, more powerful, faster and yet more economical. Sure they are rare, but if one is willing to accept 2012-2014 pre-facelift car it is resonable. I has exactly same issue with RC-F, whereas performance is really nice compared to RC200t/300h the cost of having high performance car is hard to justify for commuting. RC200/300h obviously have same issue as 300h - they are jus damn slow. LC is amazing car as far as build quality and refinement goes, but it only works as second car in household - boot is non existent and awkward to access. In perfect world I feel like having RX + LC in household would cover 99% of anyone's needs, but in reality where most people could only have 1 car (many actually can even have one) living with LC is difficult. Even compared to RC, the LC is even less practical, at least my RC had folding seats and surprisingly I was able to use it in more ways than IS. BMW may not be as reliable as Lexus, but new F and G 3-series are reasonably reliable as long as you stay away form 320i/320d entry level cars. Sure 330e will not be as reliable as Lexus IS300h, but it is still above average + it has a lot of PHEV benefits which IS300h does not have.

Close to the limit you mean... because once you on (or past) the limit that is when you will understeer into the ditch, that is the main difference between FWD and RWD. Just cruising at the posted speed limit on the motorway that will never be the biggest concern of course. Finally, for somebody who is not planning to drive on the limit and just wants comfortable cruiser driving wheels should not matter, so it is the perspective thing - I know that I will drive my cars on the limit occasionally and that is why FWD is showstopper issue for me.

I have few excuses for that, but overall I see language as a tool. Sure if you are professional writer that would be embarrassing, but in my opinion for casual post on the forum this does not matter as long as language fulfil the purpose - that is to convey what I wanted to say. It seems it everyone understood what I meant and that is what matters. Further, correcting people spelling is almost ad hominem - i.e. your argument cannot be right, because you can't even spell correctly. It is irritating and to be honest I would only do that to other people if I believe they genuinely don't know the difference between break and brake (then it is the case of learning the language and it may be beneficial), otherwise I just ignore it. Sorry I had offended some native English speakers, but only advise for now - just get over it 😁 That you simply don't understand the subject it does not make my view subjective. In general I see a lot more ignorant tolerance around than analytical thinking and seeking of the truth. Now I am not saying everyone should get cancer worrying in how unfair and corrupt the insurance companies are, I am just saying - it just happens that I work in related field and understand how they **** with us all.

235 shouldn't really rub, what profile tyres you tried?