Linas.P

Something... You will likely going to need to chase a parasitic loss somewhere, but before that just check if your battery is good in itself and that it is charging. Apart of that it is impossible to say - it could be anything, especially on the car which was previously in the accident.

The first part is purely philosophical discussion (and indeed it is me who started it). As I have already said - if insurance would be optional, then I really do not care how they come-up with the price. We can calculate risk as well and we may come to the conclusion that paying £8000 for insurance is not worth it. Government took away our right to make this choice and I would think it would be just right to take away insurance companies ability to abuse us by trying to incorrectly predict the future. So in short I just consider that current arrangement is not fair... and sure some can make a point that many things in life are not fair and insurance is only once of them. Idealist in me would answer that this should not stop us trying to improve things, otherwise we would still have slavery and kings... ooops on that last one! That said to more practical question - I don't understand why insurance companies in other countries are happy to take just registration and license number, but in UK they somehow need to know everything short of eye colour and hair colour? I really don't know the answer to this, but if I would just speculate, then they do this because they can! So again I would just argued they should not be allowed. I have no problem with objective risk assessment, by which I mean factors that increase the risk could be - more expensive car, less experienced driver (not age, but only experience), more risky area, more risky car model, past accident history and that is about it. All these things can be figured out by license and registration, but most importantly the calculation has to be 100% transparent e.g. if they say - "you have Lexus RX, which on our database is frequently stolen model and for this reason your insurance price will be 25% higher, unless you fit the tracking device", "you are young driver considering power/value of your car, your insurance will be 37% more expensive, unless you going to take PassPlus and drive with BlackBox for 3 months". Currently one person pays £5000, another £500 and nobody know why... the way risk and price is calculated is completely opaque. I am not saying price of insurance should be simply cheaper - I am just saying that there must be "base price" for the insurance and then each factor which increases the risk should be listed, should have specific amount associated with it and where possible mitigation. But as I said - this should come to the end this year as new legislation going to force insurers to justify everything, but I suspect they going to try as hard as they can to play the system. If anyone still reads and wonder how is this related to the topic, then simply ask yourself - "how many people know that credit score is part of your insurance cost? and that people with lower score pays more for insurance". In short - whole reason for this thread exists the is lack of transparency in insurance products. I doubt John would have made this topic if at the time of insuring one would get a pop-up saying "now we will run a soft credit check on your credit file to determine your credit score as it may impact your insurance, we are offering 20% discount for clients with Excellent credit score. Do you agree that we check you score?"... and at this point you may be "yeah mine is excellent, why not", or "no thanks I know mine is fair so I don't need to give any extra info for discount I won't get".

I personally have not noticed the difference between "branded" vs. supermarket, or for that matter regular vs. "premium". Sometimes there are some batches that are better or worse, sometimes I could even feel like car is not pulling the same, sometimes it is better. I have got bad batches of fuel both from supermarket and from big brands, I have even good bad batches of "premium/super/duper/mega/100 Octane" fuels. Now the argument may be that "branded" fuels are more consistent, but I found that not to be true - most consistent fuel is in the busiest petrol stations, the more they sell, the more they order, the fresher is the fuel and it is more consistently good. The smaller and the quieter petrol station is, the less consistent is the fuel - if they just got delivery and you getting fresh fuel it may run better, but if it was sitting in the underground tank for a month it may be not as good. And that means that in my experience I get more consistently good fuel from supermarket where there is living queue 24/7, then buying some mega expensive 100 Octane fuel from some small petrol station where nobody ever buys it and where that "premium" fuel sits longer. As a matter of fact the best mileage I get is usually from the worst fuel I buy in ASDA... I assume that has something to do with IS250 having "smart" ECU which adjust for the fuel, so it is possible that ECU just retards the timing for worse fuel and as result makes engine actually more economical, but less powerful... whereas worse economy was always the premium fuel, again perhaps because it gives more power, but less economy. Now this was true when 95 was petrol and not half vodka, sadly E10 is always going to be worse for economy, because it contains literally less fuel in 1L than pure petrol did. Still in my experience the difference is negligible ~1-2% maybe. Now when it comes engine preservation and cleaning - this is mostly snake-oil, yes premium fuel may slow down the accumulation of some dirt in the engine... and yes it is lab proven that in ideal conditions running 2 engines exclusively on premium vs. regular petrol for 100k miles there will be differences. There will be slightly more warmish on the engine that was running regular, maybe slightly more visible carbon deposits, but in grand scheme of things it does not matter. Engines are not run in ideal conditions, nor they are ever run on exclusively one type of fuel, nor even the differences that are "proven" in laboratory makes up to anything meaningful. One honestly would need to run engine for several millions of miles before just the cleaning effect of the fuel would be the distinguishing factor between one engine which is failing and other one which doesn't. So perhaps better idea is to save £5 per tank and do oil change after 5k miles instead of 10k miles, because at least that will have quite meaningful positive effect on wear and tear, rather than buying magical additives which will make no difference in whatever 100k miles you will be driving. I am not sure if this is the reason why, but MPG is quite stupid measurement... it is alright for the range (or would be "alright" if we used gallons in UK, but we don't), but it is horrible for economy. So assuming that hypothetically E10 economy in your car is 10% worse, and that in the city you get 35MPG on E5, then on E10 you would get 32MPG - the difference of only 3MPG. Yet on the motorway where you are getting 58MPG on E5, the exactly same 10% will make 6MPG difference and you will get 52MPG. In short the higher is your MPG, the bigger the the "efficiency" gap will look. I maybe wrong, but I thought that could be one of the reasons - i.e. MPG is kind of misleading measurement.

Lexus are great cars until they get electrical problems... been trough that myself... this should not be confused with problems like French/Italian cars have - those just randomly fail from wear and tear. If Lexus has electrical problem then there are only few reasons for it - water, somebody shorted something out in the fast and fried something, of somebody fixed something and screw it up. By themselves Lexus do not fail, but if for example you get water in the system then it isn't really cars fault. A lot of good advise above, but I tend to think some of it goes way too deep... First of all - do you have any lights on the dash? From problem description it sounds to me like not, so there is no point reading codes, checking comms between the modules with oscillators etc. It is not bad advise, but there is nothing indicating you need to do that yet. So far it sounds like straightforward electrical fault, either open or short circuit somewhere, maybe multiple places. So for time being I would put Techstream to the side and would systematically go trough all the connectors to check if are maybe corroded. If it is broken wire, then it will be major pain in the backside as there is not easy way to find it. So far your issues seems to affect random things around the car, so let's hope it is just maybe one major junction that is corroded and shorting many things out. Because you said your engine is running fine I would not be looking at any issues there... I advise to look to main grounds in the interior of the car, as well main junctions under the dash... in my case the big junction plug on the passenger side was randomly corroded, have no idea why, because that was the only connector that was corroded and nothing else around it. I was speculating maybe sunroof drain, but again why would only one connector corrode and not the others?! Anyway - marked out areas where I would start looking... let me know if you need diagrams.

Well sorry mate - that is law, they have to be. So don't shoot the messenger. Do I think insurance companies still discriminates against gender - yes they do and they need to be slapped dead for it... but won't happen. As I said above - if insurance would be optional, then I honestly would not care how they came-up with their prices. But it isn't so I do.

No problem. Regarding insurance it really depends - so first of all you need to read your terms and conditions. I doubt wrap would invalidate your insurance, some people speculated about it (honestly people too scared about retarded British insurers), but it is not "modification" and will never be. It is no different from having your car repainted - would insurance care if it is same colour? NO. However it is true that insurance WILL NOT cover the wrap, unless you specifically mention it and have agreed price on your quote, so when it costs £4k it isn't ideal (same as they would not cover £10k paintjob). So when it comes to insurance I would not worry too much about it, if you had a crash, then I doubt the wrap coverage will be at the top of your worries, but with current prices I don't think wrapping the car makes sense anyway. 3-5 year old cars used to be sweet spot - I paid £15,500 form nearly 3 years old RC in 2019, but I don't think it is true anymore.

Well I see your point (or for that matter point of insurance companies), but that is where I disagree - the more RELEVANT data they have, the more accurate is their assessment. The more IRRELEVANT data they have, the more worse is their assessment. Basically "shait in = shait out" and shait is shait - there is no way of telling individual driver risk from their eye colour. But here is the other thing - if that would be true, then insurance in UK should cost on average the same as elsewhere, just the gap between cheapest and most expensive would be higher. However, that is not the case - UK car insurance is much more expensive, especially for certain undesirable groups - like young people, or city delvers (my conspirator mind would say that is no coincide, but there is no proof), yet it is still slightly more expensive for everyone else. So unless the data they are gathering means that UK overall is much more dangerous place to drive (which I don't believe is true, as UK has one of the safest records in the world), then something is wrong with their data. And just one note here - my data on insurance cost is anecdotal, based on how much family members and friends are paying in other countries. One thing which is very obvious is that young people are paying ridiculous amounts for insurance in UK, I think Ireland is similar, but in rest of Europe prices are fairly reasonable. And by reasonable I mean young person the day after they get their license pays say 4 times the price than their parents with 20 years experience, if they get little shaitbox, then they may pay only double - in UK they pay 10 or 20 times as much regardless. Regarding second statement, perhaps they are trying to tell the future, but that is exactly what they have no right of doing it and should be prevented from. They are no future tellers, they insures - so they should stop guessing. Most importantly it is impossible to tell the future and using past data is worst thing for that - so again insurance companies should not be allowed to do it. Some general trends may be true - like more expensive car is more expensive to fix, less experienced driver (regardless of age, because remember age discrimination is illegal) is more likely to crash and powerful cars and young inexperienced drivers don't mix together. But by the time they start asking how many kids you have is way past it. I think I would compare it with legal concept of "innocent until proven guilty", I think insurance companies should be forced to respect the same. What they doing instead is charging people up-front for accident which may have And you example about eye colours is very similar to something I have said myself in the past about hair colour - this is not reliable way of assessing risk, hence shouldn't be used... no different to occupation or family status. Now we partially got rid of some of this non-sense with discrimination act, but I think it needs to be expanded... to be fair GDPR already technically covers it (data minimisation concept and disclosing the data purpose), sadly it is not enforced. Now why I hate insurance companies so much? I don't - I just consider they should be closely monitored, because insurance is mandatory. If it would be optional then who cares, if you want you can insure if you don't want don't insure, if they tell you ridiculous prices they can go to hell. Now everyone are legally compelled to insure, so there must be a process to make sure insurance is FAIR... and it isn't. I would even require them to have price caps (like facilities companies) or better profit caps (which is much better than price cap).

Americans as well leases a lot of cars. In fact the fashion to lease cars rather than buy them came from US. Sure UK had historically a "company car culture" where it was usual to get cars via employment, but that is pretty much dead nowadays. Whenever you lease from work or yourself, there isn't much difference in my opinion. As well I don't believe in US they value reliability any more than we do, nor keep their NEW cars longer. They do indeed drive more miles, but new car buyers there are very similar to new car buyers here - they just lease the cars for 3 years and then replace them. Now it is true that European cars in US are more expensive, but it is as well true that Lexus cars are outright cheaper. Likewise not many of the Lexus are US made... the only model in fact is ES, as well Lexus makes RX/NX in Canada for US market and I heard they have some quality issues. But the rest of the models are imported from Japan. In short - Lexus just manages to make their cars price competitive in US, but not in EU/UK. In summary, whatever are the reasons I just think Lexus does not consider these markets seriously... if they really wanted to compete as much as they do in US... and if importing was what made them uncompetitive, then they could as well open plant in UK and pump out NX or UX or whatever... The fact that they haven't done it means either that importing isn't an issue, or that they simply do not really care to increase their market share.

Rear part is ~£220, the middle section is what costs fortune ~£1000... well that is if you buy OEM. Mid and rear sections costs like £700 custom made from scratch. I would say it is too late for sleeve - sleeve could be used if you had a hole and it was blowing through. But if you backbox complete fell off, then sleeve wont help, besides it is non-standard angle ... so it is not like you can get 60 or 45 degree sleeve... it will be something stupid like 22.5 degree down and 67.25 degree right. As Ian suggested I would just go to exhaust shop and ask them to weld it back on... use some scrap pipe to reinforce it and that is it. Once upon the time I lost my rear silencer as well, it wasn't even rusted but looked like metal fatigue around the weld (like clean broken metal). So I took it to local garage and they welded it back on for ~£70 if my memory serves. Worst case scenario - they can weld the broken part shut and you can drive it with single pipe for time being, on IS250 double exhaust is nothing more but "style", the exhaust merges into single pipe anyway over the rear diff, and then split again into 2 pipes for no reason apart of looking better. I mean sure - it would not look beautiful, but would be acceptable for time being if money is the real issue... and importantly it would be road worthy/MOT passing. Then when you get money you could replace whole rear section with reproduction.

Halfrauds batteries are indeed trash, Yuasa is not great either. Vatra as far as I understand is made by the same manufacturers as Bosch S4 (which is long term recommendation on IS250 side of the forum). So given the options I would go with Vatra. As well I would not buy it in halfrauds because the consistently refuse to take batteries on warranty... honestly I don't trust them with anything.

There is as well brickworks in Lancashire which works in similar principle. They quarry shale and send it down using "ropeway" which works based on gravity. There is one electric motor which starts the process and then it acts just as a brake to keep the speed constant. So once it is started it uses no power and I guess could theoretically generate some power. As well it not only goes down, but as well lifts shale from quarry, key point is that as long as there is more mass on the line going down it is running by itself. Found a video fore:

sound like solution... we just need to design all road to be downhill all the time! 😄

Well - yes that exactly. However, we can quite clearly see it doesn't make for fairer process, because for it to be fairer process it must only contain data relevant for that process. I have argued this case before that data not related to driving, like profession, marital status etc. should not be allowed to be asked and this data should not be aggregated. Likewise I would argue that for normal car insurance extensive background check like the one LexisNexis does, or checking credit score should not be needed, nor allowed. For example I don't believe that charging somebody with Fair credit score more than somebody with Good or Excellent makes it fairer. Or for that matter person with Bad credit score (for whatever reason) should be charged more - they are already struggling financially, so who is insurance companies to decide to punish them even more? Sure we can argue that person who is struggling financially may be less focused when driving or may not be able to spend as much on car maintenance... but why that is insurance company problem?! So this I think is exactly type of data bloat which is not necessary. It is not for insurance company to decide whenever car is road worthy, we have MOT for that and likewise it is massive stretch to assume that somebody who is poorer or has financial difficulties will be worse driver... it is guess at best. And there it goes directly into this point: Agree... and that is not right, because insurance company job is only to provide insurance for your car. So they should collect information which is linked to your driving to estimate risk/liability and not a tiny bit more. It is not their job to have database about everyone and everything, then use it to explicitly target customers with different products or even use some of the meta data to raise the prices... perhaps they can use client occupation as reason to exploit them e.g. doctor who is likely to have high salary may not be financially savvy, so they can charge them more than say accountant... this sort of think should not be allowed and to be fair its already not allowed (it is part of Treating Customers Frailly regulation, which was kind of vague). That said this is exactly what they doing - they collect way too much data to justify exploitation and hiking prices for arbitrary reasons, and even worse they don't even disclose what makes your price go up or why. Well as I said this should end later this year, but it remains to be seen... I am already drafting my complaint! 😄

Not sure about ChatGPT, but they were the go-to background checking agency for some time now. I personally have no issue with LexisNexis, I just don't understand why background checking would be necessary when insuring the car - or for that matter another 100 irrelevant questions we being asked.

Yes you likely right (I have myself argued that for most new car buyers long term reliability isn't that important) - but then we can conclude that Lexus will not become mainstream, because they are not really trying to break into fleet sales. Which probably goes back to my point that they are niche because they decided to be niche themselves. I guess perhaps IS220d and IS300h were the attempts to tap into that market, but both were kind "half-arsed", even Lexus themselves didn't believe in them succeeding so never really tried. Well I guess IS220d succeeded in a sense that it is more similar to German cars than any Lexus before or after it... by being so unreliable! Now personally I don't think Lexus would not be successful in fleet sales, they just need to try... for example in UK IS300h was total flop, because of CO2 requirement of under 75g/km and the only way to achieve this was to have plug-in hybrid - BMW and MB did it and they sold loads of cars. Lexus for some reason just couldn't be bothered to comply. Likewise - Lexus never tried to compete on price in UK, they took US market because they were outright better value (still are to this day), on top of being more reliable and better built. In UK one has to pay premium to get into Lexus, which just doesn't work when the brand is establishing itself. Lexus clearly prioritised profit margins over the market share here... I guess no surprise they are stayed niche.

Glad to hear it works and I know that good feeling when the lights goes away! Good luck with and and looking forward to see big brakes installed.

Well LexisNexis is just background checking company... I have done integration projects with their database, but in principle what they are for is checking if person is politically exposed, have adverse news about them, have criminal records etc. These checks makes sense for lending, mortgages opening investment accounts, but I just can see relevance to the insurance. As for the search appearing only one one of 3 databases, it is possible that they only checked the one and not the other two, this is part of their standard service level, checking more databases costs more. Now to if we want to give them benefit of the doubt, the integration could be simple check of address and LexisNexis then uses credit score database to confirm it. However, I highly doubt it. It would be equivalent of buying 300t press to drive a nail into plywood i.e. LexisNexis is extensive background checking company and paying them money just to confirm residential address would be waste of money and unnecessary complicated. So I have my bets on insurance companies just hoarding data under false pretence of preventing insurance fraud and then misusing it to raise insurance prices to anyone who they deem undesirable. But there are some good news on horizon - so called Consumer Duty legislation is coming later this year and insurance companies will have very hard time justifying what they are doing. I am certainly looking forward to challenge them on how exactly they comply with it.

Ohhh don't even get me started... I think this is scandalous and many people are only finding that out now. They always check your credit score when you quote for insurance and yes - your insurance price depends on your credit score! Once I had false report on my credit score and wouldn't have known about it if not for making random insurance quote, I was just browsing for the cars and checking how much it would be to insure and suddenly quote came back for triple the price I was expecting... don't remember exactly what prompted me to check my credit score, but like you I have noticed searches by insurance company and basically put 2 and 2 together. As soon as I reported the mistake on credit score and it was fixed insurance price went back to normal. And it wasn't like some sort of CCJ or something, I believe it was just a single late payment on the account which was actually closed. I mean I was always very upset about how insurance works in UK, all irrelevant questions which they ask in the quotes for no apparent or driving related reasons and how it is insurance that decides basically who can drive and what cars. So this really was just to top it all off... not only they ask if you married or have kids and where you work, but now apparently even if you struggle financially they will knock you further down without even asking. And by the way... I am assuming many people who never lived outside of UK thinks that this is how it is... but no... it isn't like that elsewhere. I had insurance in other countries and different countries have different requirements, but mostly they only ask about driving related stuff. Sure most of the time they do necessary data mining themselves, UK is just a little bit backwards where apparently they need to ask you how many years you have driving license, not really sure why can't they just check it themselves, but I have bought insurance if few other countries where the only two things you need for quote is A) the car registration and B) the driving license number.... well and we can say C) the payment details. That is all they need... they don't need to know where you work, or how many kids you have, or where you park your car. Sure enough - car registration tells them everything they need to know about your car, age, mileage, engine, previous damage, value etc. your driving license gives them everything they need to know about you - where you live, your age, how many years you have the license, in other countries there are no point system and finally payment details tells them that you are who you say you are. The UK quote with 4 pages and 100 questions is utterly ridiculous and now you have credit check on top of that... and by the way it is not a new thing... I don't know how long this was the case, but the even I described was like 10 years ago. Any by the way - not only there is no reason for this data mining, but I reckon it should be illegal to ask anything that isn't relevant. As for credit score itself - I honestly terrified of it. We always think that China is backwards country with their "social credit", but the fact is our own countries could do exactly the same with credit score, they already have all the information there, sure they don't use it for the same purposes, but they could if they wanted. And by the way in US... it is actually quite similar to China already - landlords refuse rent of evict tenants if credit score drops, employers check it and refuse work, even their already expensive medical insurance can go-up if you credit score is low... Sure China goes step further - prevents people from travelling or working etc. but my point is - data is there already, it is just a matter of time when until it gets abused.

I personally don't think chiense will take Europe with cars called BigDong and DogDing... but much more dangerous are the Volvos, the Polestars, the MGs...Lotus as well! The brands we know and some of which we love. People may not recognise to whom they are paying the money... in fact people are not recognising that and will not recognise it in future. I find Volvo particularly disturbing. In 2020 EU decided to fit the cars with ability to record and report the speed, I think it is mandatory since 2022... I am strongly against it obviously, but the narrative of (false) "safety" won. Some car manufacturers tried a little bit to oppose it, but pretty much rolled over... Do you know who was the first company to implement it without anyone even asking? It was Volvo... from 2019 onwards all Volvo have the system which can restrict your speed and it can report when you speeding directly to police. I am not saying it does, but it has all necessary hardware and software to do it. All Chinese cars had it since like 2015. It may be conspiracy, but I wonder if that has anything to do with Volvo owners? And by the way I said I will refuse to buy car with such system or if there is going to be no other choice I will find the way to disable it and if possible outright remove from the car. I am sure it can't be that hard - antenna for network disconnected and they can collect whatever they like, they won't be able to send anything out. But that is also a thing which is coming... and seems even @Mr_Groundhog would agree with me that this isn't a good sign.

I am not sure about that - for me Lexus would be pretty aspirational themselves if they had something to offer to anyone who wants anything but SUV or 300h. What I mean about "slow hybrids" is that Lexus models only have a choice of 300h and NOTHING else. 450h is not available outside of RX and now discontinued GS. If Lexus had say RC/IS 450h - that would be interesting indeed. Sure - now they have NX450h, but because I am not interested in SUVs I actually do not care.... what I see when I look at Lexus UK range now is basically single car - ES300h... no thanks! Again I am not sure about dilution - the way I understand dilution is "premium brand offering basic cars", as such Lexus is certainly as diluted as BMW and the rest of the Germans, Lexus literally offered rebadged Toyotas. That BMW offers large number of mid-range models between complete poverty-line and flagships, that is not "dilution" - that is just well designed model range. It is important to note that Lexus does have well designed "international" model range, they just simply don't bring them to UK... which is why UK will always remain niche market and why they will never break trough into mainstream here (and any other markets where they follow same plan).

It is possible to programme the new key... the only problem it costs £600. It is possible to get them done cheaper (outside of dealer network), but it still going to set you back more than just finding the kit with two keys right away. I think it is possible to get new key for ~£135 and get it programmed by independent lock-smith for ~£100-£140 (so we still talking close to £300), but the problem is that many people sell so called "new" keys which aren't actually new and they simply don't work. Now sure allegedly it is possible to "re-seed" used keys (basically reset them to become unlocked, like new), but that again will cost you £150 per key or so. In short when I look at kit with single key I know that there are two possibilities - going to Lexus and getting new key for ~£600 with warranty and done within 1 hour, or buying used key for £50, resetting it for £150 and then programming it for another £140 (I can actually programme it myself, but not everyone can) and that will take 3 days and no warranty. So that is why I would rather just get 2 keys right away.

Well, that is main problem... set of keys with ECU would be cheaper than buying new keys from Lexus for £600 each, but first of all you have to get matching set, it has to have two keys and then you have to pull the dash out. When I bought my kit I didn't really had a problem - found few people who were selling ECUs and just told them I need particular matching ECUs with 2 keys from the same car. Something along the lines like here: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/225340326605

I partially agree with you... especially the first point - people do indeed buy entry-level cars from Luxury brands and it is sometimes amazing how basic the BMW, MB or especially Audi gets. Every single MB E-Class and C-Class coupe or convertible in my area are 220d variant (not to be confused with IS220d, but still as shaite). What I disagree with however is that Lexus is any different - the entry-level Lexus are as well amazingly basic, even higher spec trims (like F-Sport) were paired with unbelievably nasty poverty-line 6-Speaker audio (worse than contemporary Ford Fiesta) in Lexus RC and IS. Lexus CT was very basic in lower specs. to the point where both Golf and Corolla actually had better equipment for the same or lover price. Even looking at what is being bought today - most people are still getting UX which I always found hard to justify having Lexus badge over just being little bit less ugly looking Toyota CH-R. If ES, CT, UX being picked directly from Toyota with minimal attempts to uplift them is not brand dilution then I don't know what is... So the issue with Lexus not being in mainstream is NOT the lack of basic options with premium badge on them, quite opposite - the Lexus has no models to aspire to. When somebody get's MB C220d Coupe AMG pack, it is because one cannot tell them apart from C300 or even C43 AMG... i.e. people aspire to have nice looking car for cheap which looks faster and better than it is. Same for BMW - when people get BMW 420d M-Sport, it is because it looks very similar to 430i or 440i or whatever higher-end model it is. The problem for Lexus is that when one buys say IS300h - there is nothing to aspire to... there is no IS250, IS300, IS350 in UK... so when you get IS300h, everyone know you driving hybrid which takes a minute to get to 60mph (yes I am being hyperbolic). Yes Lexus has F-Marque, but I have argued many times that the gap between say RC-F and RC300h is way too big for people to aspire to anything. It is not like people get aspired to LC500, comes into dealership and picks UX200h as if somehow that is "close enough". So the Germans got their line-up complete and line-up progress clear, the is clear pecking order, clear ladders where one can get on low enough step when getting 10 years old 320d and then year by year upgrade in small increments until they get all the way to M3, M4 or M5, that is why they are mainstream as people who choose to be with the brand can always find a model that suits their needs and capabilities to upgrade. In Lexus there is basically only ON and OFF switch - either you go for practical and slow hybrid, or you are propelled directly into space with 5L V8... and nothing in between. I myself find "slow" hybrids unattractive, but at the same time I am not sure I really want to commit driving 5L V8 to the shops.

You just need to be careful with icebergs and it will be alright.

Are you sure it wasn't a flying cow?