TimUK

A guy in the US is now restoring the Million Mile LS400 and posting a series of videos documenting the progress. There are 3 episodes so far, here's the link to the first one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOZUveTDh88 I think what's most impressive about this car is simply that it still exists despite the fact that it's clearly been abused for many of those million miles. It's also impressive the amount of work the guy is putting into restoring the bodywork - I'm sure I won't be the only one who found themselves shouting at the screen to 'just buy a new wing'!

That's a good point about the parts. I wonder how many Mk1/2s have been scrapped because of hard to find parts, which is only more recently becoming an issue for Mk3/4s. I guess only time will tell as to how many are left in 10 years. My Mk3 has just gone straight through another MOT today, so hopefully it'll be one of them 😀

Thanks for posting that pdf. That does give more precise annual sales figures than you can glean from HowManyLeft because that site doesn't have the annual new registration figures before 2001. However, unfortunately it still doesn't breakdown the sales for the different generations on the changeover years. Still, I don't think knowing that would make a big difference to the general conclusion that there are proportionally a much greater number of Mk 3/4s still on the road.

I'd be surprised if that would make much of a difference as to why so many more of the earlier cars have disappeared. I'm now wondering if the desirability of the stronger 90-94 1UZ has resulted in many early LS400s being broken up well before their time was really up.

If you click on the 'Years' tab you'll see that the 'LS400' numbers are mostly 90-96 and the 'LS400 AUTO' are mostly 97-00 (the handful of 'anomalies' may well be imports). It's a shame there's no way to precisely distinguish between the different Marks. The best I could do was just assume that most cars produced on the changeover years were the earlier model. So that would mean there are around 40 Mk1, 60 Mk2, 300 Mk3 and 450 Mk4 currently on the road. Even given the extra age, I'm a little surprised how much rarer the Mk1/2s are, especially as (by my calculations) they didn't sell in that much smaller numbers than the Mk3/4s. What is impressive though is just how many Mk3/4s are still on the road compared to similar cars from the mid/late 90s. No surprise that there's a significantly smaller proportion of Jag XJs (I owned a '95 XJR and that was scrap within 18 years), but also BMW 7-Series and Merc S-Class. Although proportionally more of these are SORN compared to LS400s, but obviously it's impossible to know how many of these could make it back onto the road.

I certainly can't fault their service - caliper arrived in less than 24 hours! Unfortunately their supplier doesn't have the L/H caliper. So I'll just keep my fingers crossed that my L/H caliper doesn't start sticking, at least not until I've had some decent wear out of the new set of discs & pads. At which point I will probably have to go back to the refurb option unless in the meantime I get lucky and find a caliper elsewhere (eg eBay).

Thanks a million Paul! I've just bought the RH Caliper (luckily that's the one that's currently sticking), and have asked about the availability of the LH one. There was also a £36 surcharge on the old caliper, however, I would've thought they might be worth a bit more to someone whose willing to refurb them with one of the cheap kits on eBay. Anyway, the main thing is it prevents the car being off the road for too long as although I don't use the car daily, it is my regular transport.

Thanks for the reply. No front calipers on Autodoc are showing as in stock. However, I did contact BCS who have quoted a similar price to Big Redd. So it'll come down to which one I think will offer the better service.

Well, my car has a mere 160K and pretty much a complete service history, so this could well be the original caliper. However, I doubt very much the calipers have been regularly checked over, other than when pads have been changed. So maybe the extra diligence has paid off in your case. Or maybe it's the higher mileage that's meant that your calipers have never remained still for too long 😀

Thanks for the replies. Not noticed any heat/pulling, but I think that will just be a matter of time. The past month I've been getting a slight vibration under light braking at high speed, so suspected a disc issue. Local garage has just confirmed this, but said the root cause is a sticking offside caliper because one of the pads is more worn than the others (rather annoyingly the discs & pads were only replaced 10K ago). Also, I can now see a build up of brake dust on the offside wheel. Rebuilding the calipers is definitely beyond my ability, so I'll leave it to the experts! I did see those rebuild kits on eBay, but the garage have said they would prefer to use a rebuild service.

Front caliper on my '97 LS400 is just starting to stick slightly. Seems like new calipers are unavailable, so will have to get them rebuilt. Big Redd charge £220 for a pair, but I recall someone on here had some problems with them in the last few years, although they do seem to have generally good reviews. Anyone else used them in recent years, or can recommend anyone else?

It's actually Crystal Quartz (4N1 paint code) over Dark Taupe. Identical to mine except I have tan rather than black leather. But I agree it would look better with original wheels....or even better with some decent 18s 😁

Gutted 😀

Might not be his car. He might just be doing a bit of chauffeuring on the side 😀

Just stumbled across this LS400 at an auction in Sweden which was originally owned by Björn Ulvéus. https://bilwebauctions.se/en/augustiauktion-2022/lexus-ls400-51279 Unfortunately for any Abba LS fans out there it has just been sold. The final price works out to be just under £5k, which seems high but not crazy money. I guess there's not so much of a premium to be paid for a car that was owned by someone famous after their height of fame. Anyway, this got me wondering, has anyone else owned an LS with a famous former owner?