Dingle Dell

Looks lovely in that colour. Enjoy!

I was amused to see the Lexus dealer had my car up for sale (marked as 'in preparation'), while it was still sat in my garage lol. I knew then that if they tried to haggle the price down when they picked it up, I would tell them where to go, as they had marked the price up 12.5K 😂

Yes, I forgot to mention that bit. Motorway estimate was around 77.5K, so my best offer was a little way off that. A few weeks earlier Motorways estimate was 79K, but even at the time, I thought that was rather unrealistic.

Having recently sold my LC, just thought I would share my selling experience in case it helps anyone else if they are unsure how well they work. Selling a car of this value privately isn’t for me (actually, these days make that at any value), even if you could possibly get a little bit extra, so I phoned around a few Lexus dealers. I was offered between 66 and 71K. At this time, We Buy Any Car were only offering around 65K. I contacted a few high end showrooms directly such as Redline (who bought my Gulia Quadrifoglio with no hassle), and Romans, but ultimately, although they initially aid they were very interested, it didn’t lead anywhere and I got fed up chasing them, so I thought I would put it on ‘Motorway’. The process was fairly straight-forward to use and once they had all the info and photos of the car and documentation they needed, it went into the next days auction. I had three offers by that evening, the lowest being 67K, the highest being 75K. You only find out who the highest bidder is if you accept, so I was relieved to find the winning bid was by Lexus themselves, at Gatwick. There are certain ‘specialist’ garages out there that have a very poor reputation with regard to picking the cars up and paying out, (i.e. saying they will pay once they get the car back to their showroom and the manager can inspect it...) etc. I decided to accept the offer, and within the week, the car had been collected, with the money paid into my account before they drove it away, so all very hassle free. No doubt it doesn’t always go this smoothly, but I think on a majority of occasions it probably does and I would recommend considering using services like Motorway or Carwow. Financially, of course I lost a reasonable sum, but if I hadn’t bought carefully, or had bought some of the other cars I was considering, I could have lost much, much more. Ultimately 5K for 7 months ownership of a nearly new 100K car is very reasonable. I’m not saying 5K is loose change, it certainly isn’t, but it’s all relative, and there’s plenty of people out there paying 1K a month to finance their mundane daily drives, while I had a beautiful LC at my disposal all 'summer'. I have also looked at leasing some exotic cars in the past for a few weeks/months over summer (never did in the end), and 5K wouldn’t have gone far at all.

Yes, so many special editions it's funny. I'm only just over 5'10'' and have sat in both NC and ND versions and didn't have any issues; it might help that i'm quite slim. I think I'll probably end up with a 25th Anniversary edition, and get some mods done to engine and suspension. I notice my LC has had 5K knocked off the asking price already, so maybe the markets not as strong as that dealer were expecting...

Our old Vantage had fuse 22 pulled about 30 seconds after we got it home, and as you say, it does make a good difference. However, it was only after owning the car for a few years that I took the plunge and spent the money to get 200 cell cats fitted by AHM. My big regret was not getting this done from day 1, as it sounded amazing after this. Not too anti-social, but in the car sounded incredible when pressing on. I feel fairly happy that I have made the right decision as I haven't found myself going out to the garage and forlornly staring at the empty space there! I'm sure i'll own another V8 or V12 one day, but think it will be after I semi-retire and can move away from the over-congested South-East, which is something I can't wait to do.

Funny you should say this... I have been looking at the used cars BBR has for sale, all of which already have various mods on. However, I think I will probably buy a standard low mileage one in good condition, and then assuming I get on with it for the first month or two (i.e. does the seating position set my sciatica off!), I will take it to BBR to get some serious work done. The big decision; whether to stay normally aspirated or go the route of turbo-charging or super-charging. I think Supercharging sounds ideal for what i'm looking at. Good luck with the LC!

My daily is a 2019 Audi S4 and it is such a perfect daily driver. It's quick, when you need it, it's economical, reliability has been bullet-proof, and it's understated to look at, so I can leave it at railway station car parks without too much concern that it won't be there when I get home. The S4 is also able to put a smile on my face, and sounds quite nice throughout the rev range, but it is still my daily and I feel the need for something else. After some thought, I have decided to get back into a little bit of motorsport, but without getting too serious. Having done circuit racing on and off for 20 years, I'm to old to get back into it properly, and after racing, track days generally hold no appeal whatsoever, but local car clubs hold lots of Autotests, Autosolo's and Sprints, so I'm going to pick up a MX5 NC for relatively little money and give that a go. I had always been snobby about MX5 (to my discredit), but by all accounts they are great little cars, fun to drive on the roads at legal speeds, and can be used successfully in the kind of competition i'm looking at.

This will be a long-ish post, but after selling my LC a couple of weeks ago I’m just putting down in writing many of the thoughts spinning around my mind on my short ownership to use as a cathartic experience… Ultimately, it was case of it’s not you, it’s me, with the LC500 and I think I came to the wrong conclusions when deciding what I wanted from a car. I wanted a big V8, etc as I missed the noise from some of my previous cars, and the plan was to keep the car for a very long time, and this would mean I didn’t really think about depreciation in the short-term. I wasn’t worried about ultimate performance, otherwise I would have bought a 911, but obviously it’s not exactly a slow car. It’s worth saying now that most of my reasons for selling are not directly to do with the car but with my disillusionment with the roads, especially in the over congested South-east where I live. This includes the ridiculous amount of traffic on the road these days, where I seem unable to do a single journey without it being impacted by congestion, never-ending roadworks, accidents, speed-cameras, potholes, overgrown lanes, etc. Today has been a case in point with motorway closures due to serious accidents on the M2, M20, M26 and M25, all just in Kent. It’s crazy round here these days. The Good · I liked the noise it made when pressing on, though a friend was following me once and was gushing about it afterwards, so I suspect it’s even better for those outside the car · The looks from most angles · The uniqueness of the car and the positive attention it got · It handles pretty well for a big car, though you can feel the mass of the car on sweeping A and B-Roads · Cheap servicing costs and good fuel economy on long runs · The 10-Year warranty (not that I needed it in the end, but it’s still great they do it) The Bad As I said, these are not criticisms of the car, but reasons for me personally why I have ended up not keeping it long-term. Many, if not all of these I was aware of going into ownership, so I should have known better. · I had the same issues as with my previous Guilia Quad, and a lesser extent the Vantage. While pootling around doing legal speeds, the car was a nice place to be, but I didn’t feel particularly engaged or that it was a special driving experience · The noise was nice higher in the revs, but for me it was all a bit muted when driving sensibly. I know that’s just me, in that it’s a refined GT car and isn’t supposed to be raucous, but I found myself wanting more noise and something a bit less civilised, and more connected to the road. With regard to the exhaust noise, I often found myself thinking I should have bought an earlier car without the PPF, but I don’t know how significant the difference is · As we know, it’s a big car, and many of the journeys I hoped to do in the car, I ended up not doing because of concerns about parking and it getting dinged by other cars doors, or due to the state of the A & B roads around here If I’m honest with myself, I wasn’t blown away with the car on the test-drive. Performance and handling were fine, though a little under-whelming in some respects, and I thought the sound was good but a bit muted much of the time. However, I had convinced myself this was the car for me and thought that the main reason the test-drive didn’t excite me as I hoped was because I was being sensible while driving an 80K car with the salesman sat alongside me. In my mind, once it was mine, I could push it harder, and it would all click. I guess that never really happened. The LC500 is a great car, but it didn’t really excite me in the way I hoped. In the last month, I had a couple of drives in the car and found it was only really putting a smile on my face at speeds that could risk my license. You only have to rev the thing out to hear the glorious noise it makes in the first few gears to look down and see you are doing some excessive speeds. Not as bad as the Quad in that respect mind. It was after these drives, I started thinking about selling. Ultimately, I think I would prefer a car that when it feels like I am doing 75MPH, I am actually doing 55MPH, rather than a car where when I feel like I am doing 75MPH I am actually well into 3 figures. What will I replace it with? I was looking at the Vantages again, but most of my reasons for selling the LC will apply to that as well, though it has to be said, the Vantage is a rawer experience, especially if I went for the V12. I may have one last throw of the dice to find some enjoyment from driving on the road and go for something completely different; something cheap, lightweight and fun. I may even buy a car, that previously I would have never even considered like an MX5. I'm old enough that the hairdresser comments I would get will go straight over my bald head. Sorry for all the rambling; that’s how my brain works these days lol.

I would say the market has firmed up. My car is up for sale at a dealer for over 5K more than I paid (also from a dealer) at the beginning of the year, though I did feel like I got a relative bargain.

Had a nice drive in the car at the weekend to Samphire Hoe near Dover, which has the added benefit of being reached by a narrow (single-lane) 300 metre long tunnel. The sound certainly put a smile on the face. Unfortunately, it was my final drive in the car, as it has now been sold. Lots of reasons why the decision was made; i'll probably add a little summary of my short ownership experience to my original post from when I was looking for a car.

Lovely photo of the car at Reims

I might advertise mine for £1M just to see what effect it has on dynamic pricing 🤣

I have just scanned the classifieds, and there's a LC500 Ultimate for sale for 225K. I feel like I have fallen down a deep, deep rabbit hole and ended up somewhere very strange

I'm a little surprised the over-whelming majority is for Sports+, as I would have thought the base and Sports versions would have sold more than they have.