Daft Dave

Further to my last post it was interesting what SB3 has said about a main dealer only having 3 Batt faults in 10yrs, so it seems a very rare fault? having been using this site for over 6 months there is so little of any recurring faults with the CT, it does seem to be cast iron reliable, for myself not driving much more than 3K a year, I'm not going to spend loads of money on dealer servicing, Dealers are unlikely to see much of my money, I will just have my car serviced by an independent and not be concerned how this affects any resale value the car has, (likely a book full of dealer stamps will only gain a few hundred more for the car when it does sell?) anyway being an Auld Bar Steward resale value is unlikely to be my concern?

SB you check out a YT video and you will see just how easy a replacement is from what I saw on one any Eejit could attempt this? Nae bother tae a man 'O' a Celtic race. Slangevar Dave

Check a You Tube of how this is done and you will see it is not rocket science, of course some skill is needed about the same as would be required to build an Ikea flatpack?

Hi, I also have a 2018 CT200 lux, had it 6 months now and just love this car, recently I did a 350ml journey in this, most of it on Motorway and Dual carriageway set the cruise at 75mph and hardly touched the brakes or accelerator for most of the journey, the Automotive braking is a great feature with this car, I did this trip there and back in one day 700mls over 14hrs and was feeling pretty good after I arrived back home, this does live up to its name Comfort Tourer, overall I managed 54.9mls to the Gall, pretty good considering I was not hanging about. So many members on this site advise to have them serviced by the dealer to extend warranties, for me this is just too high a price to pay and for one of the most reliable cars on the road today is this really necessary? take the Hybrid Batt for instance I see replacement Batts on ebay for £350 with warranty and it can be a DIY changeover, you have said you serviced your car by yourself by keeping the receipts for the new parts that would satisfy most buyers and I do wonder even if the book is stamped with dealer services as against services by independents will that give a great increase in resale value enough to warrant the cost of high servicing costs from the dealers highly unlikely? Most of the Cars I have owned have been with me 10yrs or more and resale value was never much of a consideration to me. If you keep this car like you did your last one until it is 20yrs of age it will have little of any resale value anyway, as for my self I am an old Coffin Dodger of 72yrs only driving little more that 3000mls per year and have no intention of paying 300 to £500 every year for servicing to have nice dealer stamps in the book, the resale value will be of no concern to me anyway more than likely I will be dead?

I cannot answer your direct question, but there is always the possibility and an easy fix, to get a raised seat pad I know they do firm ones especially for that purpose to raise a chair in the home.

My friend has the Corolla estate a 2022 model I have sat in this Car over many miles with him driving but it sure does not have the comfort level of my ct200, he has the 4th generation drive train in his and usually his MPG is sitting around the 54, I do a lot of short town trips in my CT and get just under 40MPG, however I did a long trip to Birmingham and back a few weeks ago setting the cruise at 75MPH it returned 55MPH over the 700mls the first car I ever owned to get above 50, I guess in real terms and if I had done a brim to brim it would be a couple of miles less than that? anyway over that 700ml journey I found the comfort level of the CT to be superb the seats are near perfect to me perhaps even compares to Volvo seating and I've owned a few of these? When I bought the CT 3 months ago it is a 2018 model I had the option to get a Corolla Hybrid for the same price which was a year younger at the same mileage, the CT is in insurance group 17e with the Corolla in group 19e this would cost me £60 more to insure, I just had to have the Lexus perhaps one of the smartest small hatches on the road at this time, the Corolla in my opinion is a very ugly car both inside and out, this modern trend to have lots of piano black in the interior does not appeal to me, soundproofing is better on the CT than the Corolla, a couple of years ago I downsized from a Honda Accord Ex (perhaps the best car overall I have even driven) to a Yaris, I lived with this for over a year till it got to the point I would avoid driving it I hated this so much, but now I find the CT to have that same feel as a larger luxury car. I think it fair to say I am a happy Ct owner

Having recently acquired a 2018 ct200 I have the impression there is very little out there to compare with it for the level of comfort it gives me, it is 20yrs since I last had a Car as comfortable as this and that was a Volvo, quite amazing to me for such a small Hatchback, being an old coffin dodger in my early 70's this is likely to be the last Car I will ever buy, them Meerkats found me a good price for my insurance, however I am fortunate to live in Scotland where there is less thieving Bar Stewards around. The majority of the Cars I have owned (not that many) in 50yrs of motoring I would buy them at 3 to 4yrs of age and keep them 10yrs or more, this being far cheaper for Car ownership than changing every few years, every time you change Cars this costs a lot of money. So I would say to you if you have had trouble free motoring for the 3yrs you have owned your CT, also if it has everything you need in a Car? KEEP IT, there is just so much unreliable rubbish out there, I had the chance of a Corolla one year younger at the same price same mileage, strange the insurance group 19e against the CT at 17e another strange thing a 2016 CT with the same spec was also 19e. There is not a lot of Ct's up here in them there hills and quite a few of my friends and neighbours have remarked on how smart it looks, in my own opinion both the front and rear of the car is smarter than any of the rest and the side view is not bad either, mind you it is not likely to appeal to someone that drives a C-HR but they must have a mental health issue?

Hi Paul, I am in a bit of a quandary about this issue myself, I also have a 2018 CT 200, which I just purchased a little over one month ago. like you my annual mileage is only around 3K, for us to get an annual service from Lexus this hikes up the cost per mile to us to a lot more than someone that does an average of 7.5K in the year, same goes for the Road Tax we pay, fortunately for us the insurance company's take this into consideration but I would guess this is just a small reduction in the whole scheme of things? Throughout my life, now an old Coffin Dodger in my 70's, I've never paid out for any extended warranties on any of my material possessions, most of my Cars were bought at over 3yrs of age and out of warranty and many I had for 10yrs, when I did buy one at a year old with two years warranty left on it, this cost me a fortune in servicing costs and a few hidden charges from the main dealer. Likely the reason for most of us to buy Toyota/Lexus is for their reputation to be the most reliable Cars on the road today, so I'm wondering if I should just carry on as I did before and use my local guy to do my servicing and take the hit if anything does go wrong with it? up till now I have been very lucky and had little of any problems with Cars throughout my 50 plus years of motoring, as for having a dealer service history I'm not overly concerned with this, the cost to maintain this (especially for a low mileage user) will far outweigh the added value at the end of the day, anyway in my advanced years this is likely this will be the last Car I will ever own. For Lexus to give you the relax warranty they are backing and odds on favourite that very little will go wrong with their Cars, but this reals in their customers to pay their high cost of servicing. Cheers Dave

I agree with you 100% and not the OP, 5 weeks ago I traded in my 2015 39Kmls 1.3ltr Yaris Icon for a 2018 Lexus CT. in my opinion these two cars at at opposite ends of the spectrum, the Yaris was a good clean little Car in fantastic condition but it was like driving around with a pail of loose nuts and bolts lying on the floor it was full of rattles and the music system had to be on low as it caused a lot of vibration to the dash when the low bass notes were played. Doing 70mph in this in 6th gear it would feel like is was in 4th with the revs being well above 3K, often I would inadvertently try and shift this into 5th when it was already in 6th. I'm sure I suffer from PTSD after owning this car, even my friends are telling me I am looking a lot better since getting rid of it? Now the Lexus is a very luxurious car in comparison, very comfortable and quiet, to me it feels like a much larger car than the small hatch that it is, turning up the music to an uncomfortable listening level and there is no adverse vibration with the car. doing 70mph once up to speed the revs drop from 3K to just above 2K unless you hit an incline which then raises it a little. If I was to say anything bad about this that would be that it is a little stiff (good on the corners) and not absorbing going over speed bumps and potholes but not really uncomfortable and not what I would term as being harsh? overall I would suggest this has a very well built interior and not as described by the OP? Having owned a few sturdy well built cars, Volvo 240, 740 and 940 plus an EX Honda Accord I would say this Lexus compares to any of them as far as build quality is concerned and I am very pleased to have it.

Not all but most of the Cars I have bought I have saved for and paid cash and had them a long time usually around 10yrs, I do often wonder? say for example only, take the case of a 10yr old Car has this been bought by say 3 owners each having payment terms over 3 to 5yrs and if so what did this finance cost over this 10yrs? I purchased a Lexus CT one month ago from Evans Halshaw, getting a small top up loan from my son I paid for it outright, the dealer tried his best to get me to take out finance, extended warranty, anti stain treatment for the interior and another for the paintwork, perhaps all this put together may be close to £4K. they tried to insist that I should not consider to buy any car and not buy a warranty on two potential deals I was making, both salesmen were to tell me they would not let their Mother buy a car without an extended warranty, to which I replied I only do around a third of the mileage of the average driver and I will take the warranty if you give it to me at a third of the price. I doubt very much if I will ever get a call from them wanting to buy my Car back, they hardly got a cup of tea out of the deal I had with them?

Worth trying Thanks I had never thought on that. Having had many large Gas Guzzling cars in my time I am used to going light on acceleration and run in as high a gear as possible, slowly coasting up to a red light hoping for it to change just before I get there, getting into 5th gear as soon as I was close to 30mph trying to keep the Rev counter at less or close to 1500rpm. I would have thought this style of driving to be well suited to a Hybrid? I had narrowed my choice of Cars down to two, one a 2019 Corolla slightly more expensive and this 2018 Lexus, both had the same mileage, it was a no brainer to me the Corolla is just Fecking ugly, even if it is more fuel efficient I'm still happy to have chosen the Lexus, Btw the insurance group for the Lexus is 17e and for the Corolla 19e costing me £50 more to insure, strange though it may seem a 2016 Lexus is group 20e? costing me around £60 more.

I had a Volvo 740GLT this was a great Car and I changed the Oil in this at every 3000mls this was around 12yrs of age and had 150K on the clock when the engine failed. The reason for this was; the Car had done 150,000 short journeys this was what killed the engine, driven mostly by my first Wife she would not even walk to the local shop around 500mtrs away. For this reason I would never buy a Car with high mileage as you will never know the amount of short journeys it has been driven, this is what kills an engine not the amount of miles but the amount of starts from cold it has had, Cold starting causes the most wear to an engine. Buying a young Car with high miles for its year is a better choice as it is more likely to have done much of it on motorways. Replacing a Hybrid Batt is not all that complicated and an easy DIY fit, well it does look that way on some YT videos I have seen? I'm sure I have seen a replacement Batt priced at around £600.

I've now had my new to me 2018 Lexus ct200 for a month, overall I'm very pleased with the Car this suits me well, so glad I did not take any heed of the motoring experts that like to condemn this Car, having just driven my first 260mls in it, the Car says I'm getting 43MPH, on a brim to brim it works out closer to 40MPG after a 100ml round trip on rural and part dual carriageway roads the mph got up to 48MPG, the rest has been town driving mostly short trips, my friend has the Corolla with the same drivetrain and he gets 54MPG, I looked at it on his dash. I am an Old Bar Steward in my 72nd year and tend to drive with a light right foot, so I expected my MPH to be closer to 50 than 40? I did think a Hybrid would give better mileage to me on my mostly town driving? however it does give me slightly better mileage than my previous Car a 1.3ltr Yaris which was gutless and terrible over speed bumps, I really hated this Car, these two Cars are at the opposite ends of the scale. I've read so many positive owners reviews on the Lexus ct200 with most saying the experts are all wrong about this model and I now have every reason the believe this, however most owners tend to say their MPH is close to low to mid 50's, I have every reason to believe my Car is running well, I'm just thinking as I write this maybe I should check the air filter. Has anyone any other thoughts on this? Thanks Dave

Keeping a car in a garage overnight incurs an excess over one that is on a driveway, perhaps hard to believe but true, actually putting a wet car into a garage does it no favours and accelerates rusting especially if it is a wooden garage, it's good to have a second named driver on a policy this also reduces the premium.

Well I have taken the plunge and now own a Lexus CT200h Luxury in Metallic Red, this is a 2018 facelift model with the honeycomb spindle grille, this is being delivered to me in a few days, will I need a course on how to operate all the switches and toys it comes with?