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Lexus In Australia


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Since first becoming interested in the IS250, I found the UK Lexus owners site a great source of info on the net. Thanks everyone. The Australian site has little about the IS250 and the US site has more comments about the IS350 and AWD versions. I took delivery of my gold IS250 yesterday and thought you may be interested in some details of an Australian IS250.

The trade-in – Honda Accord VTi, 2.4l, 5 spd auto. Made in Thailand and courtesy of a free trade agreement between the two countries, new prices dropped some $4,000, 6 months after I bought it. So depreciation has been heavy. Bummer. Not a bad car, but a cruiser not a performer. Like all Hondas, developed rattles and creaks after a short time.

The Lexus – IS250 automatic, gold with cream interior. Looks fantastic! Don’t buy one until you have seen this combination. The colour on the Lexus web site isn’t close to the real thing. The only options available on the base model (if you could call any Lexus base) are a sunroof at $1,500 and automatic transmission at $2,600. Cost for me was $56,490 (with auto, no sunroof) plus on road cost of $4,017 giving a drive away price of $60,507. At current exchange rates that is roughly £23,200 + £1,650 = £24,850.

I guess our base model could either be viewed as your base IS250 with leather climate controlled seats with electric operation and mica paint or your IS250 SE with 16” wheels and mica paint.

The deal – managed to spend $1,000 less than my budget. On top of that pursued the dealer to include window tint in the deal (a must for the Australian climate and a saving of up to $600, depending on film quality).

The dealer – A very positive experience with courteous staff. No pressure sales techniques here. Ordered the car on 21 Nov and the dealer promised delivery by Christmas. They kept their promise as I took delivery of the car on 22 Dec. Luckily when I ordered the car they had just been given a new allocation of some IS250 models. They said some buyers of the Luxury Sports model have to wait until March.

The dealer also provides a complimentary car clean each month and gave me a couple of CDs, a basket of goodies as well as some classy number plate covers on delivery. The pre delivery service was a little sloppy with the radio/climate control stack not having been cleaned since it left the factory. On a positive note everything else was spotless so this was really only a minor oversight.

Likes

- Virtually everything. What a car! However a few highlights for me are:-

- Instruments – love just turning them on, brilliant clarity.

- Sound system – great sound, lots of features

- Luxurious leather interior – very upmarket in cream and the colour is practical in a hot climate too. In spite of comments to the contrary, this is easy to keep clean as I have had a couple of cars with a light interior before.

- Refinement , superb fit and finish– an expensive car needs to look and feel like one and the IS250 definitely doesn’t disappoint.

- Heated and cooled leather seats. Great on a hot day and very comfortable as well.

- Climate control air conditioning. The pollution sensor proved its worth in peak hour traffic switching from fresh to recirc when exhaust fumes were detected and then back to fresh when the coast was clear.

- The engine – quiet at light throttles with a purposeful growl when pushed.

- Fuel economy. I live in the suburbs and use public transport to get to work so my car use is usually a combination of highway and suburban roads and with little or no city traffic. Therefore I can usually achieve the manufacturers claimed combined fuel consumption rating on my past cars. In the case of the IS250 that is 9.1 l/100km (31 mpg). Just driving it home from the dealer, through heavy peak hour city traffic, a brief freeway cruise and a few suburban streets it registered 10.6 l/100kms (26.7 mpg) so 9.1 l/100kms is definitely achievable. Not bad for something straight out of the factory.

Dislikes

- Road noise – only occurs on textured road surfaces and is not excessive, but the silence of everything else makes the road noise more noticeable. Lexus needs to work on this a little to make it a little less intrusive. Even so, is quieter than the Honda, which was itself a quiet car.

- Auto paddles – seems to be a delay between selecting the next gear and it actually changing. This results in anything up to a 750rpm increase before than change occurs, so you have to be thinking ahead of the tacho. Not really concerned as I wouldn’t seriously use this feature except for engine braking coming off the freeway.

- The screen display between the tacho and speedo needs to be bigger – it is a pity it only allows one piece of information to be displayed. A little bigger and they would have been able to combine some of the 7 screens you have to cycle though.

Lastly the final test of any new car. Showing to it to your friends. Performed fabulously here. One friend, who is not into cars, told me I would have to leave as he was getting jealous (once I stepped him through the long, long list of IS250 standard features). Priceless!

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Iam another aussie from brisbane waiting for arrival of MYIS250 SPORTS WITH SAT NAV AND ML AUDIO DEEP BLUE WITH CASHMERE ordered it beginning of november its just arrived at the docks should pick it between christmas and new years,

trade in my IS300

I wish it was a IS350 same money paid AUS $80000

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Great to see other Aussies on the forum :)

I found this forum too when I first started getting interested in the IS250 a few months and have been lurking here for a while, soaking up info.

I'm a proud owner of an IS250 Sports, with a dark grey exterior with grey interior (picked up last Saturday). Couldn't convince the wife about the EMV pack, but I love the 18" wheels :) It's been fun fun fun since then. The only pity is long work hours this week and not enough time to drive the damn thing.

Had a good experience with my dealer; offered me a decent deal, with some corporate sweeteners thrown in (free servicing for 4 years and an extended warranty for minimal outlay). Hope to get a bit more driving in this weekend.

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(free servicing for 4 years and an extended warranty for minimal outlay

What's "free servicing for 4 years" means ? Are you saying that you don't even have to pay for the normal schedule "10000km/6 months" service including all oil/filter change ?

By the way, I've been to all three Lexus Owners Club and found that the one from Australia the useless/hopeless one. No one ever answered any question even for a very simple question. :crying:

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I agree that the Australia Club is not worth visiting. That is why I and I suspect many of my compatriots from down under spend more time on this forum.

I don't enjoy the US one much either, or the IS350forum. Too much squabbling between spoilt rich kids with IS350s trying to boy-race against M3s and insult each other. The software hacks are good though :rolleyes:

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I'll try and get some pictures up as soon as my wife gets home (she's driving it today!).

I got mine from Lexus of Brighton (I live close by). Overall, I was happy with the service there, and I got a fairly good deal considering how quickly the sports model was going (on the day I went, at least 3 other sports were sold). Managed to get about 5k off the price which was decent I thought.

The cars going great; the ride can be firm at low speeds, once u get above 40-50 u don't notice it. And goodness, the 18" wheels do really suit the look of the car.

The free servicing basically includes all scheduled services (labour and parts).

I'd be happy to answer any more questions :)

Btw, Wheels magazine (Australia) has a pretty favourable review up in their latest issue. They're doing a 325i vs IS250 comparo next issue; I'm looking forward to that.

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Well done on the discount, much bigger than I thought possible for such a newly launched car! Did the 5K off depend on a corporate discount, or did you just haggle them down to that figure? ;)

I live in Camberwell and work in Blackburn, so Lexus of Blackburn is best for me.

The discount was purely from haggling. I'd been in there twice before already, and I basically said that I was ready to buy if they could come to the price I wanted. I must admit, I probably drove them nuts, but I got down to a price I was happy with. Was hoping for a little more actually, but I figured 5k was pretty good for a new car :)

As an aside, I'd been to a major BMW dealer not 2 days before (my wife was keen on the BMW) and we'd had a look at some 325i and 320i. BMW were pretty interested in what I thought of the IS, and they were pretty keen to deal (discount offers were coming thick and fast). One exec showed me their stock, and it seemed they had a lot of 3s that were sitting about unsold.

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You are a gentleman, thanks for sharing the information. I am going to order a Sport Luxury model in early Jan as I only want delivery in March or April. Armed with your info I feel in a stronger position to haggle with them. Let's keep in touch amd I am looking forward to the pictures. Also, keen to hear how the aircon coped with today's 36 degrees. Although you were probably cooler by the beach.

And to our English compatriots, thanks for letting us use your forum. And don't get confused by the town names. This whole place is named after English towns. I live in Camberwell, work in Blackburn and used to live in Doncaster, all of which are suburbs of Melbourne. We also have a Brighton and Shoreham where I used to live in the UK 25 years ago.

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Will post some pics if someone could point me to some instructions.

My Lexus only unlocked the driver door by default which was a pain. I prefer to have all the doors unlocked. The manual points you to the Lexus dealer. Rang the service dept who gave me some vague instructions and suggested I contact the salesman, which I did. Just as well as the service dept had got it wrong.

So to have the car unlock all 4 doors when you touch the door handle I followed these instuctions:-

1. While standing outside the car, unlock then relock the car.

2. Press and hold the lock and the boot buttons on the remote control together.

3. When you see a picture of the car with all 4 doors open on the instrument panel screen, let the buttons go.

When you unlock next, all 4 doors will unlock together. Note: this only changes the unlocking process using the door handle. If you use the remote you still get just the driver's door, then have to press again to get the other doors.

The only thing is it is a little hard to peer into the car to look at the instrument panel if you have tinted windows.

Didn't ask how to change it back to just one door but I guess you could repeat the process and let the buttons go is you see a car with only one door open, just guessing though.

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I believe the board administrator has to grant permission to upload pictures, or maybe you have to become a Gold Member. Perhaps someone can help here as I would like to upload pictures in time, once I get my IS250.

It helps to be a gold member so you can upload pics from your album in the gold forum.

If you've got photo bucket or something similar that hosts pics. You can link to that.

Actually i think you have to be a gold member to post pics because of the bandwidth. But you should be ok just linking to them. :D

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Thanks for confirming that. I will sign up for Gold once I take delivery in March 2006. Although quite what I will do with the discounts in Australia remains to be seen :hehe:.

I will consider Gold Membership my first IS250 add-on, followed closely by personalised number plates or (W)anker plates as they are so politely named here.

In fact that brings back a funny memory. I had just emigrated to Australia in the middle of petrol rationing. A radio announcer advised that odd numbered plates could buy petrol on Mon, Wed and Fri and even numbered and (W)anker plates on Tue, Thu and Sat. I had not heard of a (W)anker plate before, but I was following a Merc Sports with the plate "I DO TAX" and immediately registered the meaning of (W)anker plate.

And now 20 years later I am considering getting one - does that make me a (w)anker? :P

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Each aussie state has different rules. In Victoria where I live, what you say is basically right. This link is to the Vic Roads Authority which sells the plates http://www.vplates.com.au/index.htm. Basically you build your own plate, check if anyone has it and order it. Divide the AUD cost by 2.5 to get UK Pounds. Have fun

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Will post some pics if someone could point me to some instructions.

http://imageshack.us/

you can upload your pics on here

select the pic you want to upload from your pc

once it's uploaded there's a number of way to post the image various links to the pic then

there should be a little pic of what you've posted up

click on this then it should open a new window with the full size image

right click on pic, click on properties, copy the address (URL)

then when you reply on this forum there's a little tab at the top of the reply window with IMG on it, click on this then paste the address in

that should do it

oh yeah welcome to all of you from down under

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Thanks for the tip Robin H.

Here are some pictures. You will notice some colour variation depending on my camera skills. Strangely enough, in the flesh, the car shows a similar variation in colour depending on light strength.

dsc01252a0bt.jpg

dsc01250a9wj.jpg

dsc01253a2ar.jpg

dsc01254a2tw.jpg

dsc01256a2lr.jpg

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