Rx450H Brown Tint?!

[chrisatkinson]

Hi All,

I just took delivery of a new 450H and the rear windows have a muddy brown tint when viewed in sunlight. In fact its so bad, that when viewed from the inside of the car it looks like the scenery is a sepia photograph!

What the hell is this about! Thhis is only the rear passenger windows, the privacy glass in the small corners and rear tailgate are normal.

Has anyone else noticed this? Is there a way of getting the tint removed and matched with the rest of the glass without costing £££££'s?

Any help greatly appreciated!

Thanks

[Parthiban]

That sounds very odd, first thing I'd do is compare against another car at the dealers, doesn't seem right if the tint is different between different windows.

[chrisatkinson]

That sounds very odd, first thing I'd do is compare against another car at the dealers, doesn't seem right if the tint is different between different windows.

Thanks for your reply.

Get this.

I whent to the garage today to compare colours, another Blue SE-I model has same colour tint, but the SE-L (next model up) is noticably less brown. But when they looked on the system the part numbers were identical so they shouldn't be different!

I cannot for one second imagine that lexus wanted an odd coloured pane of glass in their range!?

It looks gash!

They are getting some guy from lexus to inspect..... I will keep you posted.

[Parthiban]

That's really bizarre, I can't see how this could have happened unless they've had a screw up at the factory?

If they start getting annoying about it I'd ask them to swap the windows off that other car they have, but I'm sure they'll sort this out as it's pretty stupid.

[chrisatkinson]

I agree of course: Here is the official response from Lexus

Apparently various customers have reported this.

The glass is photochromatic and therefore darker coloured cars which absorb the heat more will have more reactive glass. This accounts for the different colour in the glass.

I have two issues with this response.

Firstly, it looks utterly crap, and the glass in my old 2004 RX was fine, I have NEVER seen another car on the road that has this issue (trust me I have been looking)

Secondly, the car we compared it too was a dark grey, I cannot imagine a huge difference between dark grey and dark blue causing such a wild difference.

I personally think that they should ditch any photochromatic glass. No one wants it, the existing glass was fine, and it didn't look like your car had been filled with muddy water!

Apparently the more customers complain the more chance of something being done about it.

I really hope they do, as everything else on the car is fantastic.

Thanks

[Parthiban]

Hang on, there's 2 different points there that don't make sense. What has the colour of the car got to do with anything?

The photochromatic part I do understand, so these windows are similar to the sunglasses in that they get darker in UV light? If so that's actually quite cool, something I've wondered why they haven't fitted to cars so far.

In any case though, if it looks that bad it's something that needs to be revisited, and at least all the tinted windows should be the same............do you have a picture of what it looks like?

[chrisatkinson]

Sorry yes, car will be warmer if darker, thats the reasoning.

Here is image:

You can see that the tint is markedly different to the other smaller window, and yes its also different to theboot window too!

Just naff

[Parthiban]

Oh wow, yes that looks hideous - I would not be pleased if I'd spent all that money on a car where each window is a different colour! Reminds me of the mk1 RX which had that weird greeny mirror tint on the rear windows which I always thought was awful, but at least they were all the same colour.........

Let us know how you get on with Lexus :)

[chrisatkinson]

Glad you agree, I will keep you in the loop.

Good talking with you :)

And glad its not just me that thinks its totally horrid