I wrote this in response to my previous post, and then realised that I had gone off at a tangent, so decided on a separate post.
I am in a position in which I can afford a really nice new car but having been out of the market for a few years, and driven a few new cars recently, they seem to have moved backwards. This after many years of not being able to afford a nice new car, having wasted most of my money on children etc.
These newish cars seem unrefined, don't ride particularly well, a spare wheel is unheard of (expensive insanity in my view), and research (of which I do a lot), uncovers what seem to be relatively common horror stories of dpfs, egrs, dmfs, gearbox failures, turbo failures, diesel contaminating oil and increasing oil content to destructive levels and so on. I'm talking about cars that include some that cost 30 grand upwards. I have considered various petrol engines, but they are not available in many models and come with their own issues including failed turbos, coil packs, stretched timing chains etc.
The last car that was as satisfying as my 400 was my 1989 Audi 90 5 cylinder. It was a wonderful car, with a briliant engine. It was incredibly well engineered and lovely to drive. I wish I could find a mint example, I would abandon my search for a newish car. My daughter just paid just over 2 grand for a 2003 vw beetle convertible with around 50 k on the clock,, a full vw history and a set of winter tyres. I'm starting to think that buying new or even newish is insanity,unless it is something very special.
Some of the new smaller petrol engines seem brilliant, with incredible power for their size -including the vw / audi 1.4 tsi 150bhp, but ever increasing fuel pressures, turbos and superchargers strapped to a small, highly stressed engine do not seem to me to be a recipe for a long and reliable life (the opposite approach taken by the LS 400 of a large , unstressed engine). I suspect that many of these little time bombs will be kept for three years only, for fear of ruinous repair bills when problems start to surface (as they already have).
So here is a caveat for potential Lexus LS 400 owners. Seriously, Don't, on any account, buy one, because you will probably never find a satisfactory replacement, and will be doomed to spend the rest of your motoring life regretting the one you sold, and cursing the car you currently drive, because it fails to live up. This is my quandary in deciding whether to sell my Mk 4