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What about a non-hybrid GS300? You still get decent performance, exceptional economy for a 3 litre petrol a full auto box and one of the sweetest drives this side of an S-Class. No complex hybrid tech and lighter weight = pretty respectable handling and 0-60 in 7.1 seconds. Same car inside and out as the one you looked at but with the bonus of much more boot space. Cheaper to buy too!

Hi Stuart, I don't think there's any right or wrong answer here. I bought my 400H in March and spent more time and effort looking for the 'perfect' car than I've ever done on a car before. I was looking in the same price and age range and TBH was dissappointed at the quality of the cars available. In particular the state of interiors was a let down. I do a reasonable mileage (done 15k miles since getting it) so the exterior is never going to be perfect but the interior is something I can look after and so wanted a good standard to start with. I started looking for SE-L models with the DVD screen but quickly realised that often these were family cars that usually carried kids around in the back and showed the signs of that. Anyway, to cut a long story short I had given up when I got an alert of a new car at a car supermarket in Coventry. It turned out to be perfect - 80K miles, 2007 plate with a perfect interior, asking price £7,500. Most importantly though it had full LSH and all of the paperwork including the hybrid checks and had 4 new tyres fitted only 2 months before (basically £750 for free). Based on my experience up to then that was a good £1k or more under the market price. Best I could tell they'd picked it up cheap at auction and being a car supermarket they use a standard pricing model to value their cars to ensure high turnover so just added their standard profit margin. I drove away with what so far has been a faultless car which IMO (and the opinion of may people who've been in it) looks and feels like a luxury car worth two or three times as much. I am using a local garage for servicing as I have no intention of changing it before it effectively depreciates to zero so there's no monetary advantage using Lexus. I looked at the warranty options but decided that given the reliability of these things it was a 'safe' bet not to worry. In my experience a car that's done 80K miles and is nearly 10 years old and has never needed a thing doing isn't going to suddenly start to be unreliable. If you want piece of mind then go through a dealer and get the warrantly but the chances are you are going to pay a fairly big premium both on the purchase and maintenance. I totally understand and would most likely go that route if I were going for a younger/more expensive car but IMO you can safely buy 'cheaper' from a non Lexus dealer or private sale if you are careful about your choice i.e. full service history, complete paperwork, obvious signs of TLC. Don't get sucked in by the idea of the car and settle for something that feels wrong. I deperately wanted my 400H and put in days of searching and viewing cars over two months but had to force myself to walk away from at least a dozen examples because they just weren't quite right. Good luck.

+1 to the above. I think you'll be lucky to buy any vehicle, let alone a Lexus, which is over 10 years old and get an extended warranty on it unless you pay through the teeth for it. By the time you add up the £500 or more annually it would likely cost, you could just put that sum aside in a savings account and fund any work yourself. Buy the right car, and it should stay reliable. Your chances of this with a Lexus are arguably better than with any other marque. The only other cars that seem to be bomb-proof are the older Merc diesels. I would happily run my GS another 5 years without any warranty and it'll be 10 years old in the New Year. It's never let me down yet. Ask owners of original LS400's how many break downs they get and you'll struggle to find many. Of course it's the non-break-down stuff, like a leaking shock or exhaust system or a failed sensor which doesn't affect the car running, that can cost money, but to buy newer, you pay for it anyway in up front capital worth, so cars really are swings and roundabouts. Better to buy a really well sorted 10 year old Lexus with all the usual jobs (like exhaust and shockers) taken care of, and chances are, you'll be driving it for many years to come without major expense.

Welcome to the forum. I'll be very blunt: a premium car from a premium brand will - eventually - attract premium bills. Even a car as reliable as the RX is not immune to wear and tear. It is a complex car, and you are talking about a 10 year old car that may or may not have been looked after by multiple owners. You may be lucky and find a gem... yet again... you may buy a dud! I certainly would shy away from anything without a decent service history. You may find that buying from a dealer is the most cost effective option in the long run, but at least you will get a solid warranty for the first year. Checking a few thread will give you some idea of costs to be prepared for: - A mirror replacement can cost as much as £450 from a main dealer - A reconditioned audio unit (they are sealed units and include the 6xCD changer) costs around £1500 to replace Whatever you decide to do, good luck. This is one of the most friendly forums you'll ever come across, with loads of people always willing to give good advice. Just ask.

I recently bought an rx450. But as others have mentioned, these RX do seem to get very abused when compared to similar aged saloon Lexus such as IS or GS. i looked at some RX that were only 4 years old in the forecourt of the Lexus main dealer at very high prices and the interiors were really quite poor, leather very worn looking and creased more like a car that had done 120.000 miles rather than the ndicated 60,000. Exterior had lots of scratches and some dents. More often than not the front and rear bumps would have scuffs on particularly on the corners. now I'd expect this if the car was a couple of grand but these were ten times that price. im very particular and like most here had to look at quite a few before the right one come up. Oddly enough the car I bought was slightly older and cheaper than most I had looked at yet in by far the best condition. I guess the point being, there are some real gems out there but it will take some searching but persevere and the perfect car is out there for you. good luck as when you find it you will wonder why you never bought one years ago. carl

Hmm, I have learnt this lesson unfortunately. After trying all your methods you did I decided to saw cut across the cap to allow me to apply a screwdriver to while using a pipe spanner to hold the valve stem. You can guess what happened next, I managed to scratch my alloy (not enough duck tape!) and the cap itself split. In the end I admitted defeat and took it to my local tyre place (at least with the cap split they could let out the air) and got them to revalve it. Cost me about £12 iirc.

Sorry that things have not worked out for you Dean.There are other fish in the sea and as one door closes another will open in due course. Bear in mind that sadly you do need to check out any information that is given to you and the members on this Forum will more often than not be able to advise you. Do let us all know how you get on. Regards John

Update. The nice Lexus sales person has admitted that the car can not be sold with an extended warranty as it is over 10 years old, even though he had previously confirmed it in email that it could. I only found this out by chance before picking the car up this weekend when chatting with my local Lexus dealer who looked the car up on their system and confirmed this was the case. I'm sure this was an oversight on their part as they are probably not used to dealing with 10+ year old stock. It doesn't change the outcome though. I have decided not to go ahead with this particular car, even though it does look in good condition as I cant afford the time/hassle of a 10+ year old car without a warranty. The search continues.

No my point is that you need to drive Lexus hybrid more gently than diesel, to achieve good MPG. That is manly because Lexus are very heavy cars and start stop fashion hurt economy much more than on say Volvo S40, equally you should never do 65+ MPH if you want good fuel economy, at 90MPH Fuel economy on any Lexus hybrid drops like a rock... And yes you can say one should not drive at 90 anyway, but that is not my point.. Diesel woudl be at it's best at that speeds 70-90MPH, while hybrid has ceiling. That is why my IS250 returns better MPG, than IS/RC300h on the motorway.

Re Steve's reply: when my battery was on the way out, the electrics went haywire even though the car started okay. So it's worth checking that first. I'm trying to use the car every week at this time of year, just to keep the battery charged up.

I don't necessarily agree. I think that until a more sustainable technology such as hydrogen fuel cells are available, there will always be customers, like myself, who will never buy a plug-in EV. If the whole country did it, it'd come as no surprise if there wasn't sufficient generating power, or spinning reserve to cope at our power stations, and CO2 emissions would be no different since gas is used at many power stations. You burn something to get the energy, so it makes more sense until we have to stop burning something, to develop practical hybrids. Had the whole country been fed from nuclear power, then I can see EVs being a more sustainable solution, but for now, it's all kidology and people feeling good about themselves, when the truth is, they still use fossil fuels and still contribute to global C02 emissions. Also, petrol hybrids are far less polluting than diesels. The other thing is that 200 miles is hardly a practical proposition. What if you want to drive 500 miles? You'd need an overnight stop. It would also put paid to our European trips due to timescales and end up coasting more for hotel stays etc. It's just not practical for now. I'm happy to invest in hybrid technology. I can't see any viable real world alternative bettering it with some honest environmental considerations thrown in, for another 10 years until this country's sorted out the growing mess that it has got into regarding electricity generation security. Why add to that problem?

Your point is drive a car, any car gently = more mpg, drive it harder =less mpg which is true for any car petrol diesel et al. I drive my GS on on a mix of roads at a mix of speeds & get average of 40 to 45 mpg. No gentle driving not slow driving just normal as I would drive any car. The outside temperature makes the most difference to MPG imho. Ed

I don't think the future is hybrids.. I think that full electric cars is the future , because if you look at people like Tesla, their cars can go a good 200 miles I believe ,before needing to be charged , so the days of the full electric equalling the range of petrol cars is virtually here already . I think Lexus will have to invest most money in building totally electric cars to keep up with Tesla and all the other companies that are bringing out electric cars. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

My normal Lexus is currently with a Lexus dealer and I have a 300 Executive as my loan car. I've had it for about 3 days and I'm very impressed. The interior quality is superb and many of the silly Japanese traits that annoy the hell out of me in my Lexus are no longer present in the 300 Execute. I even managed to get the sat nav working!! ;) This morning I managed to work out how to reset the trip computer. I found the reset button whilst looking for the now non-existent fuel flap release button :) Anyway, a 1 hour trip saw 49.8 mpg (mainly motorway, 70mph+). Impressed.

Hi Stuart Only help I can offer is to give you a run down of my 400h ownership since August this year. Like you spent time reading up and tried to learn good plus bad points. Having owned many Toyotas since the 80`s have always felt reliability to be good so on the same note expected Lexus to be similar. Was changing from Volvo to lexus as I needed higher/bigger car to get in/out as disabled. Decided to buy from a dealer so that I had some chance of comeback if problems occurred (not afraid of court process!) but wanted to find one that sold plenty of these cars not just the odd one. Main dealer prices were too high as my budget seemed to put me outside of the age range sold as used cars (generally). My budget was £8-9 k max and that found me a one owner full lexus history grey 400h with full mot etc. My next choice was should I or shouldn't I buy a lexus warranty available for cars less than 10 years old @£995 for two years cover. Visited my nearest dealer and met service manager and discussed at great length (must have driven them nuts!) every variation of claim I could think of. Only issue was that I had to have car serviced at interval by lexus to maintain warranty and my next service due was 100K despite mileage of only 80K driven. That was a big one and not cheap but it was suggested that I could have the "essential service" carried out to maintain warranty (lower service for older cars). In the end I said yes and went for the warranty, and here comes the punchline: November car goes in for service and then the phone starts to ring. Long story short needed new (rear)brake callipers shoes and discs plus rear suspension plus attention to electric door mirrors. The cost for me to pay £600 for service ,brakes consumables. Warranty paid for in excess of £1300 and I still have 20 months cover left. So I feel it makes not a lot of difference where you buy from if not dealer, you should allow for emergency spending/repairs and if possible I would recommend the warranty. I think I am right in saying car needs to be less than 10 years old and less than 100k miles. My car was 4months short of the 10 year mark so just scraped in. I have since replaced front pair of tyres as I don't like low tread especially this time of year and paid wheel allignment that also turned out to be wrong. So do I like the car? Absolutely yes.Was I glad I bought the warranty? oh yes, for once I got it right. My mileage is low nowadays 5K pa max and I can sit in great comfort in a warm safe car that should hopefully last a long time with usual servicing etc. I hope that helps a little, only one persons story of one car so no guarantee. For me I am happy to be a lexus owner, local dealer know what to expect from me (a lot) and so far have obliged and when warranty runs out my own independent garage will look after 90% of work. Nearly forgot for about £60 a dealer will carry out hybrid health check on the car system and that gives a year warranty on hybrid system Best of luck, hope you find what you are looking for

You may have problems using 6 volt LED's with them burning out. The voltage drop along the thin wires Lexus use to the side lights is dependent on the current the wires carry. So 6 watt incandescent bulbs will draw 0.5 amps each at 12 volts. The LED replacement bulbs typically have a loading of only 1 watt or 0.083 amps although the light output is the same or more. If the voltage drop along the wires with 2 OEM bulbs is 6 volts at 1 amp leaving 6 volts to run the bulbs the wiring must have a resistance of six ohms. With the LED bulbs the load is 2 X 0.083 amps = 0.166 amps. The voltage drop along the same wires at a loading of 0.166 amps will be 0.996 V rounded up to 1 volt leaving the LED's running on 11 volts. All this assumes the battery voltage on charge "ready mode" is 12 volts when in fact it is much closer to 14 volts John.

Yep code readers are pretty cheap nowadays ..think mine was £15...and do the job. Worth buying one to see if any fault codes are stored.

Should be stored code(s) so if you have a code reader worth hooking it up perhaps. How old is the battery?

The content of this thread does not meet the initial expectations raised when I first glanced at the topic title.

Ah, the magical 50........I`d like to say that I remember it well Paul, but it was 20 years ago! Yes, you are old enough (in my book at least ) to have lost that Boy Racer image (if indeed you ever had it) and have the experience and wisdom that attracts one to Lexus. I do not consider the F Sport models to be anything other than marketing ploys to attract the drivers of modern Audi`s Bmw`s and Merc`s and thereby increase sales. The LS and GS models prior to the introduction of that silly spindle grill are what I refer to as Lexus vehicles. They had presence and quality specifications as standard which I do not see reflected in the latest thinking. I still have my 215,000 miles E Class Diesel Auto Estate which I could not part with as it is a member of the family. It has looked after us and it is my responsibility to look after it. It doesn`t cost much to run,insure and tax, so I will keep it for as long as I can. I think that you are right to keep your GS until such times (if any) as you feel that it should go. Should you buy an RX, then Rayann on this Forum will I am sure have some good sound advice for you. I would just like to offer the following; 1. Try to buy from a Lexus Dealer and receive a decent 12 month warranty 2. If at the end of that warranty the car is less than 10 years old and has covered less than 140,000 miles, then take out a Lexus extended warranty so as to provide peace of mind. 3. Take out a service agreement with the Lexus Dealer. 4. Maintain an excellent relationship with your Lexus Dealer as he will be your first port of call if you need to claim on the extended warrantyand if he`s good ,he will have some clout on your behalf, 5. Try to move away in your mind from the concept of a gearbox. Lexus has CVT transmission and it does not contain gears.What it provides is a seamless and linear surge of silent power. (Remember the Bumping cars a the fareground? )It is not intended to be floored, so accelerate gradually by anticipating your (and others) every move on the road. This will minimise the need for constant acceleration and braking and should therefore provide you with the experience of being in a cacoon!. Good luck and do keep us all informed. Regards John

Cheaper and less fuss to do an engine swap?

Then use a different Mot station. Cars are built with them nowadays to protect them from the elements. As people have said lots of electricals on modern cars. What was the advisories for? Modern cars are galvernised so wings rarely rust, mirrors on extenslon sticks are for checking what the eyes can not see. Last 3 cars i have owned have had covers, as would 90% of modern cars so how can they give advisories.

From there own description of the problem any claim could or would come under the same heading. A wheel bearing would fail because of in service ware and deterioration of the bearing surfaces. I guarantee if you inspect the piston rod with the car jacked up (weight off the wheels) you will find it is the piston rod chrome coating that has failed causing the seal not to work "leak" in that area. Careful inspection will show a dark ring round the shaft where the seal sits when the car is stationary. This is visible in the pictures below even after attempts to remove it with fine emery paper. The chrome is only about 1 thousand's of an inch thick and the area where the dark ring is will rust while the chromed area remains bright. The reduction in size in the ring area can be felt with finger tips. If this is the case the piston rod failed then damaged the seal so the shock absorber shaft failed first "not the seal" I have seen this scenario on many leaking KYB shocks. Sorry for the poor picture quality. It is difficult to capture on bright chrome. John