dealer-man

Yes this is true I am afraid - a large number will not arrive until next year now. Dealers are not happy and I know customers are not either! To give us no new IS's to sell for almost 5 months and then delay the new model is pretty disgraceful really. Your dealer is not alone! I would expect most customers to get a call soon telling them about the problems, if you have ordered one and not heard from your dealer I would advise you phone them straightaway. If your car arrives in January do you hold off delivery until March 1st?? I think a few may...!

Yes I am in the "trade" (Lexus Dealer) Yes there are "two" margins The second of which is not guaranteed, it is based on acheiving very tough sales targets, customer satisfaction targets, random dealer inspection targets, telephone and video mystery shop targets, finance targets etc, etc. I am not compalining about people asking for discounts, feel free, fill your boots, I have no problem with that. But to 'expect' one automatically as a matter of principal? I can only speak from my own perspective here, but at our dealer, we have totally sold our allocation for this year, most orders from now on won't be satisfied until Jan/Feb. After the launch, this will be March/ April. It will be way into next year before the "D" word is even thought about, and even then we might only be talking about a small gesture of good will.... As I've said earlier, to sell on price is not to sell. A good sales person will offer such an exceptional level of service and care to the point that the customer will happily pay the little extra. Not everyone, but many, and enough to fill the order banks. ← I may as well add my comments on this, seeing that I also work for a dealer. I can see both points on this - the customer doesn't need a discount in order to buy the car, after all £600 say on a £20K+ car isn't a make or break amount. But I understand that people want to feel they have got a deal. To be honest the best market we could have is one where all dealers must sell at list price by law! It would actually benefit the customer as well, as residuals would be higher and you wouldn't have to shop for a "deal" - you buy from the place that offered the best service or could supply the car on time. Discounts actually do more harm than good in many cases, although I appreciate that if you don't ask you don't get!! Just a tiny point regarding interest rates - look at the offer as a whole and not the APR - pcp rates tend to be higher but they do protect the value of the car, the question is whether the one can be offset against the other - and APR's are funny things to calculate - the APR can sometimes shoot up (especially if the term is shortened) and the monthly payment not change much. But if I was a customer and someone offered by 3% discount would I take it? Of course I would! I know people think that we all make a fortune when we sell cars and I am sure that was the case years ago, but I think people would be pretty shocked at how low a lot of deals are! And finally please don't compare us to Estate Agents!! ;) They get 1% of something, regardless of how low they go, with us we sometimes get a % of something if anything is left! AND we have to work on Sundays!

Hello Smartwave Sorry to hear about your current situation - you are not the first and will not be the last so do not worry! Firstly, the figures you have quoted don't seem to add up quite right - £5000 over 36 month @ £175/month works out at 8.6% flat which equates to something like 17% APR (this is a very rough calculation) NOT the 7% APR you had been quoted. The 38% APR which you have been offered - which works out to be 18.7% flat is actually around 10% per year extra - so over 3 years you have to expect to pay 30% extra in interest - or put it another way another £1500... not a small amount. One poster has remarked that this is a disgrace and finance companies should not be allowed to do this. Whilst I do agree it is higher than would be ideal you present a very big risk to the finance companies - they are NOT trying to con you! At the moment you have spent 2 years in this country and effectively do not exist!! Finance companies can not check your bank accounts to see what your finances look like (contary to what some people think) so have to see if you have been loaned any money before - such as a credit card, mortgage, personal loan etc. Then they need to decide whether they could trace you if you stop paying. If you currently rent and are not on the electoral role (which is a sign that you do not stay in the same place for long) then in their eyes you could stop paying and never be found again!! It sounds harsh I know - but something like 1 in 4 people fail to pay their loans back properly. So what should you do? By all means check with Experian as to whether there is any bad history at the address you are living at (I would be surprised if this is the case mind you) - do NOT pay anyone to send you your credit score as such a thing does not exist - the methods of scoring very from lender to lender. If you can afford the loan and really want the car then go with it - you may have to take some pain for a while to prove you are a good payer. I have come accross APR's higher than this! It may be worth trying other specialist lenders you here about on TV etc. who may view the risk slightly differently. By the way, Lexus finance will not do loans as high as the one you have been offered, who is it with? You are allowed to contact the finance company yourself and they will tell you the reason why the rate has been set so high - your dealer will not have been given such information so they cannot always help. Keep us informed

Convert Getting deposits off dealerships is something we seem to encounter a lot in the industry - so you are not the first and you won't be the last! The law itself is actually a bit vague on this point, however, you will normally find that a dealership has the right to take from the deposit "any reasonably incurred costs associated directly with ordering and preparing the vehicle". In other words if you ordered a pink IS200 with leopard skin seats and paid a £3000 deposit and then cancelled the dealer could lawfully take some of that deposit to compensate them for the costs in ordering the car and having to sell it. However, there is also a little twist in all this! A dealer normally has to supply the vehicle within a "reasonable time period" - this is typically 90 days, in your case even if you ordered it today they couldn't achieve this as November 19th is over 90 days away! Most sales executives do NOT earn out of keeping customer's deposits, in fact I have always refunded them straight away as I have better things to do with my time than keep taking calls from irrate customers. Plus, I have never met a customer who has turned round and said "ok I will buy it then!" so as a salesman you will never get the deal anyway! I wouldn't bother contacting Lexus GB as they don't own any of the dealerships anyway so their answer will probably be something like "it is down to the descretion of the dealer". Also don't go shouting off about getting your solicitor involved or taking them to court! It isn't worth it. Find out who the dealer principle/general manager is of the dealership and write to him/her, explain the reason for cancelling the order and thank them for the service that you have received and assistance with your part exchange. Then ask if they would be kind enough to refund your deposit. Almost all dealers will do this. If the dealership is owned by one of the big groups such as Arnold Clark, Inchcape, Sytner etc... you will not have to worry as a letter to head office will always work. But start with a polite letter to the dealer principle. Hope this helps, keep us informed. By the way we are refunding all our customer's deposits if they say "no", so if anyone is worried about placing an order let me know!!

At last - got myself the full spec and price bullitin from Lexus today (obviously way behind everyone else as normal!). There are a few other little bits that I have found to add to this topic that I don't think have been mentioned yet: 1. The £3000 price jump from the standard model to the SE gets you electric heated/chilled memory seats plus 17" wheels - you will still NOT get rain sensing wipers, parking sensors, xenons, rear armrest, eletrically adjustable steering column, self dimming mirror, rear blind or illuminated scuff plates - for all that you have to go to the SE-L which costs another £2,600!! Suddenly the SE is not the "bargin" model it is in the other ranges. Bare in mind that to go from the base to SE inc sat nav costs around £6000 in the GS and £6500 in the RX yet costs £5710 and you still don't get all the bits like xenons, self dimming mirror... 2. The sport IS250 will NOT be released until APRIL 2006!! This is £1500 less than the SE-L and has metal trim instead of wood (at last a trim for the younger generation!), loses the rear blind and the illuminated scuff plates but gets scuff plates all round and 18" wheels, metal pedals and sports suspension. Also gets Escaine trim rather than the leather. 3. Adaptive Cruise Control is only available on the IS250 SE-L AUTO. 4. The different diesel engine configuration that I mentioned in one of my previous posts will find its way into the IS220 Sport - this will have a different final drive ratio to give a "sportier" performance with higher emissions. 5. The new sat nav looks superb!! It now has a 32,000 x 256 VGA colour screen with a "Michelin" style map - looks very cool! 6. A world first of "sound absorbing sun visors"!! - don't ask! 7. The eletric sunroof has a nine position selector - not just the old slide and tilt. As a dealer who is going to have to sell them I would say that the entry level model for £22,400 will be a good seller - I don't see a lot of people taking the SE at £25,400 with no xenons, self dimming mirror etc. The SE-L will sell well because it has everything but really most customers will want the rear camera/PDC's which means buying the Media pack - I think this is not well planned. £2710 is a lot of money and many will not use the DVD player, there needs to be two versions of this. Put simply, I would say you are looking at three main sellers from a dealer's perspective - the base at £22,000, the SE-L with media pack for £32,000 and the sport for £26,500. Pick of the range? If I had to pick one BIG seller it would be the IS220d Sport. But I will reserve full judgement until I drive them all probably in September. One final point, I was talking to our Lexus area manager today who said that "Lexus are listening" regarding pricing etc., make of that what you will!

........... and you are who sorry? :duh: ← I am somebody for whom the sucess of this car determines whether I can pay my bills next year!!

Steve Dealers are very optomistic people!! The reason we were originally told the new IS would start around 18K was that it would be close to the entry price of the current IS200 - which actually is closer to £19K anyway, so I am wrong on that point! One thing has changed recently mind you that may have prompted a re-think from Lexus and that is the fact BMW are now starting the 3 series at around £22k (mainly because of the 1 series) and the Audi A4 2.0 litre starts at close to the same money. Despite this, the starting price doesn't really matter because no one really buys them anyway! The real key model will be the SE - and at this point we don't really know if the sat nav will be standard. The £2700 for the sat nav might include the all singing all dancing dvd player as well so that would seem reasonable. £2000 for the pcs/acc is not bad either if it is the same as on the GS430. But authorised Lexus car dealers are always the last to know these things!

I can tell you that these prices have NOT yet been released to dealers officially. In fact by law I believe you are not allowed to release a price for a product if it is not available for purchase within 90 days. This means that the first day Lexus could release a price would be around the 19th August - as the IS250 is being released on the 19th November. Pricing for the IS220d will probably be late 2005/early 2006 based on that. That doesn't mean that the prices quoted are wrong!! After all they could have been leaked out, but I hope for all sakes that they are wrong! From a dealer perspective these prices are a bit too high, although I will hold back on my full judgement until I have driven the car. Someone asked why there is no automatic diesel? The reason is it accounts for a very small percentage of sales for most manufacturers. Most diesels have the torque to compensate for being lazy with your gear changes and as such don't always benefit from an automatic transmission, plus you also lose a bit on the fuel economy. We have been told by Lexus that an automatic diesel will be "2 years away". I have been telling customers to expect somewhere around 18-25K for the IS250 when it comes out. One of the big selling points has been the fact that we are typically 5-6K less than equivilently specified BMW's and Mercedes. I will investigate these figures more and see if I can find the truth!