skaye

I have the Motorola Razr in my IS250 Sports Luxury and it stays in my top pocket or in the armest compartment most of the time. The bluetooth works a treat with the speakers and in-built mic - literally everyone I speak to asks how I can handle the Razr and drive at the same time, not a single person has picked that I'm on hands free. Getting your phonebook from your phone is a bit of an effort though. You literally have to add them in one-by-one. The voice dialling is a treat though, so it all works out in the end. I am going to review my charging system for the phone because to date I've never bothered to do it in the car, but my battery ran flat while on the way home last week and I then had to revert to looking like a complete loser talking into my Blackberry in an effort to finish the call.

Its interesting Georgea mentions about sluggishness. Having driven my IS250 now for 6 weeks, I have the complete and utter opposite perspective. I find the IS250 is a bit slower off the line (0-40) than other cars I've driven, but from 50 on up the thing moves like lightning. Its probably my biggest complaint about the car is that I hardly notice the accelleration between 50 and 120 and often find myself doing 110 in 80 zones. Personally, I think the auto transmission is impressively tuned for top end accelleration. I'm not a race car driver or anything, so I have no real idea what I'm talking about other than my own impressions over the last six weeks and 4000kms.

Geez, I asked my dealer here in Australia about running the car in and he said, "Flog it, mate. Take it out over the holidays and drive the **** out of it." So I did, I drove it nearly 1500kms in four days, with the first trip in it being about 650kms in one hit. I spoke to the guy about it when I got back and he didn't even ask if there were problems, he asked how I liked driving it. I'm upto about 4000kms now in the 6 weeks I've had it and I have started to notice a bit of wind noise on the driver's door that I might get them to look into.

Tango, that is an excellent picture and very helpful. I am sure I have one of those Kensington PC Charger things around so I have to dust it off and see how I go. Many thanks!

I am still the driving the hell out of my new IS 250. I picked it up on Christmas Eve and have done just over 2500km since. Its running like a treat still and I'm getting really fantastic mileage out of it - about 650km per tank which I think is slightly above the rating. For Bobcat's info, I have the Sport Luxury model in Graphite with light grey leather interior. I bought mine from Lexus of Chatswood from a guy called Kevin Yeung. The whole experience was top notch. Kevin has called me twice since the delivery to see how I'm liking the new car. I think you're going to struggle getting any kind of discount on either the Prestige or Sports Luxury as I've heard the same story as Tony. Mine is through a novated lease with a fleet leasing company owned by one of the major banks and I work for one of the largest companies in Australia, with all of that, the driveaway price was discounted about 3-4%. I also ordered mine, site unseen as a pre-order. My mate went in to Lexus of Parramatta last week and was told that they are getting further and further backed up and aren't offering any discounts on the entire IS range. Apparently if you order now, delivery is looking like late April/early May in some cases. I'm sure if you wave a chequebook around that will get shorter, but my mate was told the same thing as Tony, they are selling a couple cars a day and at the moment are getting less per month in new stock than they are selling. The only thing on the car I would change would be with the front end, its a bit too close to the ground and grinds alot. Oh yeah, and I'm a bit cheesed with the lack of voice recognition for climate and audio controls. Other than that, the car rocks. Its amazing the number of people who stare at the car. I was at Bunnings on the weekend and was backing out of the parking lot and this guy was walking with his wife, two kids and a third in a pram he was pushing. As I was backing out he was fixating on the car and literally walked his pram right into a parked ute. It was like a scene from a commercial.

I am absolutely destroying the underside of the front end bumper on my Sport Luxury. It is just way too low. Every day driving out of our lot at work I grind the road. I've tried a heap of different angles. Very frustating. Mind you, the car is fab, so I'll let it go. :D

I know the Australian version of the IS250 Sport Luxury does have the ISO-FIX and in behind the headrests in the rear seats they have a little panel that when flipped back has an inbuilt bracket for the strap-clip-thingy so you don't have to screw the bolt and attachment in yourself. Quite helpful. One word of advice though, depending on how old your little one is (our little guy is 28 months) they may not like the IS 250. The rear windows are very high and our son has a booster seat and his eye level is below the bottom of the window, so he either looks up out the window or looks out the front window. He was pretty cranky at first that he couldn't see properly out the window. We then put his favourite Jamie Cullum CDs on the Levinson system, switched the sound to his back corner and he seems quite happy now. The smooth ride and quietness are like a sleep enducing device for him as well.

Jindabyne and the whole Snowy Mountains area is trying to become like an Aussie version of Whistler or Lake Louise in Canada and be a plyground all year round. We went swimming, drove around some of the towns, went on the Snowy Scheme tour, etc. They have alot of fishing and caves there that are good fun. If you are into cycling and bush walking then its one of the best places in Australia. We went because with a two year old, six hours is about the max he can sit in a car without becoming a royal pain and we wanted to take the new IS250 for a run. On to my previous question about voice automation in the Aussie version of the IS250. I spoke to my dealer briefly yesterday and none of those voice activation features (outside of name tags for the phone) work are available in any version of the Aussie IS250. I'm pretty disappointed and don't understand why. Considering that if you buy the IS250 Sports Luxury like I did, you're paying damn near $85k which is like thiry-six thousand pounds for our UK friends, you'd expect all of the features people overseas get.

I am in Australia and have been researching this issue over the last day or so myself. In my set of books that came with the IS250 was a SatNav manual. It describes the upgrade process in detail (how to remove the existing DVD and replace it). They also suggest you let a Lexus dealer do it. In the book it told me who made the Satnav system (DENSO) and who's maps they use for Australia (Sensis). That allowed me to check to see if there was a new mapping DVD from Sensis (there isn't) and it also has pricing. I will be asking when I take the car in next week if they do the upgrade or if I buy it, will they do it for me. Hope that helps.

I went with Graphite which has the light grey leather interior. There is too much pollen and dust where I live in Sydney for black to be a realistic option, so I felt the slightly more lightened colour would allow a bit of dust without being too noticeable. On my drive today from Jindabyne to Canberra, I got it up to 160kph at one point. It was an absolutely silky experience. I needed to pass two cars and as I was just passing the first I noticed some oncoming traffic, I just gave it a bit more gas and it gracefully went from 120 to 160 in a flash. I reckon I could have hit 200 in the same space if I had put my foot down. Yesterday I asked about upgrading the mapping DVD, well it turns out the instructions are in the Navigation System manual right at the back. It suggests you let Lexus do it for you which I think I will. I still can't figure out the voice activation stuff. Am I missing something or does it only seem to apply to the Bluetooth hands free phone? I read some of the reviews talking about setting the temperature of the car and all that stuff, but every time I press the "Talk" icon it tells me I can't do it from that screen. If anyone knows what I'm doing wrong please let me know.

I picked up my new IS250 Sport Luxury from Lexus of Chatswood here in Sydney on Christmas Eve. I've been having good fun breaking it in so far and tomorrow I'll crack 1000km. I've driven from Sydney to Jindabyne, over to Thredbo and tomorrow will head back with a stopover in Canberra. The car is holding up exceptionally well and it is amazing fun to drive. I was driving along the Alpine Way here in the mountains today and was going a bit too quick around a corner and the car handled itself beautifully. It would have been a bugger to run it down a ravine a few days after getting it. As someone used to driving "lesser" cars for the past few years (a Vectra and most recently the VZ Commodore) I decided to move up in car class. My wife was very supportive as she likes the toys as much as I do and having a two year old, the new sound system rules. Nothing like turning on a kids CD and then just setting it to play out of the rear left speakers so we don't hear it at all. I also tested out the radar cruise control on the M7 on the way down here. It was a bit disturbing, but good fun - I locked the car in at 103kph, jumped in the left hand lane and after about two minutes I came up on this old X-type Jag doing about 95kph. As we got within distance, my foot started hovering over the break and before I could press, the car noticed the slower Ford Mondeo, errrr, I mean Jaguar and matched his speed to keep a safe distance. I'm taking it in next week when I'm back in Sydney for a "second handover" so they can go through some other stuff with me. Not really sure what we'll talk about, I already have my phone and my iPod hooked up and have programmed my key to reconfigured the seats and mirrors for me when I jump in. I will be raising an issue about SatNav. For those of us from Sydney, the M7 opened up on December 16th and obviously the car is not THAT up to date yet. On my way down to the mountains, I entered the street I wanted to come to and it plotted the guidance. Unfortunately while it knows OF the Western Sydney Orbital, it can't give guidance information for it - completely understandable. However, taking the M7 from my house instead of the path chosen by the Nav System cuts about 30 minutes off a six hour trip, which is significant. I know the new WhereIs DVD contains the M7 information, but I'm not sure how I upgrade it or if Lexus will do that for me for free or if they'll do it for me if I buy the upgrade DVD. Hopefully they'll fill me in. Anyway, great site, it helped alot in my decision making.