Its a company car from the lease company we use and it seems Options are priced differently than "models", they assume 100% depreciation, which means over 3 years MM adds about 2700/36 a month wheras an SE although costing 3K more now, will be worth say 1.2K more in 3 years so the lease cost only has to pay for the difference e.g. 1800/36.
illogical i know but i guess for most cars there are so many options they can't be bothered to work out seperately what they mean for depreciation. It even applies to metallic paint, where as some other companies the lease goes down if you ge metallic because it helps residuals.
Had a test drive. Dealers are very nice, much better than the alfa ones, although all that sitting around drinking coffee means your eye wanders to some of the more luxurious cars! there was an 05 GS300SE with 3K miles going for 27K!
Drove a black SE, done about 8K miles registered 11/05. Its definately a pretty special place to sit when driving. It seemed very quiet, maybe a little tyre noise. It certainly seems to go pretty well in 3rd and 4th between 2&3K revs. It seemed that there is a bit of a gap between 2nd & 3rd, especially when changing down in slowing traffic. Test was at 4pm in town so a lot of traffic & speed cams and not much chance to stretch its legs, kept finding i was going a lot faster than i thought, i guess the quietness was respnsible for that. Managed a quick go at 60-65 in 6th it was slow, but not much vibration in the mirror.
I know everyone says go for the MM not the SE, but i did like the seats, (its one of the things i like about my current car too) and it definately looks better with 17's on. I mostly listen to the radio or my mp3 player, and have a portable sat nav for the times I'm going somewhere different, (it does traffic warnings as well). Work will pay for an aftermarket bluetooth connection. So other than the DVD functionality and parking camera I'm not sure I will be missing much and the DVD function I can't see me using. (In my saab I built an in car pc, with sat nav, dvd, mp3, TV etc, but only ever used mp3's and sat nav)
I'm coming down in favour of the is220 over the 159. both seemed pretty good to drive but the lex in se trim seemed a better quality of place to be.
RD