dazed

I rarely turn mine on. As well as delaying gear shifts I'd always assumed it altered the throttle response profile to make the engine feel more lively. I might be wrong of course.

Spec-wise the IS250 Advance is somewhere between an SE and an SE-L with SatNav as standard (but no Mark Levinson).

Only available as an auto and with no paddles or cooled seats.

Basically a lot of car for a good price. Very reliable and a pleasure to drive.

I would like to keep mine as long as poss

Absolutely. I'm amazed that people who like to change their car regularly (more than once every couple of years) go anywhere near new cars. The depreciation costs are just eye-watering.

I have a self imposed £3,000 depreciation budget per year which ruled out an IS300h for my recent car change despite the dealer (who I have a good relationship with) offering me a beautiful pre-registered (delivery mileage only) 300h (Luxury?) with leather, metallic paint and SatNav for £27K cash. I must admit I was very tempted (bearing in mind I'd have clawed back some of the extra expense in reduced fuel and road tax), but I finally settled for a mint condition two year old IS250 Advance with 6,000 miles on the clock for £18,000. I anticipate keeping it for 5 years.

Maybe I'll go hybrid next time.

Is this basically the same recall for the same fault that was in the 2006-2007 IS 250? I'm guessing that the supplier of the master cylinder has found that more of their cylinders were affected than first though?

Oh good - I thought I'd got a sense of deja-vu. My original IS250 (2007) was recalled a few years ago for a check - nothing changed though. I now notice that it's being recalled again. Make of that what you will.

On a related note - I've noticed that when I use my windscreen washer at night the headlights sometimes seem to dim briefly. Is this anything to do with the headlight washer?

Sorry for the daft query, but I recently purchased a 2009 is250 and noticed that the demister doesn't clear the very top of the rear screen...

I googled a bit and did find some info that the top few lines are not actually part of the demister but are the aerial for the radio.

Can someone confirm this is or isn't the case thanks!

Same with both of mine, so I've always assumed it's the radio aerial.

Nope Dazed SE is the Base model, half the fun of these cars is the gadgets so pointless to go for the SE. Sport or SE-L all the way!

The car you mention seems overpriced to me, paid about that for mine with 20,000 less miles and mine is a Sport!

If you're looking at 2006/7 cars the SE is the mid-spec (not at all basic) so don't rule it out unless you're after the extras that the SE-L offers.

Dare I say it that I think it would be possible to get a bit more from the tank.

I would say the absolute limit is 600 miles based on an experiment I once did:

1. Got the car warmed up and on to a quiet, level dual carriage way.

2. Turned on the cruise control at 70mph.

3. Reset the fuel economy display.

4. Drove for about 5 minutes.

The fuel economy display read 46mpg (which equates to about 43mpg in reality).

So I deduced that 600 was theoretically possible, but probably impossible in practise.

the max i could get was 450 miles on one of my scotland trips. You guys must be driving with Cruisecontrol at 70 to get to 500 miles in a tank.

Although I don't use cruise control I do tend to drive around 70 +/- 5mph when on dual carriageways (traffic permitting of course).

My daily commute takes me in and out of Cambridge and includes 8 roundabouts between home and the office which (try as I might) I just can't take at 70mph!

About 10 miles of my journey is on a single carriageway A road on which I probably manage about 55 +/- 5mph.

But that V6 is a lovely motor to pootle around in nonetheless.

Indeed.

Just filled up this lunch time after covering 500 miles with a displayed remaining range of 29 miles (implying a total range of about 570 miles)

I needed to add 55 litres to refill the tank, implying 41 mpg (quite a bit less than the trip computer's 43.8mpg.

New approximate range appeared as 503 miles (obviously somewhat conservative).

That's really impressive Noo bie. I make that a total tank range of about 580 miles. And I bet you were still driving at a decent speed on the motorway.

My current tank is looking like it'll return about 550 miles. That's good, but not unusual for my typical weekly motoring.

It just goes to show that the IS is a brilliant car if you spend a lot of time cruising. It's the urban driving that kills the economy.

I have noticed your "Range approx." reading is 351 with 157.6 miles done .... the max range I have ever had from a fill up was around the 360 mark - what does yours start at when filled up?

It usually varies between about 460 and 495. I suspect it's calculated on some kind of rolling average of the previous few tanks, so if you have a few good tanks it gradually creeps up and then gets knocked back when you don't get such good economy (in my case usually due a change in where I'm driving).

Good luck with your 500 mile tank is200 Newbie. It's perfectly achievable if you do the right type of driving.

My current tank is on target for about 550 miles (one of my better ones this year).

When the 'Range approx' display hits zero you have about 1 gallon left.

I learned this during the test drive of a used IS250 about 7 years ago. When I got into the car and switched it on it reported a range of 2 miles. I said to the sales guy that he needed to fuel the car, but he said it would be fine for the test drive. Well, he was right as we drove for about 15 miles with no problems.

To be honest, I didn't really enjoy the drive as I thought the car would cut out any minute.

532 miles is not pie in the sky, but I accept that it's certainly not the norm. Even I'd have trouble hitting that figure during the winter months.

As I stated in my previous post I filled my car this morning with 56 litres, having travelled 475 miles since the previous fill up. If you just do the maths, you'll arrive at a total range of around 532 miles.

I'm a bit obsessive about fuel consumption (I burn my way through nearly £4K of petrol a year) so I reset my fuel consumption display at the start of each month to monitor any significant deviation. Last month's final reading was 39.8 which equates to around 38mpg in reality, which gives a total range of (and I'll say it again) 532 miles.

People on this forum often fail to appreciate that if you avoid urban driving and give the car a good run (45 miles, twice a day in my case) on a generally open road, you can achieve 38mpg without too much difficulty. There are numerous anecdotes on various threads that back that figure up.

Minimising brake use and anticipating the need to ease off the throttle is also a significant contributor to improved economy. I covered just over 100K miles in my first IS250 and the car was still on the first set of brake pads when I traded it in.

500 miles is most certainly achievable with an IS250 - I do it regularly (especially during the summer months) although I generally fill up at around 480 miles for obvious reasons.

I do 25,000 miles a year, mostly on dual carriageways with only small amounts of urban driving and I generally get the low fuel light come on at around 455 miles when the range left reads 40 miles. I believe that equates to an actual total range of around 532 miles, but I'd never try and actually achieve that!

Assuming the tank is 14 gallons that equates to 38mpg, which tallies perfectly with me putting 56 litres (12.5 gallons) in the car this morning after having travelled 475 miles since the last fill up. On leaving the filling station the range display read 494 miles, which equates to about 530 miles if I tried to run the car dry.

I reckon if I drove with a really light foot and managed to avoid traffic jams for a week I could get 560 miles out of a tank.

To be honest, when I read that you drive in London and do short journeys every other day (5-10 miles), I thought to myself - that'll be 25mpg tops, so you're doing about right IMHO.

If economy is important then I'd recommend a smaller petrol engine car with manual transmission, unless your budget could stretch to a hybrid. Definitely avoid diesels though.

A reading of 40.1 mpg after a long run is quite normal, especially in the summer. It probably equates to around 37.5mpg in reality though as it always over reads by a few mpg.

I do about 25K miles a year, mostly on open roads with little town driving and I regularly have the computer reading over 40mpg for most of the summer - it tends to drop back to around 36mpg during the winter.

The best I ever had was 45mpg for a drive from Devon to Suffolk a few years ago. It was a hot and sunny day and the roads were generally free moving. That probably equated to about 42mpg in reality (about 580 miles for a tank!).

Basically, the IS250 auto loves cruising at a steady speed and if you avoid heavy acceleration and touching the brakes needlessly (i.e. anticipate the need to slow and just ease off the throttle) you'll be rewarded with impressive economy.

Also I don't think the rear wheels are wider than the fronts, you are only looking at a 2cm difference in the width of the tyre, but I'm not 100 % sure of this...

Allan

This has happened to me a couple of times too. Just put it down to a 'characteristic' of the car. It always started the second time, so it's never really bothered me.

My original IS250 never consumed any oil until about 75-80K miles. Then it really started getting through the stuff and by the time it reached 100K miles it was consuming about 5 litres every 10K. The car still ran fine though with no sign of any smoke.

It sounds like your Battery is OK.

It's probably a long shot, but you didn't briefly start and then stop the car (perhaps to move it) sometime between arriving home last night and this morning? If you did you might have flooded the engine which will make starting it difficult.

If it's not that, it sounds like an electrical problem - perhaps just a fuse.

I regularly take my IS250 on long runs and I usually get the economy display to read at least 40mpg by the end of the journey (which equates to about 37mpg in reality).

I'm not sure what the optimum speed is for economy but I suspect it's quite a lot less than 70mph. A couple of weeks ago I filled up at the Thetford end of the A11 dualling roadworks and by the time I reached the Mildenhall roundabout (about 10 miles away) my tank economy was reading 52mpg (I kid you not). I managed to achieve this by driving at a steady 40-45mph all the way through the speed limited roadworks without interruption or braking. One minor assisting factor might have been the fact that there was about a 100 foot drop over the 10 miles, but I'd guess that that wouldn't account for much more than 1 or 2 mpg.

By time I reached Cambridge (another 20 miles) the overall figure had dropped to a still respectable 44mpg.

I've also noticed that some tanks of fuel return significantly better mpg than others (I'm talking 3 or 4 mpg difference) for no obvious reason (same daily journey and ambient temperature).

I've recently replaced my old IS250SE with a newer IS250 Advance and have been playing around with the sat nav which I didn't previously have.

Obviously, it's a little long in the tooth by modern standards (low resolution, jerky etc,) and it's route choice is sometimes rather dubious, but I'll forgive it given its age,

However, one slightly odd thing I've noticed is that all road over/underpasses are shown "upside down" i.e. if a road passes over the road I'm on, its shown as passing under me (and vice-versa). So, the database is clearly aware of road height information, but renders it the wrong way around.

Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just a problem with roads around my neck of the woods (East Anglia)?

P.S. I have 2011 road data.