kenfoxy

Always worth checking the supermarket aisles. Trouble is the offers can be short lived.

Just done Liverpool to Bristol and back (360 miles) with 4 up plus luggage. Still some left in the tank so I think that is quite good when you take into account the silky smooth quiet engine and the comfort. On top of that, the underground car park in Bristol was "a bit tight", put the IS200 with its relative narrowness and superb turning circle (rear wheel drive) came into its own. What a car. And it still looks better than most saloons out there.

Panic over chaps. What the Daily Mail is reporting is the road tax rise IN THE FIRST YEAR OF OWNERSHIP which includes the new showroom tax. Very bad reporting.If you buy a Band H car on 31 March 2010 the road tax will be £175. If you buy a Band H car on 1 April 201o the road tax will be £240. That is a £65 rise, but there won't be 21m new car buyers.

The increase in road tax for April 1 2010 for Band H has already been set as £5, Band K has already been set at £30. What Wednesday's budget will determine (probably) are the increases from April 1 2011. I have never heard of a budget being set and then amended just prior to implementation. To affect 21m voters as described would be political suicide.

I have only ever owned petrol cars and thet all gave my expected MPG figures calculated from the urban cycle + 10% for city/town driving. Judging by what I have read on this forum and tests of other diesel and hybrid cars (like Top Gear), this simple calculation does not work and you can expect a lot worse. If I was going for a non-petrol I would only listen to real test figures and forget the rest.

Sorry to hear it mate. You might get someone from the Forum, sounds like a goodun to me. Put the same post under the IS200 Section. Could be someone wanting to upgrade. All the best.

I agree with going for a good service if you are going to keep it but replace the air filter with a K&N drop in replacement. Better flow and you will never need to replace it again. Probably no more expensive and you can do it yourself. I think you will find that current used car values are driven by fuel consumption and VED tax bands. This makes the IS200 poor and a BMW diesel good. So it will probably cost you an arm and a leg to change. The other thing to bear in mind is that the fuel consumption on "so called" economy cars are a pure fantasy (read test reports or Top Gear). What I would do is find out the real fuel consumption and VED tax on your target car and do the comparison sums for what you would save in a year.

Sounds weird that. This points out 2 things. Firstly, there are differences in grades/brands of petrol. Secondly, If your car was CO2 tested on your mix it would end up in K not L and save £200 in VED per year.

When you say you have been "asked" by your employer to travel between sites, I assume you mean "told", in reality. Just imagine what would have happened if you had been involved in an accident which involved a police prosecution and huge third party damages. Would your employer then claim you "volunteered". I would "ask" the employer to pay for taxis until the matter has been properly sorted.

I do hope you are right about the illegality issue. It is the first I have heard of it.

No I think that the pre-March 01 cars will be left in their current bands. There is a possibility that all cars registered after March 01 will be brought into the warm embrace of the new tax banding system, at some stage. Let us see if Mr Darling's sense of fairness extends to people who have found themselves running cars which have been deemed gas guzzlers AFTER they have already been bought. Many of these people cannot afford to exchange these cars to "greener" vehicles because of the poor trade-ins.

A lot of people Band K, and over 225 CO2's, are on the edge of their seats over car tax. The worst case scenario is that Mr Darling will move them all to Bands L or M. Think £425 minimum. The best case is that he will leave it alone at £245 from April.

T1R's are a good choice, but they do wear out a bit. Read up in TYREREVIEWS. I wouldn't sacrifice wet weather grip for quietness with an IS200.

Mine went a couple of years ago. Got a replacement from Lexus Liverpool. They had them in stock! It is a very common failure. Wasn't expensive, but expensive for what it is.

I agree that a FSH is "desirable" because it is better than none and a FLSH is better again. However, an HPI and full inspection is "essential". Certainly, if there are plenty of IS200's out there, that you want, then demanding a FSH is not unreasonable. Trouble is most of us are picky about the spec and distance which quickly narrows the field.

I wonder if a service history is a kind of comfort blanket in that you can kid yourself that the car has been properly maintained. It doesn't prove that at all. You only have to read some of the threads on car forums to realise that there are scum bag garages out there. Possibly if you know the garages in the service record, it would mean something. My view is that regardless of whether the car has a SH or not you should get a HPI check and a full inspection done. This will tell you what the state of the car is now. If the cambelt hasn't been done, the car is on borrowed time. Driving an IS200 past 60K would terrify me.

That is an amazing price. They are £140 each from Camskills without fitting! Sothat is half price.

If your insurance finds out you will be penalised next year, even though it wasn't your fault. The reason is that, according to car insurance claim data, people who have been hit are statistically more likely to have a claim sooner rather than later.

If it is true that everything was OK before the Tesco petrol then I would start there.

I too have what appear to be scratches on every window that have only appeared in the last couple of years. However I can't actually feel a scratch at all. I have tried all the usual cheap remedies and none of them work. I will be getting one of those "kits" in a new attempt. It looks to me like my ice scraper is the culprit but it is a Vileda and is made of SOFT plastic. In theory it should not be possible for it to mark the glass. Never known anything like it in years of motoring. I was wondering if desert sand has landed and scraping the glass has marked it.

See "Toyota Service Costs" thread. May only be Johnsons Toyota but even with cambelts, plugs etc it may still be a whole lot cheaper.

I would go for a Toyota service because they are doing major services for £100 (parts and labour) at the moment. The belts are the three you can see under the bonnet which may be worth doing as they may need to come off to get at the cambelt. They are cheap enough on E-bay as a set. A new water pump would probably be a good idea while they are at it. Put the pollen filter in yourself. It's behind the glove box. I'm surprised you need a new aircon pump and not just a re-gass. As far as tyres go, I would be buy the best wet weather tyres for the IS200 back end. I think the Rainsports are probably a damned good choice, but get them online to be delivered to you for fitting by a fitter, or to be delivered to a local fitter for fitting. Camskills, Tyretraders spring to mind. Usually cheaper than your high street guys.

If they have separate service desks they may do. If not it would probably worth trying your next nearest Toyota dealer. The savings would be HUGE.

My daughter has just returned from having the famous recall job done. On the way out, the service manager said that they have a special offer on services this month. For her car (yaris) she was quoted £69. Seems remarkably cheap to me. As Toyota and Lexus are really the same, IS200 owners could get a good deal here. It might only be a Johnson Cars offer, I don't know.

The various websites is the way to go. But check out the reviews out there. Tyrereviews is another one.