Rapidone

I've been happy with the performance of the auto wipers on the 450h so far, although I do use the sensitivty adjust to fine tune it from time to time. I did have problems with the 250sel though. On a cold mornings with a little dew on the car, the wipers would sometimes go nuts, wiping furiously and not stopping.

Ah I see, and I thought something wasn't working. Seems obvious since I've been told. Now I'm wondering why they didn't put 'WHEEL' next to the image of the wheel. :)

The on screen display shows the traction battery charge level, 8 wide bars either lit or unlit depending on charge. What is the meaning of the 4 smaller bars directly above that; with the small '+' and '-' sign on each side? They have always been dark with no change whenever I've looked.

I don't see anything relevant in the hand book. It shows how to change the unlock options, but as I understand it, regardless of which ever unlock option is chosen, activation should still occur when placing a hand in the door handle, and not by only having the key near the car. As for waiting for the service, I may forced to do something sooner. I checked the tyres pressures today, one was 5lb lower in pressure than the rest. I can't see an obvious problems with the tyre, so it may have been incorrectly inflated at the dealers. I'll wait a few days and check it again.

When I went to collect the car, the salesman actually told me that the smart entry worked differently on this car than on my 250sel, during the car presentation runthrough :/ Did he actually think I wouldn't read the manual, or ask anyone else? One more job for the next service, along with the wheel refubishment.

The seats are ventilated, but not air conditioned.

When approaching the drivers side of the car with key in pocket the door doesn't unlock untill I place my had behind the door handle. Whilest on the passenger side the door unlocks when I walk upto it. I've been used to the IS250SE-l which didn't open until reaching behind the handle, and I much prefer this. Do you think there is a fault on the car? Or am I doing something wrong?

When asked about the seats the salesman, said the leather can stretch and contract and look different from day to day. I can't say I ever noticed this effect on the last car however. I'm willing to give them the benefit of doubt.

I'm absolutely sure, I checked each wheel in turn both the condition of the alloys and the tread depth, the wheels looked brand new. As for the interior I was very surprised to see the drivers seat was perfect and looked unused, for a car with 40k miles this stuck in my mind. When I took the car, the seat looked as you would expect from a car with that many miles. I did raise these issues with the salesman, I had however already paid the balance on the car. It didn't even occur to me that I would need to check over the car again before paying. Not at a Lexus dealership, I didnt expect this at all. Yes it is a dealer approved car. As for the idea of returning the car, there won't be a refund. You have to take another car off them instead. I assume at full marked price, with no price negotiation. To be honest I wouldn't want to deal with them again. As for the batteries, they were at the same charge level this morning, and the car says it is returning 34mpg this evening :), which is almost exactly the same as I was getting from the IS250 Auto. EDIT: It's now giving over 38mpg since the tyres were correctly inflated, and since I've learned how to drive the car more efficiently. That's about 8 to 10% more than I could get from the 250Auto on the same round trip.

I would not have taken the car until it was put back as you viewed it,I can't understand why you did nice car or not because they have conned you. As regards Lexus looking at it have you got proof IE photos of the wheels and interior if not you will have a job to proof anything. At least I will get to tell what happened to Lexus UK. They phoned me up today to ask about my experience of buying the car and the dealer service, we talked for a while they said they will send a questionaire by post. I will make very clear what has happened.

I have to say I love this car. It seems to give the same fuel ecconomy as the IS250 but is a great deal faster on accelaration. I was very concerned with the noise from the air conditioning at first, it seemed way louder than the IS250, but then I realised the radio was playing static, sounded simillar to rushing air. Anyway once the stereo was turned off I was very pleased with the noise level. I'm not convinsed by the battery charge level yet. I will be paying very close attention to the charge level on the batteries tomorrow to see how much charge has been lost overnight. I have a few problems with the purchace which do not reflect on the quality of the car, but I feel I have to mention. I would be gratefull to hear your comments on this. Before I took a test drive in the car I was very carefull to look at all the visible details on the car, I paid great attention to the condition of the wheels, tyres and interior. The wheels were imaculate, looked like brand new not a mark on them, simmilarly the interior, the seats looked like they had never been used. I even mentioned to the sales man that the interior looked incredible and unused. So today I went to collect the car, and paid the balance on the car and had a good look at it again before I drove it away. Two of the wheels have noticable damage on them, one half way round the rim of the wheel, and the seats now have very noticeable creases on the leather. I didnt want to refuse the car, so I took it. Is there any way I can get Lexus UK to look at this issuse? I thought I had a good deal on a car, only to have the dealer to swap out parts to save themselves some cash. What should I do now?

How long does charge in the batteries last? From full charge to empty. I'm asking because I've been told the batteries leak power. I'd be interested to hear from anyone with experience of this. Do you have to use the car every day to maintain good fuel ecconomy? If you dont use it for a week do you find the battery is empty?

Wow, thats £250,000 per year for one man and his van. I think I could do the job for £100 each and £125,000 per year. Looks like now would be a good time to knock up a business plan.

I thought it was the other way around. Put a bit petrol in a tank of diesel and you may get some smoke, but put diesel in a petrol car and you wont run and will damage the cat. I think this is the reason the diesel filler nosel is bigger on the diesel pump than the petrol. It's more important to keep diesel out of a petrol car than petrol out of a diesel car. I've put 7 litres of petrol in a full tank of diesel on a Ford C-max without any problems at all, not even any smoke and no problems running. EDIT I found this from a quick search Petrol in a diesel engine Breakdown organisations put the figure of petrol misfuelling at around 150,000 cars a year, with repair bills totalling hundreds of millions of pounds. Petrol will strip your diesel engine of the lubricant used to keep it ticking over and cause metal components to grate against each other and disintegrate. This runs the risk of damaging the fuel pump and fuel-injection systems, or wrecking an engine completely if used for a significant amount of time. To make matters worse pre-ignition systems start fuel pumps in new diesel models when car doors are unlocked. This cuts out the time it takes for new diesel engines to warm up, but means that diesel engines can be ruined by petrol by simply unlocking doors. The fuel pump and injection systems and filters will likely need to be replaced on new models, while an entire engine could be wrecked beyond repair if it has been run for long enough. Regardless of the extent of the damage, the repair bill could potentially run into thousands of pounds. Avoiding turning the engine over or stopping as soon as possible is vital to prevent more damage to the engine in these circumstances. A fuel-tank drain could be sufficient in such cases to prevent damage. Diesel in a petrol engine Theoretically it should be hard to fill a petrol tank with diesel, as diesel nozzles are too wide to fit into the tank. However using diesel in a petrol engine may destroy the engine´s catalytic converter, necessitating a costly replacement.

I've been considering changing from my 250SE-L to a 450h for a while now. I've seen several SE and SE-L that look interesting, but I'm having difficulty making a final choice. They are between 15k and 45K miles and differ by 18 months in age. Considering the 5 year warrentee limit on the batteries; and the good reputation of Lexus for reliability, I think the high mileage younger car option is probably the best choice. However this probably means buying a car that's ex-lease and been abused and roughly treated by a business user, as opposed to a low mileage social and domestic used car. What are your thoughts on this? Which way would you go?

Sorry wrong forum please delete. :/

Is Astral black, black metalic paint? I'm trying to decide on a colour/colours to look for on the next car, and would like a dark metalic paint. I would prefer metalic paint mainly because I think this will be more scratch resistant than the flat black I have now. What options would be suitable on a 07 450h, but not red. I don't want it to fade to pink in a few years time.

Lots of factors to consider. Temperature of tyres when you start, was there a frost, tyres will be underinflated if temperatures were low overnight. The wind, cross winds can mess up the airflow over the car, obviously a head wind/tail wind has an effect. Stopping and starting kills fuel ecconomy, doing this only 2 or 3 times on such a short trip will make a significant difference. Humidity and air pressure will have an effect at high speed, thicker heavier air takes more effort to move. Wet roads, lifting water off the road takes power. I also suspect that a signifficant difference is caused by the car deciding it needs to charge the battery on one trip and not on another. The power to run the lights, and stereo has to come from somewhere. I've had between 35 and 42 mpg on the same slightly downhill trip to work over 17 miles, mainly motorway, when being very carefull.

Ok, I've finally made the discision to get the 450h SE. I don't want the wood steering wheel from the SE-L. The budget is going to stretch to 10 or 12k ontop of trade in for my 06 IS, less than 20k miles no MM. Do you think a GS 56 or 07 with simmilar mileage, MM and sat nav, is within budget from Lexus approved? Are they going to say my car is only worth 10k?

tonyricha, sounds like you got a great deal on that car, regardless of the colour. I do however like the conering ability of the IS, the only car I've been behind that corners significantly faster was a Lotus Elise. I also like the rear wheel drive on the IS250 this is my first rear wheel drive car:). I was having some fun with a Golf GTI driver yesterday, accelarating together, braking, cornering, he ended up behing me stopped at lights before a 90 degree left turn. I left him for dead when the lights changed, RWD Vs FWD The other options are the GS430 and GS460, the fuel costs are higher, but I only do about 8k miles per year, and there will never be the issue of having to replace the battery pack or any other components in the energy recovery system. Also the weight of both will be considerably lower than the 450h. I've also been considering the Jaguar XF 4.2/4.2 suppercharged, BMW3 3.0d, or M3, even keeping the IS250 and getting a TVR Griffith 500 for fun at weekend, or maybe wait till this time next year and get a used ISF when the price has dropped. Heh, I feel a bit like a kid in a candy shop, too many options. However I realy like the idea of the 450h, since it's not often in a drive there's the options to floor the accelerator, so no need to worry about emptying the batteries. The lower road tax and insurance and fuel cost makes a big advantage over the ISF and the two car option.

Looks like they are dropping in value at about £1K per month. If that continues for the next year, they will begin to look like a good buy.

I have the rubber mats that came with the car 2nd hand, and I also would like to get some quality carpet mats, the ruber mats a fine but, they dont shout luxury. I went to Lexus Stockport to buy some Lexus mats, £85 + vat and looked like they were made for about £2.50, so I still have the rubber mats. I have tried emailing this company a couple of times but no reply http://www.extremeautoaccessories.co.uk/pr...hp?section=3351 I'd be interested in anything else you find, I'd still like to replace these rubber mats, especially now the good weather is here.

The advantage of the black plastic valve covers is that they are very low in mass, changing all 4 metal cover to plastic will save a fortune in fuel over the life of the car. You should be thanking the theives.

I had the misfortune to ride in the back of the new 320CLS last week. My head was in contact with the roof, I'm 5'10". The seats are very hard, but probably good for a long drive. My attention was drawn to the cheep looking lumbar support levers on the front seats, very flimsy felt like they would break off after little use. The door panels had large gaps. The front passenger door didn't shut properly unless it was slammed shut. We drove into Manchester Picadillily train station carpark and hitting one of the speed bumps, the left rear door mechanism opened the window on that door and left the door slightly ajar. Needless to say, I wasnt very impressed.

"Toyota has sold over 500,000 Generation II and III Prius worldwide and say they have never had to supply a battery pack for replacement due to wear and tear." Is it safe to assume that the same technology is used in the 450h?