Linas.P

5 hours ago, GrumpyCat said:

I didn't say it was coming here........ yet. The American MSRP for the GX 550 is $62,900 for Premium, $67,900 for Premium +, $75,900 for Luxury, $79,900 for Luxury +, $67,900 for Overland, and $75,900 for Overland+.

So with the current exchange rates that's £49,508 to £62,999. Seems to be excellent value when compared with the current Range Rover & Mercedes G Wagon. 

Maybe other forum members will be interested with the manufacturing process? 

It never works like that - when converting US prices you can bet it will be same amount in £ +10,000. 

So if GX would come to UK, it would start from something like £72,000 and even that is a little bit optimistic. Remember - Lexus RX starts at £62,000 and it is smaller model in the range. 

That said... again... I am a little bit baffled with Lexus decision making. Surely they can sell more GXs than LMs, as UK is quite hot for large luxury SUVs at the moment and as you mentioned even at £72,000 GX550 would be very competitive considering G-Class and Range Rover easily goes past £100,000. 

German 3L diesels are indeed very good. If I would ever had to own diesel (quite unlikely) then that would be my pick. 

Yes - double of negligible amount. Having some water in fuel as well does not affect your MPG, besides all fuel has some water in it. Pure petrol has trace amount of water, pure ethanol can handle about 5% before starting to separate, so E10 will have at most 0.5%. The discussion here is purely academical - there will be no impact to MPG either way.

Besides water in fuel in general does not reduce MPG, it could reduce power and slightly IMPROVE MPG, the problem with water in fuel is not that it hurts engine efficiency, but that fuel and water does not mix, causing separation and then when this water get's sucked into fuel system it could cause misfire and rough running. Again - will not be a problem for months!

11 minutes ago, Spark plug said:

The ethanol will absorb more water in winter ...I use E5 super all year round...

Would not be relevant to anything in terms of MPG etc. E5 can have up-to 5% ethanol, E10 up-to 10%, in grand scheme of things - negligible difference. Water in fuel only becomes relevant if you planning to park the car for 6 months, maybe 12 months... then yes E10 will be worse. But if you finish that tank within a month then either will do and again difference will be negligible, whatever tiny amount of water would get absorbed would not make ad difference for MPG.

As well I doubt winter would make a different either. I guess one could argue that humidity is higher in winter, but in UK humidity is horrible all year round, besides lower temperature would slow down alcohol and water reaction, so in winter/lower temperatures ethanol would absorb water slower, not faster.

Yes - I would agree, IS250 in itself is borderline alright, never felt uncomfortable with it's power, but never felt like it has "plenty" either, not the car which has "power to spare" in my opinion. So double the weight of the car and suddenly I think it would be rather underpowered, especially on low-end torque. Here is where diesel, or even better hybrid would be ideal. 

Yeah - I had unbraked figure ~600kg in my head. For braked as far as I understand you would need to somehow rig the connection for the trailer and car, I mean you would need to do it anyway for stop lights etc. but adding braking juts further complicates it. 

RX400h has about the same power from petrol engine alone (208hp), but electric motor adds another 64hp for total of 272hp, more importantly it add like extra 200Nm or torque from stand still, double that of IS250. 

In conclusion, I believe towing with IS250 is possible, but not recommended. Stressing that engine out probably would as well result in worse fuel consumption that larger car would get.

3 hours ago, johnatg said:

I don't see why you shouldn't tow a caravan. Just check the weight limits in the Owners manual. 

The car has adequate power and torque and it would be way better than a Landie or a Rangie. 

Yeah... I think for IS250 it is like 600kg limit (from memory), so indeed it is not they best choice of the car to use. Not that it can't be used, but just not great.

@Zuke - Landrovers in principle capable, but they are just horribly unreliable, not a joke neighbour bought Discovery, was very happy for 3 months and then engine seized. So I would not recommend, all sort of issues, electrical, mechanical, computer issues, besides you most likely going to get diesel, at which point it will not be ULEZ compliant and why have limitations like that. Plus you don't want "Luton to happen" to your car, so perhaps just stay away from that brand altogether.

What about Lexus RX 400h, they would cost about the same as IS250, so you likely would be able to change the car without paying anything to upgrade. Or if you want to upgrade then RX450h from little bit later years. For MPG they are not amazing, despite being hybrids they are still large cars, so I would say ~32-38MPG would be tops, when towing caravan probably add 20% more consumption. But in grand scheme of thing they would be comparable to other SUVs. Probably will not match diesel Discovery that could do 40-50MPG, but not having to replace seized engine is quite positive!

Definitely wrong nuts for these wheels (these wheels are standard for Lexus IS mk2).

they should look like this:

https://lexuspartsdirect.co.uk/product/lexus-wheel-nut/

To the question "if there is bigger difference between E5 and E10 on cold days", the answer is no. So if E10 is 5% less efficient in summer, it will be 5% less efficient in winter. 

The difference is chemical, E10 simply has "less fuel" in it and it will have less fuel all year round. 

1 hour ago, Bluemarlin said:

cheap tyres

That is my biggest bug bear - they look at stickers and painted brake callipers, yet people happily drive on outright dangerous chinesium tyres that are self-certified and unlikely to meet any standards. But the only thing they care is that tyre has to be 1.6mm+

1 hour ago, Localhero said:

Unless you have agreed value insurance you will never get back what you think your car is worth and that does not mean just telling the insurers that you think its worth £10k they may even iinclude  that figure on your policy, but you will only get  book price regardless of whatever valuation you put on your car

Depends on insurance, but when you declare mods they ask you how much they are worth, so it kind of implies they will cover them. That said - you correct, unless you have agreed final value, you will never know what they will pay you, but mods and option when declared would make settlement figure higher. For example when my IS250 was written off, initially assessor put it at something like £1860 (because they literally could not tell the difference between IS220d and IS250). Then I said "look at the prices of SE-L automatic, with sunroof, ML and sat-nav, there is not a single car below £5000" and they raised the value to something like £3920. If I had declared set of wheels for the £1000 (that is how much F-Sport wheels costs), then I am sure I could have argued even higher price, perhaps not £1000 higher, but still higher than market average. However, I thought that simply ticking the box that car have mods would have made my insurance double and in long term was cheaper not to declare those wheels... and besides in case car was written of, I would simply take the wheels off.

1 minute ago, Malc1 said:

that could be why so many claimants simply place all their dealings into the hands of Assessors / Claims Handling Companies to act on their behalf  ......  No Win No Fee is often the way to go !

When one instructs those professionals they will always give you a fair indication of your chances of success OR NOT !

On injury claims they take 20-30% commission, in fact in my recent experience you can't even handle injury claim yourself. My girlfriend had accident when learning to drive (good driving experience! 😄), non-fault, guy just crashed into the side of her car, no real injuries just shoulder and back pain, she took probably 1 month of work, few packs of ibuprofen and few sessions with physio. There is statutory compensation in cases like this (I believe insurance companies sets away like £5000 by default). But when she checked how can she proceed with compensation, just fair amount, say £2000-3000 for lost income and inconvenience, the TP insurance didn't even want to deal with her and advised she has to get medical assessment and make a claim via claims management company (in theory you can do it yourself, but it is way too much work). Now on positive side it was under her instructor insurance so, so he was getting claims management company anyway, but right away they said - "for injury claims under we take £5000 30%, over £5000 20% commission + claim management fees". Just to better explain how this works - insurance company by law has to set away the claim management cost in case you use claims management company. I think that is £1170... and when I have used claims management companies for car damage they do not charge anything, they just get their £1170 and that is it, but when you do injury claim they still take £1170 from insurance company +20-30% of the compensation off you... which is kind of ridiculous. I would assume on larger sum like £50,000 maybe they would agree with 10% commission, but still why should you sacrifice any money that should cover damage to your health. 

Beside just the time it takes is ridiculous. The doctor assessed after maybe 1 month that recovery in this case should be considered 10 months + travel expenses + cost for basic medicine + cost of lost income for a month, there is calculator for that and I think it adds-up to £3280 and she would have settled that right away. But no - insurance company much rather pays £1170 to claims management company and she will get £2624 (because -20%, not 30% as instructor is getting the same and thus amount is over £5000) and it was already over a year and they still have not settled.

There is just no excuse for this - they know what claim is, why they are still not paid on it? 

front number plate holder taken

1 hour ago, GMB said:

the insurance companies attitude in trying to evade responsibility by finding any excuse not to pay.

Look at personal injuries claims where they take 5 years+ trying to find any excuse not to pay the full liability.

My point is about insurance companies weaseling and wriggling out of their responsibilities that give me no confidence in them.

That is what they are doing, I have long said insurance is scam.

As well I believe insurance must always pay out right away, regardless what it is... then they can investigate and prove that somebody scammed them and claw back the money. And that would be just fair - when we pay for insurance we pay right away, we don't wait for a year to see if we like the cover or if we trust the company, nope we pay upfront, so they have to pay upfront as well. Obviously, scams happen, people exaggerate, overclaim invent stories and insurance should be able to recover the money in such cases, but they must never keep genuine claimants waiting, so settle first, then look for issues, unless it is obviously fraud on the face value. But it will never be like that - law protects multi billion companies, not the consumer!

As well insurance companies should not care for what they should not care, they should not care what your gender is, they should not care how many kids you have, whenever you own your home, where you work etc. As long as they going to ask these questions I am going to answer them in the way that benefits me. The only question on insurance quote should be vehicle registration number and car registration number... and when you want the cover to start and what cover you want. That is ALL! And it is not some sort of miracle, in most of Europe that is exactly how it works. They don't ask if you have mods or where you work, license and registration has all the information insurance would ever need - it tells them what car it is, what year, the power and they can figure out how much it is worth, they tell tell them information about the driver, how long they have license and how many points they have. Nothing else is needed. All extra information asked is there just to scam people - some are honest and get punished for that and some find the way to work with this scam and saves 30%+ (legally I must say, without lying obviously).  

And for all the reason above - I will always tell insurance only absolute minimum I can get away with, or only declare that works in my favour.

6 minutes ago, Boomer54 said:

they may choose to act sooner than previously expected.

Hope it won't happen, but experience says they will do exactly as you said! 

That is why I will always get away with what I can get away with and not going to shoot myself in the foot declaring the basic maintenance to insurance companies.

I have written off few cars, both accidents were very minor, one car literally scratch on the bumper, but I used claims management company and they never looked any deeper into anything, not under the car, not under the hood, not behind the wheels etc. Now sure - some stuff just is just asking for trouble. If you have carbon bits dangling around everywhere, or bright coloured lime green brake lines... they will notice it and you may have to explain them. What usually happens, they just not going to pay any claims for any mods that were not declared, for them to invalidate the insurance would be radical step that they would have to justify. 

I guess limitation on my knowledge, I was never at fault for the accident and the insurance that was paying the damages never got to see the car, so they paid out on the claim made by my assessor. Their assessor may indeed have tried to find some brain in the place where shaite lives. So maybe little advise - if at all possible try not to let assessor of insurance which will be paying the claim anywhere near the car. 

14 minutes ago, Boomer54 said:

The operative word there is 'trend', because  when direction is established the most likely probability is that it will continue (and yes we know that at some point that will no longer be true).

Agreed...

As for trend to continue - in this case I can claim quite confidently that it won't...

You see inflation drop is mostly based on Housing and Household Services inflation drop, all other categories remained the same, some even increased a little. What is household services and why it has dropped... well turns out that it has dropped because it is calculated differently, usually inflation is calculated after you spent the money, household services are based on energy price cap, so as soon as cap drops, the inflation is calculated as dropping, even if you never paid as much as previous cap anyway. Now I am not saying that is not useful and it won't help, but there is another reason why I am saying we soon see increase in inflation again and that is OOH inflation, which will be impacted by mortgage payments, majority of people will come off fixed rate mortgages in next year and their payments will double, this already started this year and will accelerate next year. 

In short - you are correct that monthly inflation figures usually shows trend and that is why it is useful, but in this case I have feeling this trend will not stick and soon will be reversed. 

50 minutes ago, GMB said:

Is the answer: No, I just replaced the worn out suspension. Or is it Yes, I have bought 3rd party stuff that is not Lexus OEM but it costs less and does the job WTF.

This is question which has been asked million times and I am sure will be asked million more times. 

It has been also answered million times, but there is no adequate answer to it. My view - anything that makes your car faster, more powerful, more dangerous is modification, anything that significantly increases value of your car and for which you want to be compensates is also a modification. 

Examples - you put supercharger, now your car makes 700hp, that is modification. You have tinted your headlights and tail-lights making them harder to see and for you harder to drive in the dark - that is modification (arguably illegal and invalidates insurance anyway). You have fitted £6,000 worth of custom wheels, and £4,000 worth of air suspension and in case your car is stolen you expect to claim £10,000 more for these parts on top of what IS-F normally costs - that is also modification. You have to declare these, as in the best case scenario you will not get compensated for them if car is written of or stolen, and in worst case scenario your cover may be invalidated altogether. 

Now if you have fitted different wheels which are still within reason and road legal, or if you have painted the callipers, or fitted braided brakelines, or fitted compatible replacement shocks, but you are happy to be paid normal market value in case your car is destroyed or stolen, then these are not modifications and don't need to be declared. If asked I would play ignorance and say I didn't know this is mod, or I acquired the car this way, before doing so I would make sure to read the T&Cs of my specific insurance to make sure there is enough wiggle room to make this claim. So far I have never seen any insurance in T&C requiring to use only OEM parts, this would be ridiculous! They just say something along the lines that car has to be "road legal" and within manufacturers specification. That is why one can replace rather excellent Michelin PSS tyres on IS-F to rather unbelievably dangerous Shaite Road TurboSpeed Crash ZPZF60000 form ones favourite chinesium supplier. In comparison fitting coil-over or aftermarket shocks has way less impact on car than tyre choice.

So my view - I will never be reporting anything, but most obvious mods to insurance and I am not going to be paying extra money for insurance scam. You may choose differently, whatever you do read your contract to make sure you understand what you can get away with and the risk associated.

Or you can as well call your insurance and ask this hypothetical question, I have done so in the past. I have fitted IS300h F-Sport 18" wheels on IS250 which came with 17" wheels, I called the insurance and without answering any questions or giving my name made this "hypothetical" question: "what if I fit 18" wheels from another Lexus, is that mod or not" and their answer was - "no that is completely fine"... "thanks bye!"

So answer to your question - it depends which game you want to play, secondly what your insurance actually written in their T&C. 

16 minutes ago, Boomer54 said:

OK, let's get started ,but I am warning you I am out of here for Xmas. 😉

1."This is just monthly inflation figure, it is kind of flawed to compare last month YoY inflation drop against target of quarterly inflation halving."

Answer. Sunak at the start of 2023 pledged to half inflation by the end of 2023.

Discuss. Consumer price inflation, UK - Office for National Statistics

What we are seeing is a drop in month on month inflation rooted in domestic activity. Probably a good sign that the cost of financing driven by the BOE is now working. Qtrly isn't even mentioned. Y on Y is really unchanged due to the manner in which inflation is measured. What is indisputable is that inflation has halved from it's peak earlier this year so Sunak can claim his pledge has been met which is not the same has saying that he has had anything to do with it.

We can move on to the next point after you have addressed my response to your first para.

 

1. Agreed, not sure why but I was under impression that when Sunak has made the pledge he made it against quarterly figure, but I can't find any evidence of that, so I might be wrong. If he is using just CPI then yes CPI went from 10.7% in November 2022, to 4.6% in November 2023 and yes he can claim the pledge despite not really doing anything about it.

2. That is why I want to look at annual inflation at the end of the year, because monthly inflation figures are kind of meaningless. One month it could be 15%, another 5%, but in the end of the year the annual inflation may be 5.8% and that means that £100 you hold in your drawer lost 5.8% of it's value. Whereas measuring monthly inflation really requires to divide it by 12 to get meaningful rate. I mean surely there is no issue to calculate what annualised rate is from monthly CPI figures, but why use monthly figures to begin with if what we actually want to know is annualised rate?! It is almost same as your point about savings account, yes it pay 8% monthly, but it is set-up in such way that your annual rate probably will be closer to 4% actually. 

40 minutes ago, Bluemarlin said:

At least once more, when you add on congestion charging 😉

You are right... indeed forgot about that! At least they don't charge VAT on top of ULEZ! 

No I have not said I "like" it, but I think it looks better than Volvo styling.

Not sure if you are in video games (I would assume your are not), but the ZEEKR style is really sort of futuristic style that you find in video games e.g. some sort of mixture of styles below:

When looking at real thing, I would first assume it is car from sort of video game, not a real car... although even name itself sounds like something you would find in video game, not in your local dealership "ZEEEEEKR"!

8 minutes ago, Bluemarlin said:

Sure, it's in government's power to reduce the tax on fuel, but that carries the knock on effects of reduced tax revenues. The real issue is OPEC deliberately limiting oil production to maintain higher prices.

That I know - that is why I said headline inflation is not in government power to control, so for them to claim they have "defeated the inflation" is kind of silly, because the current drop we seeing is all external factors!

That said reduction or increase in fuel tax/duties is purely political issue... fuel cost is one of the underlying factors in inflation, if fuel price increases then all the prices increase, so cutting fuel price would reduce inflation on food and many other items that are required day to day and therefore would reduce the inflation widely. On top of that fuel related taxes are currently at only 2% of government revenue, so cutting it in half and making fuel price say £1.10/L would have negligible effect on tax revenues and I would argue profound effect on kickstarting economy. BUT... they won't do it because they are in perpetual war against motorists, they want to give impression that they are punishing motorists because all sorts of vegetables in lycra are getting satisfaction from it. If government would cut fuel duties it will be all over the place across Guardians an a likes... "how our government is destroying our future", further it would kind of undermine their agenda of "war on cars"... it would send really confusing message... "on one hand we want to ban ICE, on other hand we just removed the fuel duty"... So do you want us to drive or you don't?!

I personally would support complete end of fuel duty in principle as I consider it inherently unfair and double taxation, so not only we pay VAT, but we as well pay duty on top and then VAT for duty! That is tax on tax which is then taxed! What?! And that is before considering that we already pay road tax, so tax on double tax which is then itself taxed! How many times same thing can be taxed?

Don't bother with list of reading, I am not reading type... just let me know where you think I am wrong and we can discuss. You know I will never miss opportunity for that!

I will be breaking IS250 SE-L Auto 2006 with ~100,000k miles for parts. All parts available, including engine, gearbox etc. with exception of fuel tank, fuel lines, brake lines.

Standard SE-L features, black leather heated/cooled interior, Xenon headlights with washers, heated mirrors, rear shade etc. does not have sat-nav, nor ML

For your reference VRN: BN06 RMX  VIN: JTHBK262702007599

Obviously, symbolic prices for club member for all the small bits. Will note what has been taken/reserved/sold below, so far I am taking wiring harnesses, dash, RCC radar myself and certain person already reserved foot rest.

Ohhh... so it is pure rebadged chinesium... that is good they can keep it for themselves... surprisingly it as well lost 60 miles of range somehow?!

As well I would argue ZEEKR looks better... maybe designed played too much Cyberpunk, but the car overall looks mean and has presence, the Volvo revamp makes it look like complete work van!

11 minutes ago, RadicalCoupe-Fuji said:

I did find out the problem with engines in the USA, apart from in VW's case the cars we get in the EU are made in Germany at the Wolfsburg plant & in the USA they come from Mexico, the cars we get in the UK/EU have some form of port injection to combat the carbon problem too while the american ones dont. It seems that some of the IS models have port injection too, id just make sure to get one that does. 

Only IS350... and IS-F

So no, we can't get IS with port injection in UK, DI only. But that said - still not a problem regarding carbon build-up, not unless the car has over 200k miles on it, maybe that is the difference from UK and US, maybe US cars just have so much more miles? That said my last IS250 had 192k when I gave it away and as far as I know still didn't have issues at 208k. 

If you thought LM is ugly, wait until you see Volvo EM90... 

I honestly dislike LM and I think it is pointless and stupid model (at least to be sold in UK/EU/US - they are fine for Southern Asia where such things are popular, but not here), but it does stand out and it could be argued looks premium, but looking at Volvo I would literally expect some sort of electrician or painter to get out of it with tool box:

https://www.topgear.com/car-news/first-look/volvo-reveals-fully-electric-em90-mpv-458-miles-range

Honestly, can't see the difference from this:

So Lexus achievement with LM is that at least they are second from last, better than the ugliest car announced this year! 

I wonder if that has something to do with Volvo Chinese owners... Asians just love their MPVs aren't they?