Linas.P

@ColinBarber - neither I included amount of energy needed to extract, refine, distribute and dispose of nuclear fuels, build the stations themselves, building wind turbines, dams, solar panels etc. Or as I am sure you will add, building offshore oil platforms and refineries themselves... by the way large % of energy in UK is still made by using very same hydrocarbons, so fuel refinement, distribution etc. are the same. We can go in as much details as we like, but my point was simple (and you added to it) - there is much more to the pollution then simply burning fuel or charging electric car... and in the whole system realistic difference of pollution between ICE and EV vehicles are nowhere as high as electric car manufacturers would like to claim.

That was mentioned many times - where ML really shines is when it is fed good source, if you just play mp3s from you phone I almost prefer standard system over ML.

Yes I had it for a day, did my best to understand it and didn't like it at all... the reasons behind it were discussed many times - it did not feel much faster then 250 (if at all), gearbox never seems to get into right gear if you floor it, there is hesitation from stand still, the acceleration is choppy at best and it sounds cr*p.. Otherwise, just cruising along it is fine car, but so is 250 - so what is in there for me to spend 5 times the price + fuel consumption in my normal daily drive is the same, only in certain circumstances e.g. cruising on motorway under 70MPH it has an edge in MPG? The gearbox is nice and fast if you change gears yourself and if you put it in right gear yourself it has nice mid-range torque and power, but if you leave it drive it will never be in right gear for overtaking.

Last time I have checked it was BMW 320 DIESEL! Long story short I want RC, but 300h doesn't meet 0-60 standard, whereas I have no justification for RC-F... and in other hand I still haven't seen RC-F with right options for me - Black/Red +ACC/PCS +TVD + Sunroof...

You probably right - especially if the buyer is not the most knowledgeable and was comparing M4 vs. RC-F... then dealer could have pulled all sorts of stories about top-of the range fully spec'ed version even though it is bone-stock standard... because RC-F comes with everything standard and 10 times more equipment then equivalent M4.... buyer probably though they getting excellent deal 🙂

If you not considering £20 annual tax and tax efficient salary sacrifice as government backing .. what can I say. I guess if you mean "grants", then you right they didn't have as much backing as PHEVs (£2500 grant) or electric (£5000+500), but were still advantageous over petrol and diesel back in the day. If you doing ~10k miles a year (many people do less... and those who do more get diesels anyway) then MPG is irrelevant. Co2 is irrelevant as well - it is just VED which is. That is well discussed topic, so you probably better off checking my previous posts (otherwise I am running risk of being told again, not to repeat myself even if you ask me!). In short.. it is marginally faster then IS250 and it is marginally more fuel efficient + it is not like only IS250 exist in the market - BMW 330i of the same year was significantly faster and probably yet more efficient. Terrible offer compared with other offers on the market for that year... If you want to see what significantly better is, compare step between mk1 IS200/300 and mk2 IS250 - IS250 was both more fuel efficient (significantly) then IS200 which it replaced and still faster then IS300 which it didn't actually replace as that was IS350 job. To compare that like for like mk3 IS200t should have been faster then mk2 350 if equivalent improvement would have been made over generation - that means below 6.5s...

First reason why IS300h sold until 2017 was because it was tax compliant in UK, both VED and salary sacrifice schemes, from 2018 it is no longer tax compliant, not suitable for salary sacrifice and low emission hybrids still pays £140 VED as non-hybrids. So what sold IS300h for years between 2013 and 2014 is not because people actually preferred hybrids, but because there were government backing in place - now without backing I doubt this trend will continue. Only PHEVs are exempt now and Lexus have none of them, the rest either hybrids, diesels or petrol will be equally disadvantaged. Second reason why it outsold both 250 and 200t was that both petrol options were rather terrible offering by 2013 ans 2015 standards respectively. When I say 250 is good engine - it is good in a sense as the engine designed in 2005, it was rather uncompetitive offer in 2013. The people who went for 250 or 200t could have gone for 350 instead without any issues. Dropping or not dropping 250.. I don't think that really matters, but designing 200t was massive mistake... this is almost 220d all over again.

In terms of supercharger - I agree it is better for throttle feel, but as for sound somehow I cannot imagine any Lexus sounding as dirty as that Pony.... I think they would take market by surprise and Germans would be totally unprepared if the next F-cars and LC would get revised 1LR-GUE with maybe 600hp (which is not that far from original 552)... That is how I can imagine Lexus sounding - "exotic". Imagine that...

I don't need them to make car for me exactly as I wish.. they already making them.... in fact selling more of RC350's then they do RC300h's worldwide.... So I just need to ask them to import one here... As for the job... thanks for offer... and don't worry you can keep it 👍

I know, when you said PS4s... I though you mean PS4's i.e. 4xPS4 😄 anyway now you know that you made right choice... 👍

You reckon?!. they probably knew that IS220d would not blow-up gaskets and that nobody would ever buy one with automatic gearbox as well. Again is not about sale volumes of those less volume models - it is about having reasonable range. Again why, to restrict it to the engines? they can restrict it to specific models e.g. NX, RX and CT ... IS, GS, RC, LS doesn't sell anyway, those 3 models are probably 75% of all sales? What is you guess how long will Lexus survive only selling 3 cars? Worse... they will probably replace CT with UX... how long would they survive only selling SUVs? But they are most popular in the range you would say?! Don't giving customer choice is worse then importing cars which doesn't sell as well... Obviously, I am not saying they should bring 5000 RC350s straight away as that would be disaster, but having few just for sake of giving some choice wouldn't hurt - how much worse could it be then selling 8 RC200t's over 2 years?

Do you? Found this quite interesting, to be honest I didn't even knew PS4s existed (what a shame) I though it goes PS4>PSS, apparently it goes PS3>PSS and PS4>PS4s... PS4s being replacement of PSS which is previous gen tyre... learning something new. My excuse PS4s is not even available on 17/18inch wheels so obviously never noticed them when looking for tyres on IS250..

I think in DC2 vs. DC5 0-60 and 0-100 comparison, most important is the power and weight, for 0-60 both cars does similar time because of similar power to weight ration as weight is important on stand still, but from 60 the power becomes much more important then weight and thus more powerful car will always win.

I am not trying to convince you... you make a claim, I make a counter-claim and so we go in rounds. Forums are for discussions like these... Again catch 22 - That is because they kept the choice, choice increasing interest in band and customer retention, which ultimately resulted in larger sales volumes. Neither they abandoned their customer base with forcing single undesirable engine, because of that they not alienated any customers and kept them in the brand, from time to time customers moved from 40i to 20d, other from 20d to 30d, some other from 30d to 40i, but they were never in position where the only options is 30d.... so over long period of time BMW build-up customer base and hence now they have those said "volumes". Lexus cut their customer base, alienated their it and therefore they don't grow and have no volume. Finally, Lexus still have some volume in 300h, the only problem was that 450h was completely wrongly priced between 540i and M5, instead of being priced between 530i and 540i... just wrong price range - that is all. Don't like my analogy about milk... fine.. here is another one: Imagine shoe shop... in UK most popular size for men is 9 (~43EU) - how long will shoe shop survive if they start selling only size 9 shoes? Yes it is most popular one with like 50% of sales, but by abandoning all other sizes they would still lose all the customers eventually. Logically, 50% of customers could have stayed, but the point - you need to give people choice if you want to attract them trough the door! How often it happens that you go to shoe shop, ask for specific size, try it and found that it is too small or too large and ask for next smaller/bigger size? What if you think that you need size 10, whereas really 9 would fit better, but shop only has 9 - would you still ask to try 9 (which you think is wrong size) or woudl you just go to another show which has all sizes from 3.5 to 16? If I revert that to the cars... if Lexus would offer say IS200h, IS300h, IS250, IS350, IS450h and IS-F then the customer will come for IS300h, but find it too slow and would get 250, or found it too expensive and get 200h... now customer does not think that 300h suits their needs and just excludes whole brand altogether. Again maybe after driving IS350 customer would think - nah actually I don't need all this power and 300h will be fine when it comes to upgrade, but because 350 was not offered in first place the customer had gone for BMW330i and therefore don't even considers Lexus as possible alternative.

Ideally, I would tell the son he has to get his own car - that is the only way he will value it. Less ideally, he at least needs to make up his own mind of what he wants - the guy got the licence maybe he should be man enough to do some research at least about what car he wants.... You cannot live his live for him forever! (just don't take it too seriously 😄 )

You can call it simplistic and you probably right, but I still see BMW selling 540i, 440i, 140i (or 135) etc. We have Merc C43.... it is "matter of honor" thing. When I say price to sell, I don't mean they should do charity, but only blindly chasing margins hurts brand image. I am sure I am not only one who feels alienated by Lexus inability to offer mid-tier car. Remember original LS400 - one of the main selling points was that it under-cut Merc by quite a margin, some even suggested it was "loss leader"... the reason why ES sells in US or why GS still sells in US is because they priced accordingly there. Do you really think there is significant difference between making IS, ES and GS for Lexus? NO! Just on ES and GS Lexus has higher profit margin then on IS that is what determines final RRP. Secondly, ES had several face-lifts and upgrades, wheres current GS is EOL model it is nearly 7 years old, so expect sales figures to be on the rise is stupid. SUV cancer thing is catch 22 - manufacturers advertise them because they have higher profit margins, then customer buys them, then other driver on the road cannot see past bloody things, then more customers buys it, then manufacturers says - "oh they are popular", makes more of them and markets even more and this endless spiral continues. SUV - stupid unnecessary vehicle (that is not to be mistaken with real offroaders). Going back to my analogy about milk - if we apply Lexus logic there we should only see green milk next time in the market, because majority of the sales are on green and not red or blue (for those not in UK colour of milk lids indicates the % of fat, red is kid-off with'ish transparent water called milk with 0.1% fat, green is ~2% fat and blue is 4%+ fat).

Really don't understand the interest in it... there is one with ACC/PCS and TVD for £3k more with less miles in exact same colour in/out (if that would be somehow popular colour)... My guess would be - the reason behind quick sell was massive discount to shift it.

The way you explained it - that is not what you are saying at all. So if you have 3 cars say with 0-60 times 3.9s, 4.1s and 4.4s i.e. "competitors will be within a nats ball hair of each other", I understand you will be looking to other areas. That is because they all equal... so I understand you can ignore that bit, however if one will be 7s 0-60 are you saying it still doesn't matter?

is it really? 35k for 3 years old car? ~10k Seems pretty normal for me...

Or at least get to the speed where it no longer hurts!

https://usedcars.lexus.co.uk/en/used-lexus/Lexus/RC-F/50-vdbrwxa Pictures in, plate is L88 RCF... I thought I seen it somewhere before... Totally basic, no TVD, no ACC/PCS, no Sunroof.... Although Michelin PSS, means previous owner had a clue about the tyres...

That's is not really true... When you talk about price and making profit, you need to think about R&D e.g. you need to sell "new" 300h high, because of R&D, you need to sell 200t high because of R&D, same with 8-speed AA81E gearbox, but over 12 years the costs of 350 and A960E R&D were already recovered... they is very cheap to make - much cheaper then either 200t or 300h. If you look at how much it costs Lexus to make RC350 (and I speculate here) I am sure it would be cheaper then RC200t and significantly cheaper then RC300h. Obviously, in model line-up that cheap doesn't make sense, but Lexus can sell 350 cheaper then 200t and still make same or even higher profit. Imagine if Lexus would have not wasted their time and money to create stupid 200t - that would have been win-win.

perhaps you right, but Audi 2.0t never going to put the smile on your face because it sounds like fart... the point why go for over-complicated 2.0t, 2.5+hybrid set-ups when they had all tooling and everything already set-up for sweet sweet 3.5 v6. Surely, with that development cost saved they could have simply sold cars cheaper... bet they gone for all the struggle to make something more expensive and arguably worse!... what can I say well done... "progress"! Or on other hand same 450h... it was already 90% there in terms of fuel economy, yet without any drawbacks of turbos etc. Now they going to get another 5% better economy, but half the acceleration and fun - doesn't seems like good compromise.

This one just came-up and it touches on many things I mentioned: 350 NA is sweet lineal engine, not "F" type unreasonably fast, but just right for luxury car, right sound, right pull, no "sluggishness" my exact words! important, the price - they say the way it is priced it is $6000 cheaper then equivalent Audi or BMW! in UK it does not sell because it is (or it would be) £6000 more expensive again "no hunting for gears", that is what I said about 8 speed autos, which never seems to find right one. Don't mind me (guy with 12 years old IS250), but these guys drives IS-Fs, RC-Fs, M3s and they agree Lexus 350 is simple motor yet a lot of fun and character! .... really it just p****s me off watching it. The simplest possible car, with simple old trusted engine and simple old 6 speed auto and it is so much fun and so characteristically Premium car.. no hybrid nonsense shenanigans, existing technology, cheap to manufacture, reliable and a lot of fun, but no! in UK we getting vegan versions... I know what 300h is - it is vegan stake, it is non-alcoholic vodka - what is the point of it?! I would not have GS and would not have AWD, but simple RWD RC350 would be so sweet! They say it would no sell... Price it right and you can sell anything...

That is because they are "fake", turbocharged engines doesn't have much sound just sort of "whinge" - as such they put some elaborate sound amplifying exhaust instruments, but they sound like this: and not like real powerful engine. I have nothing against turbocharging, but sound will never be like on NA engine, that is especially true when we talking about L4 or L6.. V8, V10 still sounds reasonable...