cachaciero

Just had similar damage on the front done £150.00. Actually it was worse than the OP's in that the bumper had been "creased". Decided to DIY, the crease came out easily with a heat gun then came problems with paint! Cut back edges feathered, adhesion promoter applied to bare plastic one sprayed coat of epoxy primer rubbed down and blended all looking good :-) Sprayed base coat, original paint pickled on the edges!!. Finally after more work got to a point where the base coat would go on without pickling along the edges but at this point decided that I didn't have the skill required to get a good blend so took it to a local body shop, ready for base coat and top coat. My friendly sprayer explained that as Lexus paint was "difficult" and they didn't appear to use any adhesion primer on the plastic bits he would spray a thin coat of primer sealer of the repair before the base coat toe ensure no further pickling. I was more than happy with final result. However I notice that there is an area on the rear bumper where the paint has cracked and started lifting over a large area, again poor paint adhesion to the plastic.

Actually its not that the factory UV protection deteriorates its more that it gets polished off by people polishing their headlights! The basic headlight plastic is a material sometimes know as Lexan or Polycarbonate this material reacts to UV and in time turns yellow. To prevent this the headlight is coated with a UV filter not sure what the factory use however I do know that Acrylic is a good UV filter so I suspect that the anti UV coating is not much more than a good quality Acrylic clear coat. So a comprehensive solution to yellowed headlights would be to polish the Lexan until the yellow surface has been removed and then spray them with a good quality Acrylic clear coat. My suggestion your risk :-) Oh! and for those who still have bright shiny headlights Never ever polish them wash only.

Yes infrastructure is all important, I mean roads that did'nt have suspension destroying pot holes would be a start :-) How many garage mechanics / technicians would even know what a fuel cell is let alone how to fix it ? :-(

Yes I have read / seen somewhere Toyota's justification for staying with NiMh and if every other manufacturer was saying the same thing then I might be convinced. However my 70 odd years of life has taught me to be very cynical and questioning where money is concerned. Toyota spent lot's of money developing the NiMh system and like every manufacturer they will want to maximise the return on investment and put off further development as long as they can. Your point about Toyota / Lexus not choosing to include options is I feel very valid and I suspect probably reflects their concentration on the US market and either their lack of attention to what their competition in Europe was doing or just not being bothered, the European market being of lesser importance however it is that lack of attention which causes people like me to be justifiable critical of the product in some areas. It is worth considering that Boeings 787 is an all electric aircraft that relies on very compact Lithium battery packs which under some circumstances have far higher discharge / charge rates than anything a Prius will have so I don't accept Toyota's arguments about charge current limitations. However on the 787 there have been a couple of isolated incidences of battery problems so there may be some merit in the reliability argument. Mirror in my case maybe the mirror position switch is the "gotcher" I shall go and give it a try later thanks for the suggestion.

Dev times and testing I would agree that 2000 sounds about right for start or maybe consolidation of the final design, I suspect that Lexus like Citroen may well have been working on various aspects of the design long before that. Yes Citroen test cars, they have to just to ensure that they are going to be able to meet the various regulatory demands, all car manufacturers have to do this for new models. Do Lexus spend more time than Citroen (or Ford or Merc BMW)? I don't know, however as cost will be the major driver I would doubt that Lexus spend any more time than they have to. Though as Lexus supply both the European market and the US market it is likely that they will have to spend time testing for both regulatory areas. PSA do not supply to the American market so they will not have to spend time testing to satisfy the US market. With respect to the RX400H as far as I can see from a body / suspension perspective the 400H is just a small evolutionary change from the 300. The thing which makes the 400H different is the Hybrid drive and all they did there was to scale the system that was already in use on the Prius and fit it. Infact in some ways the system fitted to the 400H is not as well developed as the 2004 Prius solution which had a chain driven Atkinson cycle engine from the off it has taken another eleven years for Lexus to get there with the 450. Interestingly I would argue that the 2004/2008 Prius is marginally underpowered the later 1.8 being better, however with the introduction of the 1.8 they changed the body design for the worse IMHO much prefer the looks of the 1.5 and the same is true of the Lexus much prefer the look of the 400 to that of the 450. The 450 begs the question why are they still using Nickel Hydride batteries and not Lithium which would have given major improvements in power to weight ratio. I don't know the answer to that question for sure but I suspect that it is more to do with leveraging profit out of existing technology rather than a quest for technical excellence. Mirror indexing that is exactly what I am talking about if it worked like that on the 05 300 why does it not do that on my 400H? need to get my hands on some schematics anybody know where to go for comprehensive technical documentation other than Lexus themselves. cachaciero

I agree that that works but it is essentially a workaround for a system deficiency, the lack of indexing on the nearside mirror when selecting reverse is a bit of a pain too.

I think it would be fair to say that most manufacturers have their strengths and weaknesses Citroens strength was their adoption of advanced technology particularly with respect to suspension, their weakness was in quality control and in ensuring that their dealer support network actually knew how to fix what the factory produced. While Citroen actually became PSA in the nineties Citroen managed to hold on to their design ethos for a while and both the C5 and the early Picasso owe more to the Citroen heritage than that which came later, now PSA have announced that they will abandon the hydraulic suspension in favour conventional springs and dampers a retrograde step if ever there was one.

Citroen common?? The last arguably true Citroens the XM and Xantia went out of production in 1998/9 since then any Citroen has been a re-badged Peugeot so I would argue it's hardly surprising that they are not that common. If they were that common I might have been able to find a good XM in which case I might not be here :-) Most car enthusiasts are not car enthusiasts they are Marque enthusiasts, there is a difference. @toffee_pie It might come as a surprise but there is a quite a large body of Citroen enthusiasts out there. cachaciero

Well every one to their own. I have owned big Citroens most of my life GS,CX (X2) XM's (X2) and C5 and by the standards of their day they were far from junk, they only got a bad rep because most garages did'nt have people with the intelligence to maintain them properly. Comparing the C5 with a newer Prius the cabin materials plastics and seat materials in the C5 are IMHO far superior. No one Marque has the perfect car they all have their good and bad points, there isn't a car on the road today I would call junk just some cars which appeal to me more than others. cachaciero

Late to this thread but.... Now lets see... 2002 Citroen C5 HDI Executive spec (2000 design).: Auto folding wing mirrors, Xenon lights Auto windscreen wipers tied to auto window close (and sun roof) traffic sensitive satnav. (if the traffic master premium paid) Rear parking sensors and lets not even consider a ride height adjustable suspension that dynamically alters car height and attitude depending on speed. On both the Prius I own and now the Lexus RX400H I am constantly surprised at how far behind the opposition they were / are in some respects. cachaciero

O.K thanks for the info, still looking and thinking :-)

Hi I am new here, if I should go for an RX then could be here for a while if :-) A little background currently run a Citroen C5 estate for lugging loads and driving over farm tracks and a Prius for pretty well everything else. Now the Cit is getting to that phase of life where lot's of little things are giving problems and bigger issues are just over the horizon and frankly I can no longer work up the enthusiasm and at 16 yrs young it's days must be numbered, shame really been a good car, not so good as the XM before it or the CX before that but a good reliable well made car for all that. The Prius purchased primarily to reduce the fuel bill to work / shopping etc. mechanically very reliable economy not as good as Toyota would have one to believe. Love the hybrid system suspension not so much. Now retired I want to rationalise the fleet and get back to one car question is what? The Prius would do pretty well all that I want if : a) it had slightly higher ground clearance and b) slightly more luggage space and c:) more comfortable chairs d:) heated mirrors e:)door checks that worked. The Lexus is high on my list simply because it answers all the perceived negatives of the Prius and has the advantage of being higher all round, extra urban fuel consumption is a negative as is the VED. However the VED on the Lexus is about the same as the Cit and the urban fuel consumption is likely to be better than the Citroen can achieve. I have read much of related stuff on this site and very informative and helpful it has been. However I have been perturbed to read of a propensity for under body rust, failing tank straps and water ingress seems to be a common problem as well. Water ingress from sunroofs is not an unknown problem on most cars that have them and that includes the C5 but rust! I hav'nt had to worry about rust for the last 15 years on any of the Citroens I have had so just how much of a problem is this on the Lexus? I notice that on some of the photo's related to cars that have had water ingress rust seems to have got a hold so how much of an issue is this? is the body galvanised prior to painting?.

Google search on Lexus RX400H failures/