Ls400 Purchase Help - 2000 Platiunum Or 1999/2000 Base

dirtycurt · July 31, 2010

The wife drives a 99 GS300 that replaced a 93 GS300, I bought the 99 5 years ago with 90k one owner all service records, did the 90k maintenace and we are at 165k.

I have a dodge ram diesel for daily use and pulling the race trailer, I have decided on a low mile LS400 to suppliment the Ram for Daily good weather use.

I have located the following cars in a 300 mile radius.

1. 2000 Platinum SK with the Nak stereo and no Nav or EAS, 38k miles $16,000, one owner perfect car. Black with camal/tan interior 5 miles away

2. 2000 Premium Black 2 tone, 51k miles, two owner, $13,000 camal/tan interior 125 miles away

3. 1999 Base with the dark red color, 45k miles, two owner $14,000 camal/tan interior 325 miles away.

None have show timing belt service done and all have good tires. I have driven the local car and it seems perfect.

What do you all think??

1990LS400 · July 31, 2010

My Goodness! These are huge prices for 99-00 LS400s no matter how low their mileages. You could easily buy a low mileage early LS430 for prices in that range.

Here are the specs and options for the 2000: http://www.lexus.com/contact/pdf/2000/2000LSspecs.pdf

Change "2000" to "1999" in the URL to see the same for the 1999 LS400.

It sounds like the 2000 Platinum has the "SF" package like mine does. You might want to know that Nakamichi components are no longer available either new or on an exchange basis from Lexus dealers and no one repairs them anymore. But you can usually find used Nak components on eBay. I'm not a great fan of the Platinum Series leather but I like it's LS430 wheels a lot more than the standard 98-00 LS400 wheels. The 2000 LS400 has "brake assist" - a pretty cool feature.

My main advice is to buy a car with the options you want. Not all 1998-2000 LS400's have heated seats for example. (I've really "warmed up" to heated seats.) Also avoid 98-00 LS400's with navigation -- there hasn't been an update since 2004 and there will be no more updates. And air suspension ... don't even consider one of those.

On a low mileage older car, verify that the tires, including the spare, are less than about six or seven years old or you will be tire shopping real quickly.

Grantville? That's a few miles away from Lake Perry where we kept our saleboat -- that hole in the water into which we poured money. I would think you could do (a lot) better on price here in the Kansas City Metro area.

dirtycurt · July 31, 2010

oops

dirtycurt · July 31, 2010

I worked at Lake Perry Marina in high school and college from 1975 to 1979 as a "dock boy"

I have been scouring the ads, and concluded that $1,000 for 10K miles seems to be resasonable. The 2000 model is at a dealer and offered it to me outright for $12k and has service records and new Nexen 5000 tires. Other than the Two-tone black(I prefer the solid black of the platinum), it seems to be a good buy as compared to a $7500 100,000 mile car.

Or our my thoughts incorrect?

1990LS400 · July 31, 2010

The main thing is that you are happy with your purchase.

When I saw the $16,000 figure in your post, my first thought was that it would be pretty easy to pick up a well optioned, low mileage 2001-2003 LS430 in a private party sale for that kind of money here in Johnson County.

As I'm sure you know, cars age with time as well as mileage. I've seen people on the forums buy low mileage Lexus LS cars that seem to have just as many problems as higher mileage cars of the same model year. You best bet is to buy a car with documented service.

Personally, if I was going to spend $12,000 to $16,000 today and wanted an LS, I would consider only the LS430. The LS430 has too many advantages over the 98-00 LS400: more rear seat legroom, many more standard features, better HVAC with additional rear seat vents, indash non-cartridge based CD changer, and especially a completely redesigned audio system for which you can buy all sorts of plug and play accessories like iPod interface, Sat Radio, etc. I even miss trivial things on my 00 LS400 like RDS which the LS430 has amd every rental car we get has these days.

But I like my 2000 LS400 and I going to continue driving it to wring as much value as possible from it. I bought it at 38,000 miles in 2003 from a auto broker friend of a Lexus repair shop owner who has maintained our Toyota and Lexus cars since the mid-90s. If you want one of those low mileage 99-00 LS400's you are looking at, I would think the sellers would take less than $10,000 for any of them. If you want a 2000 LS400, look for one made after the tilt/telescope steering column fixes were implemented at the factory -- it's around a $2,000 repair if you have to have it fixed. You might want to verify that all outstanding TSIB's -- especially the steering column fix on the 99 LS and early model year 2000 LS - were applied at the dealership while the car was under its original warranty.

"Dock boy", huh. Don't even want to visualize that! We kept our saleboat at the Perry Yacht Club ... bought it just in time to have it trashed by a tornado in the early 80's.