On 6th May 2018 , I was driving my 2016 sport plus LX 570 at around 02:30 pm with a temperature of nearly 40. The vehicle was under the shade since early morning . This is my usual time to leave work . It was only 5 minutes after I started driving , I heard a horrible sound over my head similar to a helicopter sound ! I was driving at 60 Kilometres per hour and I did pass underneath any bridge . In addition , my colleague who left work at the same time , was driving his car behind me as an eye witness . I stopped the vehicle to inspect to find the sunroof in a scary condition . It had exploded with an obvious hole of 10 cm and the rest of sunroof was still together in tiny pieces . Amazingly , the edges of the broken hole were pushed outside due to the explosion pressure . Luckily , I had the interior sliding cover of the sunroof closed .When , I opened the sliding cover , multiple glass pieces of different sizes fell on the interior of the car and the seats ! I rushed immediately to the local Lexus dealer who took photos of the vehicle and forwarded them to the warranty department to decide. Unfortunately , after 2 days , they contacted me to inform me that explosion cannot happen in its own and this is due to external hit !! I have browsed the net and searched a lot during these 2 days to find that there are enormous amount of similar cases . I saw the thread '' Exploding Rx350 sunroof'' by hemimom in November 13 , 2011 in general chat in lexus ownerclub.com and the swift positive response from the dealer to change the sunroof under warranty . The local dealer could not provide a logical scientific explanation despite the fact that I showed them few articles on the web about the same scenario ! They could not explain the outwards lifted edges of the exploded sunroof !
Two months back , while washing the car , I noticed that there multiple bends in the bonnet .I contacted the same local dealer who tried to negotiate that this happened due to an external hit . Interestingly , there were no scratches on the paint and the pattern of the bends does not favour an external hit !! I was obvious manufacturing fault . After 3 weeks of negotiation , they accepted to change the bonnet under warranty after a pressure and multiple frustrating meetings with them !
I`m waiting for an official report from the dealer in Sultanate of Oman which should include the scientific reasons for such rejection !
