The German

:D No, it's not to regulate the "purity" of the cars. You can tune them. But: I saw some folks here that put some 20" wheels on their IS and said "they were only scratching a bit on the inside of the car". For me as a "safe" German, this is...omg. No way this was legal and not noticed by any law official. The TÜV would make you enlarge the wheelspace or block part of the steering way so the tire doesn't scratch on the inside of the car anymore. (Just as an example...) The TÜV just wants to create safe roads. Every car is checked every 2 years. If there's a light bulb broken, rust or anything, a tuning part that may influence the safeness of the car, they don't give you a special tag on your car and you're not allowed to drive the car anymore. (Of course first, they give you several months to have the problem fixed). BUT: Back to the Topic. Where are some pics?!

Yeah, even though I already have my IS 220d, I'd love to see especially some 350s with nice rims... We have something called "TÜV" in Germany and it's EXTREMELY hard if not impossible to put on huge wheels (19" will give you issues). Of course, there is a way but it's expensive, is being checked by the gov't and if you don't go to the "TÜV" and have it listed in your car papers and then get pulled over...good night. That's why I'm gonna keep my standard rims alap

Oh I know...I'm just playing with you ^^ I gotta listen to all these prejudices torwards Americans in Europe all the time and I'm tired of it ;) While they blame you for driving big SUVs, Europeans like to hide the fact that there are by far more Hybrids in the US than anywhere else in the world...we still have dirty diesels that need tons of filters and cleaning injections (such as my diesel...but sorry, to me the Prius looks ugly and I can't afford neither a RX h nor a GS h with these taxes over here)... Yet it seems to me that some of the folks living in the most beautfiul country in the world, even to me - a non-American, finally woke up and realized that driving a RAM/Durango/500HP car to WAL*MART isn't exactly the best thing for neither the envirnoment nor your wallet. Sad that it took $3 a gallon to get that into their heads, though.

Since when do Americans care about gas mileage?! That's new to me... Well, ok then, you won. Maybe he should equip his Moutaineer with winter tires :D

Well, I've been to D.C. twice, once during the summer once during the winter. For sure, in D.C. I'd go with allseason tires, yet the guy asking about snow and the 350 is obviously not living in D.C. And I just recommend him instead of worrying just to buy winter tires and have them installed. Period.

Well, we call them WINTER tires, not SNOW tires. In some European countries you have to have them installed sometime in November all the way through March. Germany is thinking about introducing that law also. Even though we don't get snow on regular bases. Winter tires not only help you on snow, but they're also better if the temperature is below 45 Fahrenheit. They have better grip, handle bette ron ice and are just made for winter times. I do realize that it's nonsense to buy winter tires when you live in Texas, Nevada, California, you name it. But in New England? Parts of the Midwest? For sure!

Guess what: Besides a Camry Station Wagon, a Honda Prelude and a Honda Civic they also had a 93' Land Cruiser with AWD. It wasn't any better on snow...it had summer tires Okay, I'll shut up for now since I actually haven't been in snow with my IS yet. But I've driven many rear-wheel cars, including a BMW 325i...No problem at all during the winter time in the European Alps.

I lived with a family in the US that had two Lexus, a GS 300 and a SC 400. They were complaining that both of their Lexus would do such a crappy job on snow and they decided to trade in the SC for an Acura RL with Super Handling All Wheel Drive. What the crap?! It's written in every German/Austrian (where we get a lot of snow) car magazine that most every car does perfectly fine on snow AS LONG AS REAL WINTER TIRES are installed and that even if you have AWD, it won't help you any cause the AWD system has no traction due to y'alls terrible "All Season Tires" used by most ppl in the states. Do yourself a favor and invest some money into summer tires AND a set of winter tires. Your driving a 30k+ dollar car and another grand shouldn't be such a problem if investing into your safety and perfect handling...(BTW: Winter tires are better than summer tires as soon as the temperature is below 8 degrees Celcius which is 46 degrees Fahrenheit) I don't wanna sound like a "continental smart a**", but I just don't get it how rich Americans will buy such nice cars, invest so much money into tuning but then are too cheap to buy winter tires and therefore complain about bad handling on snow...or is there another reason why all of you are using All Season Tires? Tradition? Lack of real goof winter tire offers? Something else?

Poor guys. In Europe, the IS does have a motion sensor that goes off if someone breaks the window/attempts to break in. It's located where you guys put your sunglasses...in the roof. (funny though...in the German Forum, folks are complaining that they don't have that space for their glasses but that stupid sensor. I guess, either way it's wrong :D )

I like hybrids, yet they have one problem which is significant, especially here in Germany with the Autobahn: They only work at low speed. The average traveling speed on the Autobahn is between 80 and 100 mph, where no electric component of the hybrid engine is working, only the fuel powered parts...so the fuel consumption shoots up rapidly. The Diesel is very economic in every situation. There's even a Volkswagen (LUPO 3L), which is not offered in the states, yet in Germany that gets 80mpg...and it's not a hybrid, it's a Diesel. Yet, I believe that hybrids will be the future if Mercedes fails to get the Diesel going in the states (as they plan on doing with the 320 CDI in the R-Class/420 CDI in the new G-Class). The Diesel is just too dirty/requires a lot of cleaning. Actually, the Lexus Diesel is the cleanest in the world because it has an additional filter...yet, all that stuff is very expensive, even in mass production. In the long run a clean hybrid might be cheaper to produce.

It is much cheaper. A liter of diesel is 1,15€, gasoline (Premium which is required for most every new car) is 1,45€ a liter... So we're paying $5.50 a gallon for diesel and $6.90 a gallon of gasoline...Will y'all now stop complaining about 3 bucks a gallon? [EDIT] Here's a (British) video for all of you who are as crazy about the IS as I am. IS VIDEO (@ youtube.com)

In fact, the IS 250 is even 2.000€ more which is equivalent to $2.500, so you'd be close to 50.000 Dollars for a well equipped IS 250...(my IS 220d, as said before, was 47500 American Dollars) Btw: Sales taxes are 16% (one of the lowest in Europe), we better not talk about insurance cost and taxes on pollution (even though the Diesel has the same emission class as the 250)... That's why a 4-cylinder-engine is being offered for the first time in a Lexus vehicle in Europe. My diesel. These rims are standard on the "Luxury", they're 17" compared to 16" on the "Base" and 18" on the "Sport"...

Thx...is that shark fin antenna BMW-like? My European model does not have any visible antena at all. An on/off siwtch for the VDIM (also in Europe not available for the IS 250 but for my IS 220d it was so I ordered it) would be a nice feature...wonder why they didn't install that in the first place <_<

It's been a while that I lived in the States...plus, "me was livin' 'n Kentucky and I ain't speaking no good English". I was talking about "country roads" which are "Überlandstrecken" in German - Over land roads if you translate it poorly ;) Wie wär's denn mal mit ein bißchen Deutsch zur Abwechslung? ;) Anyways, yeah, that's a personalized plate...the most the German system allows you to personalize it (I envy you for your small, colored, individual plates...)

I have a question about that. In Europe, it's absolutely not common to change a car every year. We don't even say "It's an 06' IS", we just call it "An IS", either "pre or post-facelift", cause usually within the 6 or 7 years a car is being built, there is only one or at the most two faceliftings. What's the difference between an 06' and an 07' IS? Or ist there none, the advantage is just a better resale value. (I noticed one time that the Jaguar X-Type was facelifted and "improved" (uglier bumpers, etc.) for the US market but stayed the same for the European market)