jragosta

There shouldn't be any real difference in how long it will last. The difference in price is due to the bigger engine and different market segments plus some difference in features. There's no reason why either car shouldn't last you several times as long as your GS did. 79 K miles putting a $50 K car into poor shape indicates some serious problems. Keeping a car looking good isn't a big problem. If you do the following, it should look good way past 150 K miles - especially the way your wife drives it. That's only 4 years. 1. Wash it regularly. I personally like the touch-free washes. They're not as thorough, but won't scratch the car. If you do it yourself, it's even better, but shouldn't matter that much. I would say at least twice a month. 2. Follow manufacturer's maintenance recommendations. I take mine in for service every 5000 miles. 3. Have it professionally detailed at least once a year (probably 2 or maybe 3 times for someone driving as much as your wife). Sure, it will cost you $150 to have it done well, but that's a small price for the benefit. 4. Keep the interior clean. If you spill something, clean it up right away. Don't leave clutter lying around. 5. Don't abuse it. It's not a race car. None of that is time consuming or expensive, but if you do those things, you should at least double the life of your car - which makes the return on investment several thousand percent.

I still don't understand. If the iPod is going directly to the amp, why do you need a tape adapter, too? You might want to reconsider the iTrip. While it's 'only' FM quality, that's probably as good as your mp3 (or AAC) collection will be, anyway. When you compress a file to MP3 or AAC, you're losing so much quality that it's no better than FM.

Easy. Clunky shifting and severe hesitation when you step hard on the gas.

I"m not sure what you're trying to do. If you're going to use a tape adapter, why do you need RCA cables to go to the amp? And if you're going to use RCA cables to go to the amp, you don't need a tape adapter. I'd suggest one of three things: 1. Buy a good quality tape adapter and use it with your in-dash cassette deck. 2. Buy an FM adapter for your iPod and play it through the FM radio in dash. 3. Use the mini to RCA connector to hook the iPOd directly to your amp. In order to make this convenient, I'd also suggest an RCA splitter (4 RCA males connected to 2 RCA femailes). Connect both your indash stereo and the iPod to the amp. However, before doing #3, make sure that the amp is providing all the amplification and you're not dealing with an amplified receiver plus external subwoofer only amp. In that case, you'd only get sound through the subwoofer which wouldn't sound very good - and you'd risk damaging your iPod. Choice #1 and #2 are probably easier. Be sure to get a car charger for your iPod, too. Good luck.

True. However, one thing is that my company replaces cars every 5 years and I'm over 1.5 already. So, I need 3.5 years out of the car rather than the 5-10 years you'd normally want.

My 04 ES330 was just rear-ended by some teenager. She's got insurance so it's not going to be a problem for me (other than the hassle factor), but I'm amazed by the repair prices. Her car hit the rear end of mine and damaged the underbody slightly, as well as destroying my bumper cover and slightly mis-aligning the fenders. The exhaust was also damaged. Body shop #1. Did a quick onceover and came up with 4 days and $1700. This is sort of the run of the mill shop who does a lot of work for local people. I've used them before and was satisfied with the work, but that was on my wife's 8 year old Ford Aspire. I'm not sure I'd want them working on my Lexus, but thought I'd used them for another quote (thinking that the prices would be similar). Body shop #2. Well respected shop in town. I know the owners (my daughter goes to school with their son). 8 days and $2700. They caught some things that the first shop didn't catch - and also had more time allocated for the things that shop 1 did catch. Body shop #3. Recommended by the Lexus dealer. Caught some things that even shop 2 missed (such as the middle pipe of the exhaust system). Also allocated even more time for alignment and specified straightening of parts that look fine to me (like the roof rail). 14 days and $3700. I'm not going to give estimate #1 to the insurance company since they left too many things out - I'll look for another comparable one if they want 3. I'm thinking that I'll go back to shop #2 and tell them that shop #3 found some things that they missed and ask them for a rebid based on the same items so we can get an apples to apples comparison. Interestingly, I would expect that the final repair prices wouldn't be that different among the 3 shops. Even if I gave it to the low end shop, when they found the other stuff, they could go back to the insurance company for more money. Just reporting on my amazement that the estimates varied by a factor of 2 in money and a factor of 3 in time.

We could get into semantics about what a 'dbw problem' is, but that wouldn't be very productive. There are some DBW cars that don't have the problem, so it's not purely dbw. The cause seems to be the programming that was selected to go along with the dbw. When you step on the gas hard with an ancient carbeurated engine, you get a flood of fuel shot into the engine - much of which goes unburned. That wastes fuel as well as increasing emissions. You get a similar effect with a standard fuel injected engine. When you step hard on the gas, lots of fuel gets dumped into the engine before the engine is ready to use it. Again, your fuel economy drops and emissions increase. With the advent of dbw systems, the manufacturer can program the system to slow down the rate of fuel injection. When you step hard on the gas, the fuel injection doesn't jump quickly, it ramps slowly. That keeps emissions low and helps to increase the EPA ratings. That also explains why they don't have the problem in Canadian cars - which don't have the same standards. All of the above seems fairly straightforward. The following is speculation on my part, but I don't see anything that's not supportable. It seems to me that some vendors (including, but not limited to Lexus) went too far with this round. They have too long a lag time before fuel injection rates increase. THAT is why there's a severe lag in engine performance when you step hard on the gas. Your method of slowly accelerating circumvents this problem because the system seems to be programmed to hold back only on full throttle (or nearly so) acceleration. It doesn't seem to mind as much acceleration as you wish to apply - as long as you do so gradually. My personal gripe is twofold: 1. If the above is correct, they should be able to do a better job without affecting mileage or emissions much. The current lag on full throttle acceleration is 1-2 seconds. If they limited it to, say, 0.25 seconds, they'd get most of the benefit without the problems. 2. Simply from a safety standpoint, there are times when you need to be able to accelerate quickly. A long hesitation creates a significant safety problem, IMHO. If anyone DOES have an accident due to the throttle lag, Lexus is probably going to lose big time - given the huge number of complaints that they've effectively ignored.

I'm not sure about the 'testament to Lexus' part. Seems to be more a testament to how you (and the previous owner(s) if any) took care of the car. I couldn't personally live with cloth - not with kids in the house.

OK. You're right. I don't have that particular problem. The 'going 40' problem I was referring to was when you're cruising along at 35-40 mph and step hard on the gas, the car sits there thinking about what it wants to do for a second or two before it begins to accelerate.

Not on my 04 ES330.

Since you've already sold one car, I'm not sure you're going to be any better off selling the Lexus and replacing it with another luxury car. You might want to get some hard numbers from your insurance agent (pointing out that you've already sold one car) to see if swapping it for a GS or LS would make any difference. I suspect you'll lose more in the trade than what you gain. You've got a car you love that's reliable and isn't causing you any problems. Personally, I don't think I'd give that up for a similar era used car - unless someone could show me HUGE savings on insurance. Buying a 10 year old used car is a risky proposition. I'd say to stick with the Lexus unless there's some other reason for wanting to trade.

I agree - I think it looks great! would imagine that bit won't be in the final car though. It would become a pain to actually have your car that glowing blue all the time too so not very practial - but really cool B) ← It could be set to turn off - or switch to different colors. Not likely, but possible. But now for the real question - have they learned to make a car that shifts properly yet?

This is almost unheard of in the US, but is quite common in Europe for many types of cars. I would suspect that if you have a way to contact a European Lexus dealer they might be able to help. Or perhaps a Camry dealer.

You've basically created an artificially inflated loudness curve. Since all of your settings are above 0, you're using your eq as a volume increaser (not quite since the equalizer doesn't cover all ranges). I would expect that your system would sound about as good if you had bass +1, mid 0, treble +2 and raise the volume slightly (actually, this should improve it since you're not cutting out the stuff between the mid and bass and the mid and treble. That curve is a standard loudness curve. When you listen to music at moderate to low volumes, you hear the midrange better than the highs or lows, so the loudness setting will boost the lows and highs to make up for it. In general, people's hearing will vary somewhat so your settings won't work for everyone, but I would say that a +1 or +2 on the bass, 0 mid, and +2 or +3 treble is a pretty common setting for most people.

No problem at all, I'd be happy to. In fact I was driving around today trying to pay attention to what I do so that I could explain it here. Basically you have to learn to anticipate the hesitation and feel as it builds and dissipates. When you accelerate you have to pause your movement on the pedal once you feel the power starting to flow through and wait, you'll feel the pedal tense up and let go beneath your foot, the lag just happened. After that you can accelerate normally. You'll learn through doing this when it is neccisary and when its not, I've learned that usually its only neccisary when starting from a stop or coming back onto throttle from a coasting state. Now, at first this is going to seem really difficult and cumbersome but I promise you that you will get used to it. The pausing is only for a microsecond and you'll learn to anticipate the behavior of the transmission before it happens and then the car will feel like it drives like any other car. You'll learn instinctively to read the state of the transmission through the gas pedal and it will become natural. I don't know if thats the best explanation but its really something you've got to try. ← Well, I'm not quite sure I follow that, but I'll give it a try. Thanks.

I've asked - and was told 'no'. In my area, there's only 1 Lexus dealer in a 100 mile radius and they're pretty arrogant. They figure that if you really want a Lexus, you have to deal with them. As for the driving, please tell us how to drive so I get the response I need without hesitation. BTW, I was talking with an auto engineer today (he runs a company that provides refurbished fuel system parts for all types of cars, but especially performance cars). He said that the problem isn't drive by wire, it's an emission issue. That makes sense to me. Blaming drive by wire never made sense - even a 20 year old integrated circuit should be able to handle the calculations way faster than I could sense the results. The reason it's an emissions issue is that they wanted to design it so that when you step on the gas, raw fuel can't be flying out the exhaust. If you dump the fuel in quicker than the system can use it, your HC emissions skyrocket. Because of that, they artificially reduce the rate of fuel injection until the rpms catch up. This also explains why there are reports that the Canadian cars don't have the problem. If it were an insurmountable drive by wire problem, even the Canadian cars would show it. But since it's emission related, their different emission requirements allow them to ramp up fuel injection faster.

Good for you. Yet many people DO say that the car has behaved in an unsafe way when full power is needed. Seems to me that their experience is just as valid as yours. All you've shown is that SOME drivers and SOME cars aren't badly affected. That doesn't excuse Lexus in any way.

To address your comments one by one: 1. While dealers in your area may be flexible, many others are not. My Lexus dealer would not even consider letting me take the car for very long. There's only one Lexus dealer within 100 miles, so I couldn't go elsewhere. It's not unreasonable to assume that if a major flaw shows up somewhere, that they'll fix it. 2. I don't see how it's the consumer's fault. I drive my ES the same way I drive other cars. The ES is very, very dangerous. Maybe you're able to drive like a little old lady and never step on the gas, but that's not possible for some of us. All the freeway onramps in my area are quite short. If you don't step hard on the gas, you're sunk. And the nature of the freeways makes the hesitation extremely dangerous. I can't really figure out why you're defending Lexus in this. The car clearly does not perform the way a $35 K car should perform. There's a major lag in acceleration. Lexus admits that there's a lag in acceleration, but refuses to fix it - pretending that it's normal. The lag does not always show up in a test drive. I'm really trying to figure out how it's MY fault that the car drives like a 1975 Yugo.

The problem is that the transmission learns your driving style. It's not going to adapt in a weekend of driving. Mine was OK for the first thousand miles or so and then got bad. After they reset the transmission, it was OK again for a thousand miles or so. A test drive doesn't excuse Lexus from having a lousy transmission/engine combo.

are you sure that your condo management failed to install the sensors? if so, they failed to obey the laws: "Automatic reversal systems have been required by law for all garage door openers in the United States since 1991. Optical sensors became a requirement in 1993." ← the sensor is facing the wrong direction, i.e. its on the wrong side, the opening unit was placed on the opposite side thus the motion sensor is indoors when it's supposed to be outdoors. ← That's just the optical sensor. Most garage door openers also have an automatic reversal system - which relies on the force of the door hitting something.

Good luck. Last time I checked around hear, the dealer's best price for a year old used Lexus was 95% of the cost of a new one.

Actually, we DO face that problem. Instead of the 'operating as designed' line, we say 'we designed the product with an adequate cushion of safety. Every manufacturing process has a range of acceptable results. Even though your product does not match the exact middle of the range, it is well within the range of safe and acceptable parameters.' No liability problems and no dishonesty, either. And no telling your customers that they're idiots.

It's not semantics at all. Saying it meets their design criteria means that they intended for it to act that way. Saying that they set design criteria and failed to meet them says that they didn't intend for the car to lurch or didn't intend for the seat memory to end up in the wrong place, but due to a design or manufacturing flaw, that's the way it ended up. It's obvious why they chose the former - it's just absurd for them to pretend that that was the behavior they were shooting for.

Sorry, I don't buy that. For some signficant percentage of drivers, there's a serious problem. When I try to accelerate onto a freeway, I have a serious delay more than half the time. The delay is often enough to have me worried about getting rear-ended. I don't believe the car was designed to have a big delay when you step on the gas. You could say that the car meets their design criteria, but that the design criteria are incorrect - since they cause a bad result. But that's not the same as saying it's operating as designed.

I might buy what you're saying but it IS Lexus Customer Care that's saying that the transmission is operating as designed. I've talked with people at all levels of Lexus and they all say that the car is suppsed to drive the way it does. (Of course, that's nonsnese - I can't believe that they really believe it's supposed to lurch like an arthritic drunk). So it DOES appear to be the Lexus policy to insist that any problem with the car is simply the car operating as designed.