CanTex

Where your azz sits and the back are real leather, sides ect are nauhagahide (spelling) :D :D :D I've always worried over the years about how many naugas they had to kill to make Naugahyde. Fortunately the fabrics got better since the '60s, and there is lots of leather available these days so all is better. Anyway, wouldn't a standard leather cleaner do the job? Seems to me it says it's OK for vinyl and leather somewhere on the container.

19 - 21 for in-town and local (congested) freeways in the Fort Worth / Dallas area. 26 to 28.5 across America with the cruise on 75.

I'm only 6 feet tall but also have a "long torso", so I use a little tilt and I'm happy. The seat is at its lowest position, of course. After having to be practically laid back into the back seat with my '01 Acura TL, it feels almost upright in the RX. For anything else, go by the manufacturers' specs for headroom on Kelly Blue Book or Edmonds

100,000 km = ~ 62,000 miles. It's hardly broken in! The most cost-effective way to go is keep what you've got! That 4Runner ought to go 200K with very few problems. The MDX is better handling and is more "masculine" but casts a bigger shadow and has worse mileage. The RX has slightly wishy-washy handling but goes where you point it and gets decent highway mileage with excellent comfort. (For example, my trip computer shows 27.3 mpg but actual miles traveled / gallons pumped = 26 mpg. I have no idea what that is in litres per 110 km.) For all you drive, you could pick up a year-or-two-old RX and save all that depreciation. Just be aware that some members of this forum have found that the Canadian-built (Cambridge, ON Toyota plant) Lexi have had a few more problems than the Japanese-built Lexi.

Sure, a lot of ladies drive them, but they're not like the "New" Beetle or the Solara for being decidedly "girlmobiles". My wife decided that ours needed to be black, not some wimpy gold or silver-gold color, just in case there were any potential "issues". She was right. (She was supposed it use it as her daily driver but much prefers my '01 Acura TL so I get to enjoy the Lexus.) And since our dealer offers unlimited car washes, the RX is shiny black almost all the time. Just enjoy it and drive it. Aside from the wishy-washy handling it'll weave through traffic with the best of them and goes when you need it to. And Consumer Reports has the RX as Recommended. If you wanted something more masculine, try the Acura MDX. I had one for a service car one day and was impressed by the handling but it's too big for us and didn't feel as comfortable (ride and controls) as the RX, plus it took up a lot more space in my garage. Oh, and the NAV system got mad at me when I strayed off course. BMW and Mercedes? Sure. Just bring more $$$ to the sales table, as well as expect more service problems. Buy the April Consumer Reports Annual Auto Issue on the newsstands now for good side-by-side comparisons.

I believe it's the Toyota Venza, not Lexus. It's a taller station wagon version of the Camry but they're afraid to call it that. Here's the Toyota link: http://www.toyota.com/upcoming-vehicles/in...l?s_ocid=pdsrch Another of many links: http://www.autoblog.com/2008/01/14/detroit...es-edge-murano/ Just Google "Toyota Venza" and you'll find lots of info. Very nice, but a Lexus it's not.

I'm wondering if it's one of the Canadian-made RXs. Does the VIN start with a 2? (There's a thread in the forum about the assembly labor being Toyota-like at the Cambridge, ON plant but the parts are being sourced from the "fine folks" who make parts for "Malibus and Neons". Ouch!) My '07 RX is absolutely wonderful after 17K miles with zero problems. Japanese-made. (Canadian versions go to the NE U.S., I was told, an the rest of the country gets Japanese versions.) I'd say lean reeeeeal hard on the service people to make it right for you. Yell loud!

I think the same people who work in the mattress police office (the ones who are going to arrest you for pulling the Do Not Remove tag off your mattress) will be looking for you. ;) Actually, it's probably a federal regulation that the labels are "embedded" like they are, plus the potential liability/lawsuit situation for the carmakers if the labels were easily removable and someone had a wreck in a car where the labels were removed. (Aren't trial lawyers wonderful? <_< )

Neons & Malibus? Ouch! I did not know Toyota parceled out their parts manufacture like that. Magna? RX350s, of course, are final-assembled alongside Corollas, and Matrixes (Matrices?) at the Toyota plant in Cambridge, ON. Good point about the Japanese lifers. There's another thread about windshield distortion on what is likely a Canadian-built RX - different sourcing again. (As a Canadian ex-pat, I was initially disappointed that I didn't get a Canadian-built RX here in Texas, but now I'm glad my "baby" is Japanese-built.)

You're located in Ohio, so you may have the Canadian-made model ("2" to start the VIN), so who knows what glass they're using up there or where it's coming from. Could it possibly have anything to do with seating position relative to the windshield? My Japanese-made RX350 has no problems with distortion.

You mean the center arm rest over the "bins", right? Actually for this over-60 guy with a bad hip, it's the ideal height: I raise myself up on my right elbow when I get in so I can position the rest of me properly in the seat. Then I ignore it and keep both hands on the wheel. I also sat in a LS460 at a car show and found that armrest to be way, way high to be useful. (Good thing I can't afford a LS anyway so I don't feel so bad.) Not only is it too high but it is way to close to the seat to be effective and Im just average sized. Hey, great product for future Lexi: Adjustable arm rests! (I mean, there are so many adjustments on this car now, another one shouldn't be a problem.) I can see your point about it being intrusive - my vertically-challenged wife whips it out of the way before she climbs in. Great for me, not for her. Oh well, just enjoy your vehicle.

That's probably because we're generally happy with our "not-too-big not-too-small just-right" vehicle purchases?

Just curious... Is yours Japanese-built or Canadian-built? (J or 2 to start the VIN) I was hoping for a Canadian-built RX, being a Canadian ex-pat (hence my "handle"), but they tell me the Canadian cars are for the northern tier states so I had to "settle for" a Japanese-built RX350 here in Texas. (16K miles with absolutely zero problems, best car and fewest initial problems out of 25 or so in my life. Oh, and the paint, black, is flawless.) I'd say take it up a couple of notches and contact the regional people. It probably wouldn't hurt to mention your "sharing of glad tidings" with the Lexus Forum. Get vocal and keep going until you get results.

You mean the center arm rest over the "bins", right? Actually for this over-60 guy with a bad hip, it's the ideal height: I raise myself up on my right elbow when I get in so I can position the rest of me properly in the seat. Then I ignore it and keep both hands on the wheel. I also sat in a LS460 at a car show and found that armrest to be way, way high to be useful. (Good thing I can't afford a LS anyway so I don't feel so bad.)

Um, what's the matter with leaving the '07s and the '08s together? Identical vehicles. Except, of course, the chrome door handles on the '08s. (Personally I saved a bundle by "settling for" body-color door handles when the '08s were arriving last February.) My opinion is the current RX350 generation stick together to resolve common problems, then the next-gen RX owners can get their own forum.

I've been pondering the work the dealer wishes to do on my 15K mile checkup for my RX350. One item that keeps showing up in the service list throughout the life of the vehicle is the cabin air filter, either to clean or replace. The manual makes getting to the filter look easy. Just pop the two stops at the sides of the glove box inwards, tilt the glove box out of the way and viola, there's the filter. Is there a special tool involved? This klutz tried prying with a couple of screwdrivers and it was apparent I was going to break something. There has to be a better way. If I can do it, I can more easily parse out the work into smaller chunks that could be done by other service facilities, including Toyota dealerships. (Wait! The coffee won't be as good! Darn!) Thanks!

My cars NEVER go back to the dealer for ANY reason. Were a serious, more expensive, warranty repair required I might consider it but mostly I just buy the required parts and do the warranty repair myself. My dealer said that if you can't find a Lexus dealer nearby when traveling, take it to a Toyota dealer. Well, when traveling near Toronto this summer, it was very apparent that the nearest Lexus dealer was miles away. So I took it to a convenient Toyota dealer and they did the work for a lot less money. (They were reluctant to do a 5-tire rotation, though, because they only see AWD vehicles up there.) Question: How does one unleash the glove box to get at the cabin filter? Special wrench? I tried prying away at it with a couple of screwdrivers but I was going to break the plastic. The manual makes it look so easy. If I can do that, I'll bypass the Lexus dealer.

Hey All Thanks for the input, even though I don't agree that it's an intuitive design. (We had occasion to run 500 miles on my Acura this weekend just to keep it active, and rarely did I have to take my eyes off the road to see which button to push - they were right under my right thumb all the time.) You are right, though, it's the only "dark mark" on an otherwise fine automobile. And it's quite clear Toyota/Lexus intends to keep going down the same road, so my efforts in pointing out something like this are apparently for naught. Many more years and miles to go on this baby, so I'll have to put up with the little stalk for sure.

I can fully understand that, based on the very nice stable of Lexus vehicles in your family. I have had a long string of Honda and Acura vehicles, the last several of which were/are Acuras, plus rented many cars of all levels, all of which had very intuitive top-of-the-wheel buttons. As well as fumbling to find the stick behind the wheel, I found quite often that when I went to push the stick up to Resume, I must have been pulling it towards me at the same time, thus canceling the cruise, followed by unexpected loss of speed. Since we put on a lot of highway miles, if Lexus doesn't get this fixed, it might just be a deal-breaker the next time, considering the wide array of really good vehicles out there today and coming soon. Harsh but we want "the whole package", not something from the Corolla parts bin. Aside from that, we really, really like the vehicle and the dealership, so my complaints can be considered on the picky side to some. I'm just looking for Lexus to fix it.

Am I the only one in the world who doesn't like that stubby little cruise control stick behind the steering wheel? Non-intuitive, awkward to use, confusing, have to take my eyes off the road to find it and use it. And it just got pulled out of the Corolla parts bin. Is this a Lexus, or a Corolla? (I put 9,000 highway miles on my baby this summer, so I had plenty of time to learn it and use it - still a bad, cheap, annoying design.) My Acura has very intuitive wheel-mounted buttons that "fall readily to hand", as do 90% of the other vehicles I saw at the car show at the Texas State Fair. Part of the other 10%, aside from Toyota, was the Dodge Caliber. Ouch! At another show, a Lexus marketing person (from Chicago) came up with a mind-blowing but still wrong answer: "We didn't want to clutter up the steering wheel." Huh? A phone call and an e-mail to Lexus got a "humor this guy and he'll go away" response. Thoughts? How does one get through to the people that make such decisions?