Knightshade

And yet, the dealers keep replacing them free under warranty.

because it -is- BS.

The owners manual explicitly allows mp3 discs to be used, and it's required to be fixed under warranty.

They might moan about it, but they CAN NOT deny the warranty repair for a use that is explicitly allowed in the manual.

BTW, in the manual you linked to, right there on page 190, it EXPLICITLY lists CD-Rs as playable.

"Compatible media:

Media that can be used for MP3 and WMA playback are CD-Rs and CD-RWs"

Just open the manual and point to that if they give you any more garbage about not being a warranty repair.

You're -supposed- to use burned CDs in it. Says so right in the owners manual. So they can't "blame" it on that and deny a warranty repair.

Should be a free repair under warranty

Yup, I got mine on Oct 3rd... sport package, XM, Mark Levinson -without- Nav... was a special order, and the first sport pkg car the dealership had ever seen. I've had it a month now and the cashmere carpet remains perfectly clean, I just insure I don't have any gunk on my shoes before I get in, and I don't eat in the car either. I could see folks who live where it rains a lot or something wanting to avoid the light colored carpet though.

And yeah on the steering thing most car mags are comparing the IS350 to the G35 and BMW 3 series, and in 06 the big complaint was no way to disable VDIM, so in 07 they added the button to do so... in 07 the big complaint was the IS350 had "numb" steering and lack of road feedback in steering compared to the other two, so for 08 they supposedly tried to address that too.

Improved steering feel was one of the changes mentioned early on for 08 to better compete with the 3 series BMWs

BTW, only 08s with cashmere produced after the first run or two get black carpet... mine still has cashmere (which I'm pretty happy about, but a lot of folks seem to like the black carpet too)

1. Press start once [Foot off brake]

2. Hold trip reset

3. Press start once [Foot off brake]

4. Hold until ----- disappears

That'll reset it

Like I said, likely varies by dealer, but in most cases it should be whatever they charge for an hour of labor (not that it takes an hour, just most places won't bill any less than that)

actually there's a squeek TSIB too as well as a dust one...

LPS (lexus personalized settings) is about 4 pages of things that can be set... a very few of them can be changed by the end user later on, but most of them can only be done by a Lexus dealer, and it's not free. (Well, you get ONE free set of changes if you buy new, within the first 12 months of ownership, but after that, they charge... how much will vary by dealer but I'd guess it'd be whatever they get for an hour of labor).

When I was looking at getting an IS I found that the price difference on new vs. used was very small, and it wasn't worth buying used... especially since I wanted the sport package which was very rare to begin with, in a specific color combo... If you're not picky about color, or want an option package that's pretty common, you might be more able to find a used car price that's worth it to you.

If you want to see the full LPS list you can go here:

http://www.clublexus.com/forums/showpost.p...mp;postcount=23

Click on the PDF and it'll have em

If you want to mod the car for performance, don't bother. There's literally nothing that adds significant performance for any reasonable cost right now. The Joe Z intake pipe is probably the nearest thing, only because it's inexpensive for a good quality item, but still only adds single-digit horsepower. No -legal- exhaust adds more than that either and costs massively more. Some non-legal (ie off-road only because they delete cats, etc) exhaust might add as much as 10-15 horsepower if you don't mind dropping a grand or more for such gains.

There's a supercharger for $6000 that'll add 40 hp or so, still pretty poor bang/buck.

NOBODY makes IS350 specific headers, though a few very-cheaply-made generic headers that physically fit the motor are available.

Nobody makes a real ECU performance chip either, thanks to lexus encrypting the ECU.

Right now unless you can engineer your own parts the best way to -significantly- enhance the power/performance of an IS would be to trade it in for an IS-F in a couple months. You'd gain over 100 hp plus better handling and such for about 10k.

If you want to mod for sound/looks, well, then you have lots of options of body kits, aftermarket wheels, loud exhausts, etc...

Toyota/Lexus is sponsoring this years SEMA show at the end of the month... Some folks hold out hope that we will finally see -real- performance enhancements for the 350 available then... many others think it'll just be more of the same (ie bling/show items that don't really do much and are way overpriced) but it'll be another week or so before we know for sure.

I'm curious why the guy thinks Avery is way behind the other brands... local installer I've been talking to can do both Venture and Avery and recommends Avery as the better product

I used Johnson Lexus in Durham, NC... bit of a drive from NJ but not TOO bad... (not sure where in NJ you are but it'd be about a 5 hour drive from DC doing the speed limit for reference... if interested lemme know and I'll put you in touch with the sales manager I worked with

$900 over invoice is about what the local dealers were selling on-lot 07 350s for while 07 was still in production... but that was fairly late in the model year when I checked (late spring 07)... right now most 08s seem to be going about halfway between invoice and MSRP, so 3k over invoice might be right as an average. This is mid-atlantic though, I would guess 350s are scarcer in the northeast where AWD 250s would seem more popular.

Note you can probably do better buying out of state, it's just a quesiton of if that's practical or otherwise economical to do (ie figuring either cost to transport or time to fly there and drive it back)

You left out a couple of things-

Coinholder added to left of steering wheel

Some minor price changes (you can look these up pretty easily, mostly $200 more for most cars, $200 less for AWD 250s, and a couple minor changes to optioning pkging on the AWD 250)

The wheel color change specifically is to what they're calling liquid graphite, and most people consider it a significant improvement

The seat-back pockets are also different in addition to the leg-room cutouts you mentioned

Some folks have reported (Edmunds among them) that the steering feel/feedback has been improved, but no official statement on that one

The I Agree screen is gone on Nav systems (this might be addable to older models with an updated Nav disc)

hopefully ZERO...if you order a car the way you want it, you should be able to afford it...at the dealer I work at, if you order a car its an MSRP deal.

What a horrible dealer you work for! I just picked up my special order IS350 last night, at a significant discount off MSRP. You're selling a car, not oxygen.

With a special order someone is walking in, cash in hand, ready to commit to buying THAT DAY. A dealer should be more than happy to take his money.

The dealer still turns a profit, and it requires NO work on his part at all beyond some paperwork to earn it.

Dealers that hate special orders baffle me... and it's one of the single biggest complaints about Lexus that I see driving people to companies like BMW who sell a whole lot more 3 series than Lexus sells ISes, and are more than happy to special order for you.

I was lucky enough to find a dealer also happy to take my money, but it's a shame there's so few of them.

(I'm on the east coast BTW, so sadly not much help to the Vegas poster unless he's willing to buy out of state)

Absolutely... but at least it's a couple hundred dollar item moving toward worthless instead of a couple thousand dollar one. And in the meantime it's $75 a year to update the maps instead of the $300 a year Lexus charges for the same thing.

I'm not panicing, I explicitly deleted Nav from my special order and spent 2k less on a better aftermarket unit :P

The key is smart, it doesn't automatically make the driver smart :P

Studies have found that OEM nav actually lowers resale value...

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2007-0...sale-usat_N.htm

yeah, go to the dealer and tell him you want the brake dust TSIB, free new pads, no more dust :)

www.tirerack.com

If you get tires from the dealer be sure to bring lube

Very few mods (that actually add any performance) exist for the IS350. Your warranty can't be voided by ANY aftermarket modification though unless the mod itself causes whatever failure you're trying to get fixed, that's federal law... (ie an aftermarket exhaust system has no impact on the warranty of your brakes for example).

If you don't care to break federal law by removing your catalytic converters there's really no mods worth the money (IMHO) to add power... the best 100% legal exhausts add maybe 5-7 horsepower... you could do a Joe Z intake and maybe pick up a similar amount on that end, and that's fairly inexpensive so might be worth it to you... and that's about it.

If you don't mind an illegal exhaust system a couple of those (LMS for example) can give you in the neighborhood of 15-20 hp for a bit north of $1000...

If you want to go faster without adding power you can always go with lighter wheels and tires.

Course, those swaybars don't actually exist.

If you call them they'll tell you they'll be available for sale in a few weeks. As I understand it that's the same thing they've been telling people for over a year now.

I just do both. One factory unit and one portable for other situations. It's just a couple hundred bucks for a portable unit (as we sit discussing forty thousand dollar cars). . .

Yes, it's just a couple hundred bucks for the portable unit. The factory unit on the other hand adds 2.5-3k to the price of the car, which is still significant even on a 40k car.