Mark55

Hi I suspect whether you can live with the handling depends on how you drive or how you are willing to adapt your driving to the car. I have had a GS450h for around 13,000 miles and moved to it from a Jaguar S-type 4.2 Sport and prior to that an M5 V8. The handling is not perfect, and whether you can enjoy it really depends on how you drive it. If you drive at less than 80% and use a slow-in fast-out approach (highly recommended on the public road anyway !) that allows it to keep its balance then its quite good fun. It all falls apart a bit if you late brake and then turn in at the last moment - something both the Jaguar and M5 excelled at. It feels like it is very well balanced front to rear but has a high centre of gravity - I suspect part of the problem is that if you brake heavily there feels like there is some sort of transfer taking place from the regenerative braking to the front brakes and this upsets the handling just at the point you want to turn in. The dead steering doesnt help at this point. If you like to make brisk, smooth cross country progress then its fine. Mark

I have a GS450h and have noticed that under full acceleration that the power guage on the dashboad only shows 200Kv until around 60mph, when it climbs to around 220 and then when you reach around 90mph you can hear the revs rise and the power guage moves around to 250kv. This seems odd as clearly the motor is not giving out full power until you reach a speed where its not all that useful. The dealer says it is normal, but I wondered if any other owners could confirm that theirs works the same as mine ? Mark