J.Clarkson gives 2010 MB E550 1/5 Stars

[KILLERGS4]

more stupid reviews by J. Clarkson...
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Lexus GS430
Wake me up when we get there
Jeremy Clarkson
Recommend?

Do you remember when you were growing up and all your friends were allowed to go on school exchange trips to exotic places like France and Germany? Well how’s this for progress. We now have an 11-year-old girl from Tokyo in the spare room.

Now, I’ve been to Japan and it was strange. The bath in my hotel room was vertical and made from wood, the food was mostly still alive, there weren’t any chairs, the walls were made from rice, I was fed by a woman with a completely white face and a shoe size of minus three, all the bars were full of men in slippers, singing, the traffic hadn’t moved since 1952 and all you could buy from vending machines on the streets were cans of drink called Sweat. And soiled pants.

Once I tried driving from Tokyo to Yokohama but it was impossible because none of the road signs made any sense. Elsewhere in the world “centre” is zentrum, or centro or some such derivation, but in Japan it’s just a meaningless squiggle. Honestly, I would have found more cultural reference points if I’d gone to Venus.

So after a week I went back to my hotel and spent the rest of the trip under my bed hiding. And I was 40. So how on earth would an 11-year-old girl cope over here? To get round the fact that the poor little thing didn’t speak a single word of English, she was sent with one of those gadgets that only exists in Star Trek, the mind of Stephen Hawking, and most Japanese high street electrical stores.

You type a message in Japanese and it speaks the words in a sort of Daleky Engrish. And the first words it spoke, just five miles from the airport, were “car sick”. Plainly, after 11 years in a Tokyo traffic jam, our visitor was unused to travelling at speeds in excess of 3mph.

She was also confused by her supper on that first night, picking up a spoon and staring at it in much the same way that a traveller from the future might pick up and stare at a gramophone record. Plainly it made no sense. But then neither did any of the foodstuff that had been placed on her plate.

After just one mouthful of mashed potato she rushed to the loo, where she vomited, explosively and for a very prolonged period of time. Not bad, I thought, she’s only been in England two hours and already she’s been sick twice. I desperately wanted to make sure she was okay, and not too worried by the beds with legs and the chairs and how all the trees were more than 6in tall and outside. But it’s pretty hard when all you can say in Japanese is “hello”, “goodbye” and “Subaru”.

I couldn’t even use her gadget, partly because all the keys were in Japanese and partly because it had stopped saying “car sick” and was now saying “broken”, over and over again.

We’d been told that the whole point of her trip was to provide an experience of England, but after the spoon episode we did give her some chopsticks. And then, after watching her use them to wrestle with a 6in Yorkshire pudding, I’m afraid I relented and drove all the way to London for some sushi. To be honest, I felt so sorry for her I’d have gone out and harpooned a whale if that’s what she’d wanted.

To make matters worse she had arrived with a suitcase full of presents, all of which were exquisite but completely unfathomable. I mean, what kind of face are you supposed to pull when you’ve just been given what looks like a squidgy test tube full of pink and green sticky tape? It turned out to be a pen that writes a musical score as you drag the nib across the paper. Honestly, I’d never seen anything so amazing in my whole life. But then everything’s relative. She’d never been to a house that had dogs on the inside and trees on the outside.

It’s said that genetically the human race is defined at one end by the tribesmen of New Guinea and at the other by the Basques. These, apparently, are the bookends. But I’m sorry. I reckon the genetic North Pole is a 6ft 5in Brit and the genetic South Pole an 11-year-old Japanese schoolgirl.

And that brings me to the new Lexus GS430 I’ve been driving these past few days.

Like all cars, it has doors, seats, pedals, a steering wheel and lights at the front and the back. But how can this be, when it comes from a people who are baffled by a spoon? How do they make something so instantly recognisable as “a car” when they can’t eat mashed potato without vomiting? We have knives and forks. They have chopsticks. We lie down in the bath. They stand up. We cook food. They don’t. Their culture is completely different from ours, and yet the Lexus, on the face of it, is just the same as a Jaguar, a Mercedes or a BMW.

Except it isn’t. It is much, much quieter. At 70mph it’s so silent you can hear your hair growing. Sitting in your garden after a lovely lunch is more frantic. In the cabin you are so isolated from the real world that you get some idea of what it might be like to be dead.

The six-speed automatic box swaps cogs like an albatross changes direction, and even if you do put your foot down, the big V8 responds by humming, quietly, like it’s in a church arranging flowers. Driving this car is like being wrapped up in a duvet and carried from place to place by a small white cloud.

Only faster. It is far from being a sports car — driving this car with gusto would be like going into a sword fight armed with a cushion — but in a straight line, at least, the 4.3 litre engine delivers the goods. It’d easily hang onto the coat-tails of a similarly priced BMW 5-series.

But the best thing about this car is the layout of the interior. If we ignore the spectacularly horrible wooden trim we find a sense of order and logic that would make Mr Spock look like a swivel-eyed madman. All the major controls are where you want them to be, and do what you want them to do, and all the minor controls are hidden away in a flap by your right knee.

Problems? Well, apart from the wood trim you have to dig deep to find anything tangible. The boot’s an awkward shape, I suppose, and there isn’t quite as much space in the back as you might expect. But neither of these things is a good enough reason for buying something else. As a long-distance cruiser this car is quite simply outstanding. Better than a Gulfstream V, and maybe even a rival for teleporting.

Unfortunately, I didn’t like it at all, partly because it’s about as attractive as a sponsored town centre roundabout and partly because Lexuses these days are driven by people who play golf, or people who like to slap their hos and drive around at night shooting at business rivals with submachineguns. Gangstas? Golfers? I don’t want to look like either.

Mostly, though, I don’t like this car because it feels like a facsimile of the real thing. And that’s hardly surprising because that’s exactly what it is. A copy. A Mercedes clone.

Cars sit in the Japanese psyche along with spoons and mashed potato. They don’t come naturally. Oh sure, they can copy a Mercedes and use it to earn vast lumps of foreign currency, but how do you copy flair and panache and feel? The simple answer is: you can’t, so you end up with a completely soulless driving experience.

It’s a bit like those vegetarians who insist on eating hamburgers that are designed to look, feel and taste like the real thing. But they’re just not.

Technically, this new Lexus is probably better than a Mercedes, in the same way that a golden egg made by laser is going to be technically better than one of Karl Fabergé’s originals. But which one would you rather have?

[KILLERGS4]

this guys has bunch of stupid reviews...
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/dri...cle1358270.ece

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/dri...icle710808.ece

[Och]

Oh, cock!!! The original is 1 start out of 5, and the copy is even worse.

Thats not gone well at all....

[I8ABMR]

I wouldnt take Jeremy clarsons opinion word for word. He can be a little harsh. I think he does it to be funny. I would make up my own mind

[CDNROCKIES]

Clarkson always needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Without ratings, he'd be nobody, so he tries very hard to be entertaining. At times he's completely hilarious, and at others, a total buffoon.

His review basically describes the car that it's buyers actually want and will buy.

[1SICKLEX]

Originally Posted by KILLERGS4

more stupid reviews by J. Clarkson...
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Lexus GS430
Wake me up when we get there
Jeremy Clarkson
Recommend?

Do you remember when you were growing up and all your friends were allowed to go on school exchange trips to exotic places like France and Germany? Well how’s this for progress. We now have an 11-year-old girl from Tokyo in the spare room.

Now, I’ve been to Japan and it was strange. The bath in my hotel room was vertical and made from wood, the food was mostly still alive, there weren’t any chairs, the walls were made from rice, I was fed by a woman with a completely white face and a shoe size of minus three, all the bars were full of men in slippers, singing, the traffic hadn’t moved since 1952 and all you could buy from vending machines on the streets were cans of drink called Sweat. And soiled pants.

Once I tried driving from Tokyo to Yokohama but it was impossible because none of the road signs made any sense. Elsewhere in the world “centre” is zentrum, or centro or some such derivation, but in Japan it’s just a meaningless squiggle. Honestly, I would have found more cultural reference points if I’d gone to Venus.

So after a week I went back to my hotel and spent the rest of the trip under my bed hiding. And I was 40. So how on earth would an 11-year-old girl cope over here? To get round the fact that the poor little thing didn’t speak a single word of English, she was sent with one of those gadgets that only exists in Star Trek, the mind of Stephen Hawking, and most Japanese high street electrical stores.

You type a message in Japanese and it speaks the words in a sort of Daleky Engrish. And the first words it spoke, just five miles from the airport, were “car sick”. Plainly, after 11 years in a Tokyo traffic jam, our visitor was unused to travelling at speeds in excess of 3mph.

She was also confused by her supper on that first night, picking up a spoon and staring at it in much the same way that a traveller from the future might pick up and stare at a gramophone record. Plainly it made no sense. But then neither did any of the foodstuff that had been placed on her plate.

After just one mouthful of mashed potato she rushed to the loo, where she vomited, explosively and for a very prolonged period of time. Not bad, I thought, she’s only been in England two hours and already she’s been sick twice. I desperately wanted to make sure she was okay, and not too worried by the beds with legs and the chairs and how all the trees were more than 6in tall and outside. But it’s pretty hard when all you can say in Japanese is “hello”, “goodbye” and “Subaru”.

I couldn’t even use her gadget, partly because all the keys were in Japanese and partly because it had stopped saying “car sick” and was now saying “broken”, over and over again.

We’d been told that the whole point of her trip was to provide an experience of England, but after the spoon episode we did give her some chopsticks. And then, after watching her use them to wrestle with a 6in Yorkshire pudding, I’m afraid I relented and drove all the way to London for some sushi. To be honest, I felt so sorry for her I’d have gone out and harpooned a whale if that’s what she’d wanted.

To make matters worse she had arrived with a suitcase full of presents, all of which were exquisite but completely unfathomable. I mean, what kind of face are you supposed to pull when you’ve just been given what looks like a squidgy test tube full of pink and green sticky tape? It turned out to be a pen that writes a musical score as you drag the nib across the paper. Honestly, I’d never seen anything so amazing in my whole life. But then everything’s relative. She’d never been to a house that had dogs on the inside and trees on the outside.

It’s said that genetically the human race is defined at one end by the tribesmen of New Guinea and at the other by the Basques. These, apparently, are the bookends. But I’m sorry. I reckon the genetic North Pole is a 6ft 5in Brit and the genetic South Pole an 11-year-old Japanese schoolgirl.

And that brings me to the new Lexus GS430 I’ve been driving these past few days.

Like all cars, it has doors, seats, pedals, a steering wheel and lights at the front and the back. But how can this be, when it comes from a people who are baffled by a spoon? How do they make something so instantly recognisable as “a car” when they can’t eat mashed potato without vomiting? We have knives and forks. They have chopsticks. We lie down in the bath. They stand up. We cook food. They don’t. Their culture is completely different from ours, and yet the Lexus, on the face of it, is just the same as a Jaguar, a Mercedes or a BMW.

Except it isn’t. It is much, much quieter. At 70mph it’s so silent you can hear your hair growing. Sitting in your garden after a lovely lunch is more frantic. In the cabin you are so isolated from the real world that you get some idea of what it might be like to be dead.

The six-speed automatic box swaps cogs like an albatross changes direction, and even if you do put your foot down, the big V8 responds by humming, quietly, like it’s in a church arranging flowers. Driving this car is like being wrapped up in a duvet and carried from place to place by a small white cloud.

Only faster. It is far from being a sports car — driving this car with gusto would be like going into a sword fight armed with a cushion — but in a straight line, at least, the 4.3 litre engine delivers the goods. It’d easily hang onto the coat-tails of a similarly priced BMW 5-series.

But the best thing about this car is the layout of the interior. If we ignore the spectacularly horrible wooden trim we find a sense of order and logic that would make Mr Spock look like a swivel-eyed madman. All the major controls are where you want them to be, and do what you want them to do, and all the minor controls are hidden away in a flap by your right knee.

Problems? Well, apart from the wood trim you have to dig deep to find anything tangible. The boot’s an awkward shape, I suppose, and there isn’t quite as much space in the back as you might expect. But neither of these things is a good enough reason for buying something else. As a long-distance cruiser this car is quite simply outstanding. Better than a Gulfstream V, and maybe even a rival for teleporting.

Unfortunately, I didn’t like it at all, partly because it’s about as attractive as a sponsored town centre roundabout and partly because Lexuses these days are driven by people who play golf, or people who like to slap their hos and drive around at night shooting at business rivals with submachineguns. Gangstas? Golfers? I don’t want to look like either.

Mostly, though, I don’t like this car because it feels like a facsimile of the real thing. And that’s hardly surprising because that’s exactly what it is. A copy. A Mercedes clone.

Cars sit in the Japanese psyche along with spoons and mashed potato. They don’t come naturally. Oh sure, they can copy a Mercedes and use it to earn vast lumps of foreign currency, but how do you copy flair and panache and feel? The simple answer is: you can’t, so you end up with a completely soulless driving experience.

It’s a bit like those vegetarians who insist on eating hamburgers that are designed to look, feel and taste like the real thing. But they’re just not.

Technically, this new Lexus is probably better than a Mercedes, in the same way that a golden egg made by laser is going to be technically better than one of Karl Fabergé’s originals. But which one would you rather have?

Its always funny seeing German fanboys getting butthurt. So b/c Clarkson (who has reviewed cars for decades) gives your favorite E-class 1 star, you decide to post his review on teh GS and title it "Mercedes Clone' to make yourself feel better?

Funny but the clone still got 2 stars over the E class one.

Why didn' you post the GS 450h review? I mean if you are going to cry foul, post them all. He actually liked the 450h a lot.

Lexus GS 450h SE-L
At long last, that hybrid hocus-pocus has a point
Jeremy Clarkson
Recommend?

Last week a man in the Top Gear audience gave me some wire. It didn’t appear to be the best present I’d ever received until he explained what it was for. “It’s so you can connect your iPod to your mobile phone,” he said.

Now I’m a man who likes a gadget, so I thanked him profusely and turned to go. Then I thought of something. Why would I want to connect my iPod to my mobile phone? What would they possibly have to say to one another? It would be like slotting George Bush into the back of Hillary Clinton. Fun, in a “look at that” sort of way, but a bit pointless.

Which brings me on to the BlackBerry. I’m told by those who’ve invested that this is the biggest leap forward for mankind since the invention of fire, and that when you’ve had one for a week or so you’ll wonder where you’ve put it. Because losing it is like losing your mouth and your ears.

For those who think a BlackBerry is a fruit, let me explain. It’s a mobile phone that can also receive and send e-mails. This means that no matter where you are on the planet someone can always get hold of you to ask if you’d like a bigger penis.

But this is not its biggest fault. Have you ever been out for a drink with someone who has one? Sure, they’re in constant contact with the office, which is great for them, but they’re not in constant contact with you. Every time you get to the interesting part of a story the BlackBerry chirps and you can see they’re not listening any more. They’re willing you to hurry up and finish talking so they can whip it out and see if, this time, it’s not somebody wanting to offload a bucketful of ********

Go out with someone who has a BlackBerry and you’ll not get a single word out of them. Because it will be chirping or whining or playing the theme music from The Persuaders. And they’ll be texting with one hand and sending an e-mail with the other and it’ll be like talking to someone who has an unreachable itch and a daughter who’s just been kidnapped. Their mind won’t be on what you’re saying.

If you have a BlackBerry you may be physically out with friends but mentally you are at work. This means you can never have fun. You can never relax. Soon, then, your friends will stop wanting to see you and then you’ll die, quite early, from stress.

Another way of dying quite early — though this time with an axe in the back of your head — is to get a researcher’s job on Top Gear and be found by me, using the Wikipedia website as a research tool. Oh, it sounds great, like the BlackBerry and a wire that connects your mobile to your iPod, but it doesn’t work.

To prove this I recently checked the entry for Jeremy Clarkson and after just a short time thought, “Wow. When can I meet this guy?” He sounds like a riot, a cross between Nick Van Ooestrogen and Genghis Khan. He’s killed hundreds of cyclists, murdered all of northern Scotland, eaten a barn owl, and at weekends he goes out and rams trees for fun.

Apparently all the entries on Wikipedia can be updated by anyone. Which means there’s nothing to stop you going on there are saying oh, I don’t know, that Bonnie Tyler is a man.

Or try this for size. Wikipedia says the Toyota Prius looks like and performs like a normal car but delivers 50% better fuel economy. That’s not true. A Prius doesn’t look or perform like a normal car and it will do only 45mpg — far, far less than you’d get from a Golf diesel, say. I harbour a belief, founded on an admittedly limited grasp of science, that if you removed the electric motor and the batteries from a Toyota Prius, you’d save so much weight that it would become more economical and therefore even kinder to the environment.

But saving polar bears, of course, is not the point of a hybrid car. The point is not to save the planet but to be seen trying. I saw a Prius in California the other day with the registration plate “Hug Life” and that’s what the car does. It says to other road users, “Hey. I’ve spent a lot of money on this flimsy p.o.s. and I’m chewing a lot of fuel too. But I’m making a green statement.” Think of it, then, as a big metal beard, a pair of open-toed sandals with wheels, David Cameron with windscreen wipers.

And that brings us onto the subject of this morning’s road test — its big brother, the Lexus GS 450h. Unlike the Prius, which is a stand-alone model that looks like nothing else on the road, the Lexus hybrid looks exactly like its normal brothers. So if you buy one of these you’re not making a statement. In fact, while driving up the Bayswater Road this week, a gnarled and furious cyclist who’d been inconvenienced by my presence leant through the window to give me a piece of his warped and bitter mind. And before I had a chance to draw his attention to the hybrid badging, he was gone. If I were a real environmentalist I’d be a bit pissed off by this.

This car, however, does work the other way round. It works for normal people. I, for instance, liked it a lot.

It’s not the fuel economy. Lexus makes many bold claims, saying that by combining petrol and electric motors it’ll go to the moon and back on a single drop. It won’t. It’ll do the sort of mpg you’d get from any large diesel.

Nor am I all that bothered about its carbon dioxide emissions, because I don’t have a company car. If you do, however, then the savings are big. It’s £2,500 a year less than a comparable Audi.

Does this mean it’s saving the planet? Hmmm, I’m not so sure. Its 3.5 litre V6 engine is fantastically clever, combining direct and port injection. So I wonder how miserly it would be even without the electric motor and the batteries and so on.

Let me put it this way. On electric power alone, this car has a range of just 1.2 miles. Providing you don’t exceed 20mph.

It starts silently and for the first few inches it’s on batteries. But then the big V6 kicks in and doesn’t really shut down again until you’re home. Hybrid? Yeah, in the same way that my Ford GT would be a hybrid if I put a child’s windmill on the roof.

The only good thing about the electric motor is that it provides extra power when you mash your foot into the carpet. And I’m not sure that was the point.

So where’s the appeal? It’s not that fast, the CVT gearbox is as unusable as all other CVT gearboxes and the ride, beefed up to cope with the extra weight, is harsh in normal mode and boneshaking if you hit the sport button.

And you will hit the sport button because a lot of the Lexus dash is quite confusing. It even has a device that tells you which way to turn the steering wheel if you wish to miss an obstacle.

These, however, are all quite small faults. And they’re balanced nicely by the styling, the quality and the sense that you really are in something a little bit different. But the one thing that swung it for me is that if you take this huge, gas-guzzling super saloon into London you don’t have the faff of paying the congestion charge. Because it’s a hybrid, it’s exempt.

Since Uncle Ken introduced the charge a couple of years ago I haven’t driven into central London once. I can’t be bothered to talk to recorded messages. Life’s way too short. But with the Lexus I drove up and down Piccadilly all day.

It was great. It drove like a normal car and looked like a normal car, so people didn’t think I was a lunatic green person. I even did a couple of U-turns for fun.

Of course, if you never go to London there are better, more comfortable cars. But if you do, the Lexus is something very unusual. Technology with a point.


I assume you will cry about that too.

Clarkson is regarded as one of the best automotive writers period and is an automotive Icon. He maybe new to most people but I've followed him for years. He HATES Lexus. I don't cry about it. It is what it is, I still find him to be a great resource.

Oh, here is some good news so you don't cry anymore. Clarkson was head over heels over the CLK BLack Series. He basically said its one of the best cars ever made. See, he's not a bad guy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0UUIOvMO98

Clarkson doesn't like the E-class, big deal. It will still sell in droves, it will still be used as a Taxi, the AMG version will be a beast.

[superchan7]

I believe Clarkson has an SL55 AMG. They pay him enough.

[GS3Tek]

He's more of an entertainer than a true car reviewer
Even though I don't like this new E, 1/5 is too harsh.
The front end is nice but it's that hideous rear end

[DaveGS4]

Originally Posted by 1SICKLEX

I assume you will cry about that too.

Guys, keep the posts here impersonal please... on the cars and not on the people posting their opinions.

Also, let's keep this post timely and topical to the new Mercedes. The GS430 review posted is from May 2005

[rominl]

ouch, this hurts. i have seen quite a few of them on the roads here. it still doesn't strike me as good as the previous gen, but in terms of tech i think it's still very good

[IS-SV]

Originally Posted by rominl

ouch, this hurts. i have seen quite a few of them on the roads here. it still doesn't strike me as good as the previous gen, but in terms of tech i think it's still very good

I'm kinda seeing the E the same way you are. I will drive one soon enough, being a regular Benz customer with a cushy dealer close by. But after looking it over carefully and sitting in it, I'm not blown away especially with the price diff of similarly equipped C300 (vs. E350 with similar performance).

[IS-SV]

Most likely the E will have the improved reliability of it's class brand-new design (08 C-class), that's a significant plus. My opinion is that Mercedes can build reliable cars when they design them that way from scratch.

But styling-wise after looking it over carefully I'm not overly impressed. The chunky roofline, rectangular front lights, fake rear fender swoops, generic taillights are not it's best features. The prior gen E did seem to be sleeker with better integrated styling.

[whoster]

Originally Posted by superchan7

I believe Clarkson has an SL55 AMG. They pay him enough.

he sold the SL55 for a Ford GT, which he returned, then bought again, then sold again for a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder, and then got himself the CLK63 AMG Black.

I do believe his DD might be a SLK55 AMG.

Originally Posted by rominl

ouch, this hurts. i have seen quite a few of them on the roads here. it still doesn't strike me as good as the previous gen, but in terms of tech i think it's still very good

It looks pretty good on the road IMO.

not like the 5 series out testing today in Torrance of all places. along with the X6-M wearing some tape.

[RXSF]

WHen will some of these designers understand LESS is more

but if less is more, imagine how much more more would be.

[ViniZaoD]

edit: just read Clarkson's review of the IS250.

I'm very confused what he's going on about.

1) He says no women drive them. I rarely ever find anyone in an IS250 besides middle aged women.

2) he says the steering is too sharp. What? The steering was the main downside to it when i was buying it. Very numb compared to my other options.

3) He says girls don't like the looks. I have yet to find anyone who thinks the IS is a bad looking car.

Makes me wonder if he ever drove it at all... some of those 'opinions' are just blatantly wrong..