wowzer

I tested a lot of cars before deciding upon the Lexus ES300h. My highest priorities were total driving miles adn reliabiltiy. TheLexus won by virtue of its high reliability and tremendous crusing miles on a single tank of gas. Now that ive driven it for a couple of days, i have to say that i made the right choice. The car is so nice to drive, it has more road feel than prior ES mdels and the steering, while light, is not disconnected like some reviewers reported. The drive is sturdy and handles well so far.


Here is my spreadsheet breakdown. What do you all think?


https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...p=docslist_api

bc6152

Nicely done. Although some categories are subjective, I tend to agree with most of your evaluations.
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corpnupe85

Congrats on your purchase!! Thanks for sharing the spreadsheet.

chrisexv6

Quite a list of vehicles driven there!

Im leaning toward an ES350 for my wife as well....we havent test driven anything on your list except the Q50. Just a question about it - how did the driveability get just a 1?

Im also curious as to what your definition of "driveability" is (not being sarcastic....is it luxury feel, firmness, handling, etc)

Thanks in advance.

-Chris

wowzer

The Q50 hybrid was a jittery thing to drive. Even after I turned off the vehicle stability assist and the lane departure, it's still was very jittery. The car just felt like it would herky-jerky left and right all throughout the test drive and maintaining it on the street in a straight line was not easy. With the Lane departure and steering, the car fought you when you try to change lanes or if you're trying to drive either on the left-hand side of the lane or the right side of lane. Since I tend to drive a little bit of left-hand side of the lane while in the left lane and on the right inside of the lane in the right lane, the lane departure would be turned off all of the time. In essence, the lane departure and car in general was a little too sensitive and steering. I suspect infinity would have to install a new drive by wire software so that the car would not be so jerky even while going straight ahead.

Just to be sure that it was not The car, I test drove it twice at two separate dealerships with two separate cars. I was able to feel the same problem twice. For that reason, I chose to give the drivability of one.

wowzer

Did you find the Q50h any better?

Arty101

Nice spreadsheet. Did you test drive them all?

wowzer

The ones without numbers, I did not test drive....

Arty101

Darn, looks like you test drove 25+ cars .

chrisexv6

I can see where you are coming from....sure sounds like a PITA. I believe I remember a few posts like that in the Q50 forums but I thought they might have been resolved (either through software, new parts or maybe even swapping vehicles)

You can see, though, the Q50 has its bugs....I drove one myself without all the nannies included and it drove well (just about the same as my G37 minus a little handling but a plus was the quieter ride). But who wants a base car just to make sure there are no bugs!

wowzer

I think the base car is not drive by wire....but i wanted something that could cruise for as many miles as possible with the gadgets. The Q50h AWD seemed a nice option, but alas it was too quirky to spend $50+k.

chrisexv6

Correct.

That might be why I liked the base car....I like the steering my G37 so I should like it in the Q as well.

There is a quirk or two unique to the hybrid, but the lane wandering wasnt one of them.

And I agree, at 50K+ fully loaded, I can live without RWD or RWD biased AWD....this will be my wifes car.

Just on paper, looking at cost vs options vs reviews, the ES350 seems to be a winner. Even an Ultra Luxury model with all the goodies seems to be around 47K. Its not cheap, but knock off the UL or the ML audio and you save another 2500 or so.

wowzer

Infiniti was very interested in making deals, unlike lexus. The only way i got a good deal was by seeing the prices here and leveraging that knowledge.

gcrest01

I was wondering what does the column "Add $" mean? For an example in the Lexus row you have 36 months lease for 399 monthly and 2500 down. What is $1500 in the Add $ ? Did $399 include tax or not?

wowzer

I stopped entering the lease deals because i figured to buy the ES. More importantly, some of these deals were time dependent and may not be up to date. I did not include tax.

additional money meant down payments or initital costs. As some had no additional money down, i wanted to capture the real costs.