Johnhav430

On the way to work today, saw a AAA flatbed, with a MB C400 on it (guessing 1 y.o. or so), and a woman in her 50's in the passenger seat. I guess this may be a part of the German car experience, it's all covered, but you may be riding in flatbeds and late for work. This hasn't happened to me since 1995 or so, pre Maxima.

Anyway, decided to go to the website. The C43 AMG base prices at 52k, pretty low by today's standards. Look at the suspension. It would seem that no Lexus has these high quality components, yet they charge the same or more for the parts or for repair. Addressing those kind of things is what would put Japanese cars over the top. My money says it will never happen. Reliability does cost something to the mfg, and I think all of us here do put heavy weight on it....rhetorical question, would a 2017 LS460 have forged aluminum lower control arms, or are they still made of heavy stamped steel? from the pic it seems there's extensive use of steel

http://www.lexus.com/models/LS/specifications

look at the pic to the left of AMG ride control, you can see the thrust arms, bushings, etc.....no steel....except maybe the sway bar. Could be these details don't really sell cars, they translate to road manners....so in the end it's about cost...

https://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/vehic...-C/model-C43W4

Gronemus

It's always because of cost. Building any car at x dollars involves thousands of design and manufacturing trade-offs and each manufacturer has their own philosophy on how they handle them. If they have performed their task well it shows up in sales volume, or perhaps better stated, that you or I would buy their product.

I'm somewhat puzzled by your comment on the quality or lack thereof of the Lexus suspension components. Are you saying that they have to be made out of aluminum or some other exotic material to be of "high quality"? I see that many parts on the LS460 link that you posted are in fact aluminum. I'd bet the move toward aluminum parts over the last decade or so is more in response to getting the overall weight of the vehicle down than it is for other factors. If the car handles properly and is durable who cares what they use for materials???

Johnhav430

The key is not overall weight, but unsprung weight.

My point is not that Lexus has low quality parts, but that they are always rather expensive, yet not quite up to snuff when compared to their foreign high end competition. Look at the price of an OEM shock or strut. The argument is always, well, which car is more reliable? And it is a valid point.

The lower control arms are a very specific example. They likely are of the same quality as a Highlander, etc., yet appear in a 73k plus car. As far as handling goes, the engineers' objective is to reduce unsprung weight, which is a primary reason you often don't see stamped steel in premium cars. It isn't so much, well, who's gonna crawl under your car to see what components are being used....

Brake rotors would be another example, OEM vs. OEM. The competition rivets aluminum hats to the disc, almost always larger for the same mass, to save 4 lbs. times 4. Of course, this doesn't do much good if the vehicle is broken down on the side of the road, but it's an example where the engineer got his way and the design made production...

edit: I was curious so I went and googled LS400 control arms. Upper and lower are made of steel, so it wasn't something that changed over time. It's a philosophy, I get it, marginal cost vs. marginal benefit. But, the lowered costs aren't translating into lower repair and parts costs...

airchomper

What do you mean 'not up to snuff'? The parts on our LSs seem to last longer than any 7er or S-class that ever existed. How often do you find 7 series that are on their factory ball joints at 150k miles?

Heck, check out Rock Auto's repair index (can't link directly to the comparison). The 2001 S430 parts tend to be 10% more expensive than the LS430s parts. The BMW 7 series seems considerably cheaper but how many 2001 7 series do you see on the road? How many 7 series for sale with >200k miles? Where are all those cheap parts coming from? People trying to offload their inventory

For all your blathering about quality you seem to have poorly chosen bases of comparison: whether the driver's elbow rest is torn or not, whether parts are aluminum or steel, whether it measures up to your 90s Maxima, whether the windshield fluid is heated, ect. But why? You haven't tied this hodge-podge collection of facts together in a comprehensive way but you lob a lot of not-fully-formed statements out there to what end?

If it's bothersome that your LS doesn't have aluminum / steel disks, go make some and tell us about the improvement; or sell your LS for a car that has such fantastic brake rotors; or at least try to keep the threads on topic for the sake of taxonomy.