black570

My LX was at the shop for eight days. They were doing the 60K (KM) service, and replacing the kit they ordered from Japan to solve the noisy damper problem (refer to previous post). Out of the eight days, they appear to have really worked on the car for four days. The rest were a weekend and two days in which I was out of town.

The other thing they did was rotate the tires as I had started hearing a new noise that came on whenever the car was slowing down. The tire rotation made this noise much better, but didn’t entirely eliminate it. They told me I needed new tires to eliminate the noise. I’m glad it’s the tires, though, as I had thought it may be bearing or differential noise (shows how much I know).

Well the kit from Japan was ordered on what turned out to be wrong diagnoses. The problem is not gone following the replacement. In fact it’s worse as the fridge now has hardly any air blowing into it. They acknowledged the mistake, and were “terribly sorry to have inconvenienced” me and have ordered what appears to be an entire air handling unit to replace the one that now is totally screwed up. On the positive side, the AC still puts out plenty of cool air to fight temperatures that have started to approach 50C (that is no typo, and that is 122F). Notice that all these repairs were under warranty. Of course I did pay dearly for the 60K service.

In the week they had the car, they removed the entire dash. That’s what they told me after the fact. I’m glad I didn’t see that, and I’m glad they didn’t tell me their plans beforehand. I’m sure I would have told them to forget about the noisy damper. My fear would certainly have been that they would not put the dash back correctly, and they would exacerbate the dash noises. Would you believe they put it back just fine, better hat the factory in fact. I’m pretty sure the noises have improved. In fact the car is better following the 60K service, apart from the air handling unit that is. But to think they will do an encore when the replacement air handling kit arrives from Japan. Well let’s just hope they improve the dash a smidgen more next time.

To preempt comments as to my cool and controlled reaction to the above experience, I’m the fussy type and ordinarily wouldn’t stand for a workshop keeping the car for several days only to tell me they made a mistake and would have to redo it. I can’t explain the cool reaction this time. It may be age. I hope I can keep it up. It’s better this way. But this may have contributed. Someone on this forum, pmrash, who bought his LX about the same time as I did, has recently exchanged it for a Land Rover. That enticed me to visit a Range Rover forum to see what they talked about over there. While I think the Range Rover looks and feels immanently better than the LX, I believe we, LX owners, have reasons to be gleeful. For one thing, in these 60K plus kilometers of service, the car and all of its equipment have always been ready to go, no buts or ifs. I know this is not exciting, but if your brand new fancy car ever stops functioning and needs to be towed, well you get the idea.

Tires and wheels:

Seeing that I’m being told to replace my tires, I want to talk about the original tires and wheels. I usually would go on the first set of tires longer than 60K (KM). This is because the first set of tires ride on a chassis that is still new and balanced. I had a Honda Accord a long time ago that I ran for 140K on the first set of tires. But those were Michelin Pilots. I’m not sure I like the Dunlops (285/60R18) which come standard on Gulf LXs. They’re not very pleasing to look at and they don’t compliment the look of the car, which in itself needs all the help it can get. The wheels are not much to write home about either. I never took my car offroad, and that may be where I would appreciate the original tires. I’m now thinking of replacing the original wheels and tires with something nice (like those Lexani Lss10 that someone on this forum, 0260n5.7, has used to good effect) while storing the originals for when I decide to go offroad. Does this make sense?

Cruise Control:

In my previous post I promised to write about the LX active cruise control. I previously wrote elsewhere on this forum something about it in answer to a question. I will just copy it here if you don’t mind:

“ I would think of the radar cruise control more as a cool gadget to show off to your kids and friends every once in a while than a true tool to assist you in driving. If it’s an extra cost option, I wouldn’t pay for it. As it were, when I got my 2008 LX570, it was a standard feature. Here is why:

At highway speed: While it is buttery smooth and refined at breaking to match your speed with the car ahead of you, it revs up so absurdly fast and up shifts like a nut when the car ahead of you is out of range. When this happens, your passengers are surprised at your childish driving habits. This ruins the whole experience and you start engaging the cruise less often.

In town: It revs up and breaks smoothly, but every time your speed goes below 40KM or so, it disengages and now you have to deal with the situation manually. So you’re always waiting for when you need to intervene. The system from Mercedes on the other hand continues to assist down to a total stop, as in a traffic light, and resumes from a complete stop. Unless the Lexus system works down to a complete stop, it is worthless for driving in town.

One last issue related to radar cruise control. Lexus uses the radar for “passive safety”. If you step on the brake pedal and the computer determines, based on the radar measurements, that you are very close to the car ahead of you, it will “complement” your breaking with additional force and pretensions (pulls) the front seat belts (what about my kids in the back?). This sounds good, but in several situations it surprised me with a tremendous breaking force that wasn’t called for and almost caused the driver behind me to hit me from the back. The jerky seat pretensioning can also hurt. While the concept is good, the problem here is that metering/distance judgment does not appear to work properly.

I have a feeling all of these shortcomings are down to the software running the system and Lexus could bring about a software fix that could make the system more useable. But would they? ”

I’ll continue with other topics next time. I think a lot of people can’t handle long posts, especially ones with no pics.

Enjoy!

LexusLX

Again, developing a good, effective and concise report is an art form in itself. ...

Thank you for Part3, as long as you don't go off-road, you should really cosider Lexus newly reduced price of the set of 20" rims of 9700 riyals. In fact they had reduced price 50%, which was over priced any way.

On the other hand, I came from Cayennes 2005, and it feels safer keeping and maintaining a Lexus. Lexus are made to last and let yous pend less on them.

Cheers..

koolkevinj

That's a great writeup.

I am a 470 owner who has been thinking about upgrading. So this is helpful.

I have to ask though...are you happy you bought the truck? Would you do it again?

black570

Thank you for the continued encouragement and kind words, LexusLX. When I dropped off my car for the 60K service, I talked to my salesman. He told me the new 20" wheel and tire package was SR16,000. This reduction makes these wheels more attractive. I'll ask again.

black570

If I must answer with a yes or no, and I expect you want me to, then the answers are: yes I’m happy I bought it, and no I probably would not buy a Toyota in the foreseeable future. Please read on …

To qualify my answers further, I’m happy the car has been reliable and dependable. I say this in spite of the air handler issue, which, I would have to surmise, was an isolated incident. This is because no problem has ever caused unscheduled loss of use. I will have to give this one to Toyota.

I’m also happy with my purchase because of the ability to resell fairly quickly at a decent resale value if ever I decide to (at least I expect so).

I once owned a Nissan 300ZX. The 300ZX was reliable. It was also, for my age back then, sexy. It had a terrible turbo lag (typical of turbos back then), which all the experts say was bad, but I loved it. It also sloped just right and looked so gorgeous so much so that my younger brothers volunteered to wash and polish it. I don’t remember the 300ZX for its reliability. I remember it for its sexiness.

My happiness with the LX is marred by its lack of sexiness, which at my stage in life translates to quality; quality of design, material and workmanship at the detailed level. I get the feeling Lexus, in fact Toyota’s, designers are either not creative or are not given room for creativity. I also think the company has been focused on expanding market share at the detriment of attention to details.

Toyota’s phenomenal success and strength of reputation has been due to reliability, but reliability is no longer a holy grail. Other companies have succeeded at achieving it. But some other companies are able to combine reliability with a measure of sexiness. If Toyota doesn’t hurry up and shift its focus, it may go the way of GM. On the other hand, with the vast resources available to it, being the most profitable car company, it could really do magic. When they do, I will be happy to buy their products again.

I’m seeing a few indicative trends (in no particular order) that Toyota should pay attention to, and probably is:

- Nissan failed miserably due to stagnant creativity until Ghosson (sp) took over. He brought Eurpean attention to soft skills, like design. While remaining fundamentally Japanese, Nissan’s recently introduced cars have been much nicer.

- While Toyota has been busy perfecting hybrid engines, European manufacturers have been honing their engine design skills. Traditional gas, and especially diesel, engines from BMW, VW, and Mercedes provide good mileage, performance and pollution levels. Toyota’s gas engines lag behind, and they have no diesel to speak of.

- Hyundai has been making amazing inroads. Their designs are pretty (if not always original), their quality is getting there, and their reliability is on par with the Japanese. However their recently introduced cars are revolutionary, for Hyundai, in terms of originality. Examples are the 2010 Sonata and the 2009 Genesis. They may score a coupe in the same way Samsung scored a coup against Sony and others in electronics.

- The VW group has been expanding vertically and laterally. They bought several good brands that contribute positively to the group’s reputation, and unlike other companies (like Ford) have been able to leverage strengths of the brands they acquired to make the original brands’ products better. Notice the introduction of the Audi R8 which was a tremendous success in the first generation because they were able to leverage the Lamborghini experience.

Good luck with your decision.

ige

I have just emailed the three thread posts to Lexus USA, hopefully they'll read it, take it seriously and learn.

I'd love for everyone (in your free time of course) to participate in getting Lexus and Toyota to read these outstanding LX570 impression articles.

Thank you black570 again for the time you've invested in writing it up, we do appreciate it.

05 Celsior

Nice write up again. iLike

OBI_agent

Man, Again, great write up.

I hate when the cruise control does that. It's like it hunts gear at first then takes the lowest gear and accelerates as quickly as possible. My Honda accord has a cruise control in it and boy it's obedient. Is there a fix for this? Any reprogramming or something?

Anyway, I was disappointed at not getting 20 inch rims when my dad got the car. And 16000SR...?? Are they crazy? I think it's too much. In that price, I think you can get better aftermarket wheels.

LexFather

Thanks for the detailed write ups!