....Is everyone else as thrilled with this as I am? It essentially renders the in-dash CD changer irrelevant. Why would I bother loading in a few CD's with 10-12 songs per disc when I have a perfectly wonderful Ipod with about 700 of my favorite songs (and capable of holding 7500 I think...it's the 30GB photo) at my fingertips piping out CD quality music through the Aux input.

I do wish that they had put the seat ventillation/heating controls somewhere where they can be seen. I'm finding that located under the armrest I forget that I have them on and they just keep blowing (albeit, a minimal amount) air for days on end until I even realize that I have them turned on.

While the front seats are very nice I do have to say that I haven't been able to find that one real "sweet spot" and I don't think they are quite as comfortable as the seats in the '02. I wish there was a way to control the seat angle fore and aft. Alas, there's not and all you can do is raise and lower the whole seat. I seem to recollect that the '02 allowed for fore and aft height adjustment though maybe I'm not recalling this correctly.

The power of this engine is just thrilling. Gone are the doubts about your ability to scoot in and out of "holes" in the flow of traffic on the highway. Just point this baby, put your foot on the accelerator and you're there.

Steering is still nowhere near as sharp as it should be and you don't get the feeling that this car is going to be any too agile in any accident avoidance maneuvers but hopefully I'll never have to find out. Still way too much body lean in curves though I strongly suspect that this is something that could be improved by putting on tires with stiffer sidewalls (like a good summer tire). The all weather Michelin MXV4's they put on the car are mediocre at best.

Gas mileage contineues to amaze me. In combined driving I'm getting 24.5-25mpg! That's easily 8mpg better than my outgoing underpowered '02 ES300. Astonishing, just astonishing. All the more so that they're able to engineer in this kind of efficiency in a 3.5 liter 272hp engine.

 

i havent tried the ipod connection yet, but I can fit 130 songs per CDR and its great also. I tried the butt-cooler for the first time. It was real nice, though i think i would appreciate the butt-warming function more in the winter. The seat is way more comfortable than what i'm used to, so no complaint from me

Indeed the engine has power and nice acceleration. It feels a bit heavy though, as if I were driving a really heavy car. Knowing that it weighs almost 4000 pounds, I guess there is some psychological effect there.

Now as for steering and handling, my last car was a Mazda Miata, one of the best handling cars around, and the Lexus really can't compare. However, the luxury and comfort far exceed the need for superb handling, so in the end the Lexus is definitely the best choice one can make.

my 2 cents.

 

That was one of my favorite features too. I only listen to my Ipod in the car. I used the Ipod for a few weeks but I didn't like manually having to start and stop it every time I got in/out of the car or I made/received a call. So then I made an MP3 CD and enjoyed having the control from the steering wheel and the automatic pausing. That's when it really started to bug me about Lexus disabling the Details screen showing all the song info while the car is in motion. I can't even imagine the logic behind that since it is only a display screen.
But now I'm really in heaven since I had the VAISTECH SLI unit installed. I never have to touch my Ipod anymore. I have a playlist with 700 songs on it that I listen to. It will display a song name under file name and for some reason the number of characters is longer than it used to be before the SLI unit was installed. This is a great unit and the guys who installed it were very impressed. A nice bonus is that it has a feature to bypass the 'I Agree' screen after 5 seconds. So I don't have to hit that button anymore.

A lot has been said about how well this car drives but my favorite features are the nav system, bluetooth and my Ipod hookup. These are now must-have features for me in any car I drive.

I too am also impressed by the gas mileage. I usually average between 28-29 mpg on each tank although when I calculate it myself it is 1 gallon less. But I'm still very happy.

 

I've had the car for a couple of months but just bought an ipod about a week ago. I really love this feature. I have subscribed to some podcasts and bought an audiobook that loads onto the ipod. Now when I drive, I can listen to music, an audiobook or a podcast. Between this and XM radio, I need to drive in my car more just ot have time to enjoy all the entertainment options.

 

Stupid question here. My wife has an Ipod. Is the car supposed to come with a connection cable I can plug it into the aux input or do I need to buy one myself? I'm only asking since my car did not come with a cable and if it was supposed to then I'd like to give the salesman a call.

Tim

 

Just go to your local Radio Shack and pick up a male to male mini-plug.

Should run you about $4.95.

 

Just make sure it is "stereo Mini to Stereo mini". You can tell by the fact that the plug will have 2 notches on each plug. They also sell Mono to Mono which would only have 1 notch on each plug. You don't want that one !