My ES / My Whining
 

Picked up my Tungsten ES last Saturday. Love just about everything with the car ( have a little remorse after seeing my friend's Crystal White), but of course I have a few things to complain about. I have a new rim on order because one of the jockeys curbed it before i even got it, but that's an issue in and of itself :mad: . Here are my gripes:

1) Key Fob - why so big? It feels like a cell phone!
2) Seatbelt chime- so obnoxious!! getting this disabled on my 1,000 mile
3) DRL's - dont like the look, getting them disabled hopefully
4) the FF on the cd player is awful, not much faster then regular play
5) button to open arm rest isn't placed well, opened it a dozen times with my elbow already
6) rattles- coming from the trunk area when the system is turned up from the bass. bass is not even turned up, i'll have to look around for this.
7) 215 tires are too thin- i realize this is not a car designed for cornering, but i really don't feel confident going into turns on these tires.

Let the flaming begin ! :cool:

7) yea they shouldve came with wider tires, maybe 225 or 235 can be fitted on stock wheels later on

and I thought the key fob was small.

Seriously, if these are the only defaults, you're not doing half bad.

I'm very pleased overall, but just wanted to throw some things out there for conversational purposes. And in case the Lexus people are lurking on here for mid-cycle change ideas ;)

As for the key fob, it is very big. Consider the old lexus key that was used. The immobilizer and 3 buttons all fit into the end of the key, and that is about half the size of the new fob.

If you ever opened up the fob you'd see why it needs to be that size.....mucho internal electronics.

I agree with you.......it's sort of a PITA

I've done some pretty hot cornering with my car and I found it to be satisfactory. This car is not a sports sedan.

7) Make sure you get the summer tires; it makes a big difference.

I just went in for my 5000 mile service and asked for this to be done and they told me they couldn't do it because they have an old version of a Tools program. They claim they are getting an updated version which should be able to do it. They also couldn't do another thing I asked them to do. I had to tell them that both items were in the list of Personalized Settings.
Anybody else able to get the seatbelt setting done? This one drives my husband crazy.

mine came with the summer tires and they corner very well. i agree with most of your gripes, but hey those are kinda minor overall.

Congratulations!!! When are the pics coming? I'm sure you will have yours up before mine, even so I had my car for 2 weeks alredy :D

I do a gree with some comments. Armrest button and covering of seat temperature controls when opened - this is a big design flaw. Regarding cornering, not sure if this car is designed for that. For my taste, steering is too sensitive. Yeah, it really does feel like car can turn on a dime, but even with a wider tires I still wouldn't be too daring for any driving tricks. I haven't had bass up all the way, will try that on a way back home from work and will let you know if it "supposed to be" or something is wrong with yours. From my previous experience with factory speakers and non-premium audio units, speakers RMS power are often not matched to the maximum head unit power. Also dynamic frequency response of the speaker/driver will lack the bottom end (low frequencies). I'm sure hope Lexus regular stereo (which does sound premium to my ears, of course without listening to ML yet) has some kind of a crossover to drive lows to subwoofer (if there is one?) and have speakers with frequency response to handle lows.

Regarding key fob, you can make it slimmer and narrower, no doubt about it. Electronics in there is not that advance comparing to stuff that goes into cell phones and how thin RAZR is. But, nothing could be done to make it shorter because you have a key hidden inside of it.

I'm telling you one thing, I spend this weekend driving my wife's Highlander... Was I glad to get behind the wheels of my ES350 this morning!!! I never complained about the road noise with any of the cars that I owned or driven before, up until I got into Lexus. The comparison is night and day!!! And the power, woo-hoo!!! You do get used to luxury things really quickly ;)

thanks for the comments... the speaker rattling i referred to has to do with something loose in the back of the car. it's not the speakers that are rattling. when i have time i have to get back there and smack some things around. i put almost 200 miles on it this weekend!

In this day and age, they better have uploadable ringtone chimes LOL!!!

I haven't really paid attention to these chimes, will have to check it out. Of course, since you guys pointed it out to me, it will drive me crazy as well...

BTW, you no longer get your 1k complimentary service, only 5k. Does your dealership doing it differently?

also, why haven't they figured out how to make the back windows disappear completely? there is that little piece of glass that stays up when all windows are down, doesnt seem like rocket science to me.

the seatbelt chime is very annoying. and i buckle up, but for the short trips to the quick check and around the neighborhood i dont want to have to get that progessively faster chiming sound!

I am getting a $1k service- probably because they curbed my car!!!

I don't know about the fob. It's already smaller than the smart key I have for the Prius.

Agreed about the rear windows not going all the way down.

But, most emphatically do I agree with the center console comment. I've already inadvertently opened mine with elbow, or other piece of arm, several times after only driving it for an hour...

Also wish that CD to CD swapping provided memory to allow storing off the cued spot of the CD swapped out so that when it's cued up again that spot was restored instead of the beginning of the disc...

Errrr. I really don't like the FOB either...

Other than that... FABULOUS!