bostonsnow

Some dealers here in Southern California list Lux pkg cars. Others should Premium pkg, with heated and ventilated seats.

If a premium package car also has heated and ventilated seats, isn't this exactly the same as the Lux pkg? Or is there still some difference? perhaps in seat material? or the way the wood trim is?

thanks!

Boston Snowboarder, now in Sunny California....

azipod

I think the Lux comes with both heated and ventilated seats. However, you can still get these as an option on the Premium package. Or you can get Premium with just the heated, and not ventilated.

With Lux, you get both standard.

bostonsnow

Some dealers are listing "Premium Package" but then also Peforated leather plus heated and ventilated seats. So then this sounds like lux pkg? However, the price is still lower than cars with actual lux pkg?
maybe there still is something else different? wood or leather trim differences?

azipod

The dealers are frequently wrong. The only sure way to find out is to have the dealer pull a copy of the window sticker with the VIN.

If I recall correctly, there are essentially 3 major packages. It starts with the Premium, Luxury, and Ultra Luxury.

PREMIUM adds maple (ES350) or bamboo (ES300h) trim, power telescoping steering wheel, driver's side memory seat/mirrors, and remote keyless linked memory.

LUXURY adds Preforated leather-trimmed interior and heated/ventilated front seats.


The best way is to check the VIN. Toyota/Lexus has the most confusing packages/options for any automaker. There are endless options/combos and in some situations, you can add individual options to make-up what you would get as a combo in an actual package. In other words, sometimes you can build on a Premium package to get what you would automatically get in a Luxury package. In that case, technically, you still have the Premium package, but it's loaded to match a Luxury package. Very confusing.

imrankh24

I own a luxury. The diff is for the center console you get wood instead of black piano. Also the luxury opens up the option for 18 inch wheels. And also real leather. And I'm sure there's more that I can't remember.

bostonsnow

ah - maybe there's real leather vs nu luxe?
I guess I should search the blogs in more depth - someone must have covered this at some time.

bostonsnow

searching old posts - someone did say this in June:
Premium = Nuluxe Leather (Fake)
Luxury = Real Leather
Ultra Luxury = semi-aniline leather

Zipit555

Lux package includes everything in Premium package plus 1)embossed-stitch perforated leather trimmed interior, 2) Wood-trimmed console 3) Heated and Vented front seats (which can be an indiv option as well)

gmanusmc

It also seems that here in CA, many of the lux pkg cars come with the pano roof and rear sunshade - those are a couple things that my wife wanted, so that's pretty much why we went lux pkg. It would be so nice if Lexus would just have trims equipped a certain way like Acura does it - would greatly simplify things.

bostonsnow

agree. Buying my wife's Acura RDX was a piece of cake, and the choices were so simple. This also made internet/phone shopping with the dealers very simple.

Even though I have a lexus and know the lexus terminology, figuring out all these options and packages is a real pain....

in the end - I have to decide between 1) 1st choice color but with the premium package with nu luxe vs 2) 2nd choice color but with Lux. I'm gonna go with choice 2.

bostonsnow

Figured out what some of these Southern California dealers did - They ordered Premium package cars with add ons of Heated/ventilated / perforated seats. So the only difference between these and the Lux ones are Nuluxe vs Leather; and then not having the wood trim in the center.
I'm not sure why they set up the cars this way - maybe to shave off about $1000 on price vs Luxury package? I'm still not clear on whether Nuluxe or Leather are better in hot climates, or whether there is any difference at all.

azipod

I agree.

I believe a lot of this has to do with marketing. They are trying to prevent exactly what we are doing; that is, price shopping from one dealer to another.

The mattress industry does this really well. You can never buy the the same model mattress from a different store. For example, Serta mattress will make Model-A but will brand it under different names to different stores. This prevents the consumer from price shopping. And unbelievable, some of these same mattresses are marked up A LOT more from one store to another, even though they are exactly the same model. One industry expert told me that to price shop for a mattress, you can take note of the visual style, and then compare the materials with the tag. That is the way to get around it.

Back to Lexus. Yes, they make things very difficult.

TechNut

I can't honestly tell a difference with respect to temperature. We have black on the ES and parchment on our NX, both in NuLuxe. The only obvious differences are the smell and NuLuxe doesn't develop cracks along stretch marks like the leather in both of our previous RXs did. We only have about 18 months with the ES and 6 with the NX so I can't claim long-term use, but so far I am very satisfied. Compared to past leather interiors, the NuLuxe looks like it will hold up better. It really has all the benefits of leather without the drawbacks. I know leather has higher resale and the leather smell, but beyond that I wouldn't be afraid of NuLuxe at all.

bostonsnow

thanks. helpful feedback.
When you say smell, do you mean the nice smell or the leather, or rather negative smell of Nuluxe (particularly when new?)

zes

I think I have the perforated nu-luxe with cooled seats. There is no smell of leather.