Hey everybody, I'm new to the forum and this is my first post.

I am currently looking at buying this 2005 gs300. It has the bergundy/maroon exterior with the black interior. 102,000 miles. It is very hard to get answers or understand the seller as his english is very bad. So it seems to help a little bit by emailing him.

He listed the car for 7,800 which is about 500 less than kbb for fair condition. He says he will go as low as 7,600 firm.The car looks like it is in excellent condition and he says there is nothing wrong with it. He's only owned the car for 7 months and said he purchased from a dealership for around the same price (7,800 or so) which is a surprise as dealerships usually are way high.

I need some pointers on how to go about this purchase. He lives about an hour and a half away and I honestly don't plan on taking it anywhere to have an inspection and I dont know to much about cars. What should I look for or are there common problems with these cars? I asked if he had the timing chain changed and told him I read they should be changed at around 100k and he said he didn't know anything about that. He said that it has never been in any accidents and has a clean title. Any help would be appreciated

 

By the way is this a steal that I need to jump on or is this not an uncommon deal. I cant really see anything wrong as far as body goes and interior.

 

Very rare exterior color and interior combo. It's called black cherry. Since timing belt hasn't been done, add $1k to you total cost since this is the avg going rate. Click on the suspension thread to read about things to look out for...ex lbj's.

 

If I recall correctly the 2005s weren't plagued by the suspension issues such as the ball joints, caster arms, and control arms. By this time they had redesigned them since 98s had already been around for 6-7 years and the failures were well known.

 

Ask for vin. Carfax it . And go from there. Make sure is a clean title

 

The lbj's were never redesigned. Provide proof of this from Lexus, not hearsay from this site. The caster arms were redesign but not lbj's. I read this a lot here but no one hasn't provided proof to back up that claim. TBH, the GS models were plagued with issues since the 1st gen.