I'm drooling.....
 

The latest version of InsideLexus.com is out!

Check out the special L-Tuned IS-300 model. Looks like a very sweet Beemer killer. I wish I had some money lying around :(

It almost makes me want to go and buy the L-Tuned body kit for my car. However I perfer the normal look, but have a beast of a car behind those normal looks. I like looks to be deceiving.

I wish the site had a bit more info about the car though.

It's a very high price for a looks package.. I'd rather save the extra 9 or 10k it costs and deck the car out myself.. I'm sure money can be better spent.

I totally agree. Why look fast, when you can't back it up?

Christbol, good point!

I too would rather do the car up myself...but I would look into forced induction before a body kit for that car.

Manaray I've seen your car so I'm guessing the thing smokes. Hopefully I'll find out next Saturday.

I think I would only add a bodykit once I was down to or below the 5.5 range.

Christobol - Well as far as engine work, my car is stock for now. No one has a good forced induction solution yet and I'm waiting for a couple of other vendors to release one...however, I have been considering just putting a hold on the the engine upgrades because I might just trade this car in to buy a the new GS in 2003/2004...dunno, if the car is ugly, I'll just do some sick engine work to this car... :) ...but at least I have a 430 engine so the car is pretty damn quick (especially for such a large sedan)

It gets harder and harder when you go up in On-Board Diagnostics (commie EPA required and ineffective smog/gas usage controls) it gets harder and harder to use traditional methods of tuning. Your GS430 is OBDIII, the most difficult yet. They sell ECU adapters to Honda people so they can adapt older ECU's for easier tuning on their 96+ cars. This will also make forced induction more problematic and less effective. If we're lucky, race shops like WR will be able to figure out a way around this setup.. they seem to be dead set on making it work for the later cars, so I'm hopeful.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe it's that high, $9-10K, for the package. Derek, Lexus of Serramonte Service Director, and I were calculating the total cost of the added parts and it came out to the package cost, and that doesn't even include the would-be labor for retrofit. So the pkg is a good deal for what it is, even though there's no engine mod, and it's Lexus factory warranted, FWIW. Derek mentioned it's a quality wheels pkg, though I forgot the make.

BTW, Derek is the one who took 3rd place in his IS300 at last year's SCCA solo2 nationals.

I can agree with you on the quality, I've always been happy with the L-Tuned wheels I bought and installed down there. I'll probably see more of you too, Lexus Marin's service department is so bad I've decided to take my car down to Serramonte from now on. However, I would still spend the extra money some other way, since I would only want the rims and exhaust maybe. The rest would go to Leo :D