I am a new member who just discovered the excellence of Lexus Vehicles recently and immediately fell in love with the brand.
I am somewhat knowledgeable about cars but very limited, I don't do maintenance or any work on cars yet, but hoping to get there at some point.
I have a situation which I need some much needed advice for, and would appreciate if someone would be able to help.
I am meeting someone in a few hours to look at their 2006 IS 350 they are selling. I may be able to get a great deal on it, although I'm not 100% certain of the condition just yet. The car has a decent service history on the Lexus Drivers site but also I can't always decipher what the descriptions of service mean. The biggest question I have is, if the car turns out to need a lot of work, what is a price point that I should take it for regardless of the condition? For example if I can get it for $3000, is it worth it to buy it and "baseline" it? Also if someone can reach out to me I would love to pick your brain about other things with the car and maybe look at the Lexus site together to help me understand the work that has been done.
I am new to this site so I don't know if leaving my number is frowned upon but I am going to do so because I'm kind of desperate haha. If anyone wouldn't mind please reach out to me via text first to introduce yourself and I would greatly appreciate talking with you then.
Ask him to let you drive it and park the car, alone, nobody else, look under the dash for any signs of splut wires, rust. Bring your own OBDII scanner, about 25 w bluetooth software. The scanner can tell when it had a check 3ngine light and for what.
The cars suffer from front inner tire wear, the dash abd door panels tend to crack and get sticky.
I would do a redline pass once you jump in the highway, and test cruise control.
I would pay for a pre-inspection, it costs about 80 to 100 just to have a mechanic and place on a lift. Check undercarriage, rust, bent parts, oil leaks, etc.
The transmission tends to be a little jerky when car is cold, once it warms up, they shift well. Some models the hood needs some effort to close well.
Certain yrs the driver side light ballast goes bad.
If it runs and you can buy it for 3k buy it. You can make it last another 3 years by just changing the oil. That’s cheap driving.
the IS is. Great car. Very easy to work on and quite inexpensive to own. You can buy cheap parts at rock auto. They are as reliable as corollas and much more fun to drive.
if you don’t watch Scotty Kilmer on YouTube do. You can learn all you need to know about fixing cars from both him and Chris fix. The IS is a great do it yourself car
Thank you all so much for your insights, these tips are golden nuggets of knowledge for me and I will use them all when I see/test drive it. Luckily the guy had to reschedule the meeting to Monday so I haven't seen it yet. I also want to give a special shout out to @ncatona who reached out to me earlier today and gave me a bunch of useful advice.
Yeah if I can get it for $3000, I'm pulling the trigger for sure. Has a decent service history on Lexus site that I actually want to share with you guys because one or two things seemed like a red flag so I am going to post those screen shots here shortly. Please let me know if anything should be a concern. The last service record is at 119,000mi and I believe the current owner has had it since then, its now at 158,000
Btw since I've been on here, I've found the members of these CL forums to be nothing but outstanding people who are generous with their knowledge.
Also if yours is the touch screen that will fail at some point, its pretty common so do look for a fix in the future if you got that. Get on it a few times during the drive to redline, see what happens and give us feedback about the drive and what you find after. See if you can do the PPI at the dealer or a special indy for Japan cars.
Hey guys, I wanted to thank you all again for your helpful advice that you gave me and I'm sorry that I haven't updated you on the situation again up until now.
I did end up going to see the car finally. Long story short, it was way too good to be true. So many red flags about the car and the sellers, least of all the fact that the frickin VINs were scratched off or removed in every place but one door panel. I (stupidly) test drove it anyway (alone). Inside was trashed and transmission seemed pretty jerky so pretty much can assume he drove it hard regularly. Many other small things that would have needed small expenses.
I ended up offering him $2800 (again stupidly) and he turned it down. I was kinda relieved and we went our separate ways.
I did try to look for everything you guys told me to in this thread to the best of my ability. Thanks again to everyone that took time to comment. I'm actually looking at another one now that seems promising. May post another thread on the forum for thoughts.
