It's a must IMO. Half the times that I take the car in with an issue they don't know what I am talking about. However, in the Lexus, so far I haven't had much to complain about.

 

I didn’t back in the day, but I can see the benefit now. I had my service rep drive mine like a crazy person because I thought the shifts were a bit rough in manual. Funny thing, as the passenger, the shifts weren’t rough at all. At any rate, he said everything was as designed.

 

I somehow just discovered this, I thought something was wrong. The first month of driving my 500 I was surprised at how short the throttle pedal was, then I started pushing through this and thought the throttle was getting stuck on the floor mat which was somewhat concerning. I’m not sure I like it, I’ve never had a vehicle with a “kickdown” button before. I can’t get my head around feeling like something is wrong, maybe I will now that I know it’s not.

 

That car is a grand tourer, so it's basically there like "are you sure you wanna rip?" kinda thing.
I honestly don't mind it, it's more predictable if the car will just go or if it'll downshift like crazy and spin the tires.

 

Oh I’m sure it’s a good thing, it’s just very strange to experience for the first time. My last fun car was a GT car too, a Kia Stinger, and it was turbo charged so it drove differently obviously, but didn’t have this particular quirk.

 

I sometimes give the kick-down switch a love tap just to make the car shift down a couple of gears. The transmission can be a little... derpy sometimes.

 

Drives me insane, so it’s manual most of the time for me. Way easier to get the performance I need without the delay.

 

Oh, absolutely, if I am ripping it on a back road. But if I'm on the 285 and need to make a quick pass, I've gotta just plant my foot and engage the kick-down. And, away we go.

 

I do the same and after over a year of ownership I still get annoyed when I'm 99% full throttle and the car is 3 gears too high because I didn't push down the extra 1%.

 

Manual.

This is the way. 😉

 

I honestly think Lexus didn't spend as much time on the auto shift mapping because they knew the people who were going to rip on these cars would go A) full throttle or B) manual mode.

 

Whenever you downshift in manual mode, is there a quick way to go down 2-3 gears or do you have to flick the ****/paddles the respective amount of gears you wanna downshift?

 

Pretty sure you have to hit it once for each gear. You could try holding the left paddle down. The worst that can happen is it shoots all the way down, engine brakes suddenly and throws you through the windshield.

 

Yep you have to click the paddles multiple times. Remember, the higher the RPM, the faster the car shifts. Basically be over 4k rpms.

Seriously?! You were right there and then went over the edge. 😂🫣

 

The KickDown button has been around for a long time. This thread may interest you folks:

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/is-...gas-pedal.html