Johnhav430

The Europeans? I think my 2006 LS430 is closest to the 91-99 S Class in styling. And if you look at the 4th gen plus S classes, it always seems that the next gen Lexus resembles the previous gen S class, imho

The last S Class I rode in was a 2005, at the time (2007) it was super sweet. One of the big boss mans has a 2014 but I've never ridden in it....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merced...-07-24)_02.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_S-Class

Scootymad

The Japanese and South Koreans have until recently been fairly conservative in the styling department, so indeed they seem to have been lagging behind in the styling department. It started to change somewhat with the Nagare design concepts from Mazda (think the Furai, the Gen2 Mazda 3 and 6) and then became more bold with the Kodo design, which continues today with the RX Vision concept, and can really stack up against the best in the world. Lexus, with their new Spindle Grille and swept tail lights is also showing that design is good. I was followed by a 08 or 09 LS460 this afternoon and the styling difference between my LS and that came along in great leaps, and even that is still somewhat restrained. There is absolutely nothing at all like Lexus build quality however. I've driven late model Bmers and brand new GMs that aren't even remotely as well put together as an older Lexus.

Johnhav430

It's pretty interesting how Lexus seem to have very respectable cds. Now my dad would also say you have to look at the frontal area to understand the total drag. Kind of like how HP sells, the 330HP car with 265 ft. lbs. Many consumers didn't even study physics, let alone know what torque is. So they look at HP alone. If I'm not mistaken, doesn't the GS with F sport have a high cd, higher than the non F sport? I could be wrong. But cd seems to be a goal of Lexus, back to the original LS (it was one of the 4 objectives). That's why when I see posts where folks have tossed their under belly pan, I suspect they've done harm to the number Lexus engineers strived hard to lower...

Scootymad

Lol like myself, I biffed mine because it was drowning in engine oil and to let some cool air up in there when doing donuts :P

RA40

iTrader: (6)

My take was that Toyota wanted to attract buyers of BMW and MB by emulating certain features they found appealing. This has been part of there styling among some of the 70's offerings too. There are enough queues to compare the integration over the years. The GS has MB E series hints and so on. The newer designs are somewhat different though comparing other manufacturers models they still have some overlap.

Johnhav430

Yeah but you have to realize, you may only be able to get up to 156 mph without it, you can no longer do 160!

Scootymad

There's a solution for that. Moar power!

airchomper

It makes a ton of sense that Lexus would optimize their Cd - if you pay the engineering price, it's the closest thing you get to a 'free lunch' when it comes time to manufacture the car: you get better milage, less noise, and you can optimize vehicle calibrations to harmonize with the Cd.

Cd is short for coefficent of drag, it's an element in equations that model the force of drag and power required to overcome it. If anyone wants to read some more about it, there are a ton of articles out there including this one. Note, most of the writing out there applies to 'low mach number' formulations, as the velocity of fluid increases (relative to the speed of sound), it behaves differently and different mechanics govern/explain its behavior.

The Japanese have spent a ton of time working on numerical wind tunnels, even before it was popular, and Toyota has a proud history of owning powerful computers. Optimizing a luxury car is more analogous to optimizing a bullet train than optimizing an F-22 and it's no surprise that Toyota had the resources and drive to optimize the car along this axis.

Would you mind elaborating on your point, "Kind of like how HP sells, the 330HP car with 265 ft. lbs."? I often hear people bemoan the lack of torque but with the right gearing, torque doesn't matter. A 330 HP car with a CVT (and comparable powertrain efficiency) would out accelerate our (stock) cars 100% of the time. Even the torque number isn't as important as things like torque curve and how much engine load the ECU/PCM will tolerate - Nissan's 3.7 liter makes decent torque down low but you'd never know because the 7 a/t seems to keep that motor spinning north of 2k.

If all you're looking for is a non-dramatic and quick reaction to a demand for more torque, then you just have to test drive the car and see if it fits the bill. The days of 3,400 rpm torque peak N/A motors is dead. It makes too much sense to adopt the paradigm of 4000-ish RPM torque peaks and near co-incident HP peaks and redlines to move away from it. Heck, drive an electric car and tell me you think the 3UZ is a more worthy heart for a luxury car than something with a flat torque curve and instant response.

Johnhav430

There has been this theory called the megapixel conundrum. That is, man wants one number, by which he can judge goodness. With a digital camera, it's megapixels. Many of the bread and butter SLRs are 24+ megapixels today, although they were around 6 in 2005. A $100 underwater point and shoot today, does around 13.2 megapixels. So does that $100 point and shoot, take better pics than a SLR from 2005, that has 6 mp? 13.2 > 6, so yes. No, it doesn't, as we all know. The lens also has a lot to do with it, and with that 2005 SLR that does "only" 6 MP, you can easily print 8x10's.

Let's go to an extreme, Acura and Toyota had cars with 200 HP, and 140 ft. lbs. The marketers wanted 200, to sell the car. How does this work? The 200 HP is achieved at an unusable rpm, much greater than 5252 (this in physics defines the relationship). Just making numbers up, you can routinely have a diesel that puts out 200 HP, but 420 ft. lbs. of torque. Which motor are you going to use to do work? cd is a valuable number, but in a way, frontal area is like torque, the overlooked piece of the puzzle.

To put things into perspective, the LS430 has a lower cd than a 335i. But which car cuts through the wind better, and which has the higher top speed? I will say, that on both cars, the engineers did go to a lot of trouble to keep the underside as smooth as possible.

airchomper

I don't dispute that people back into one number to make comparisons (heck, a good fraction of my job is trying to distill complex, technical arguments into something that can be digested in 30 seconds by attention starved shot callers) but horsepower is a good basis of comparison, especially in this world of ultra-wide ratio spread transmissions where the penalty of a narrow powerband is ameliorated.

Go look at the specs of a current gen Accord and a 1996 ES300, they're rated within 8 horsepower of each other and they weigh within 100 lbs of each other. The honda has a 'peaky' engine with a 6,400 RPM power peak, but that doesn't matter because the CVT can hold the engine in its powerband, the . The Accord is about .4 seconds faster to 60 mph with the same power and weight (and substantially less torque) - how can that be? Power is the only thing that really matters.

Back to a comparison between a 3-er and the LS430, area and Cd have the same 'limiting' behavior, a 25% change in area has the same effect as a 25% change in Cd (in low-mach situations) and the same change as a 25% change in fluid density, but the Cd could vary with speed and I could see why BMW would tune its cars for top speed and why Lexus might tune its cars for the freeway at the expense of top speed. And why bench race Cds? You can just decide what's important and optimize to that. If you're trying to find a car that's quiet on the freeway that has reasonable running costs, you can just look for the overlap of 'cars that are unusually quiet' and 'cars that are relatively inexpensive to own' and you probably won't find many BMWs on both lists - no need to complicate it with Cd at 150 mph, existence of top-speed governors, and speed rating of tires.

Johnhav430

ftw.....if that were the case, we wouldn't be able to get one, we'd be back to the way it was, where BMW puts out a new coupe, and there is a 9+ week wait list to get one (and dealer gouge-o-rama). The last time they put out the F coupe, just go and buy it, like a Kia or Hyundai. Heck, there used to be a wait list to get a Camry whenever a new gen came out.

It is impressive that Lexus has cd, and then quietness, as two of their goals. It seems to be in their fabric, just like BMW has always tried historically to achieve a 50/50 weight distribution (not sure what they can say about the new FWD-based platforms).

edit p.s. this seems to imply that Lexus kind of got off track and is coming back....I just hope it's not a V6 like this says, that's just not right as we know who they're competing with....

http://www.caranddriver.com/news/201...-and-info-news

jayclapp

Cd does not change with velocity. Drag changes with velocity, but the Cd remains constant. The equation is Drag = velocity head (which is 1/2 x density x velocity squared) times frontal area x Cd. Cd (drag coefficient) is always determined by testing in a wind tunnel. The drag coefficient is different for each auto (or airplane). That is because of the airstream separating from the auto and creating turbulent airflow. This can occur everywhere, even beneath the auto. The shape of the auto at the back of the car is especially influential, as separation causes the static pressure behind the rear to cease to rise (this leaves the rear of the auto under a lower pressure, causing a higher pressure from the front of the auto to the rear). This delta pressure creates a higher delta pressure across the auto from front to rear, which raises the drag on the vehicle.

Too much guessing on drag and Cd here. Consult an aerodynamic engineer to fully understand. The concept is somewhat difficult to comprehend unless on understands the difference between total pressure and static pressure.

airchomper

The coefficient of drag is velocity independent (in low subsonic speeds) when you're comparing a similar reynold's number. And if Cd is immutably constant - why would anyone deploy active aerodynamic elements? Why go to the effort of highspeed, supersonic windtunnels if air behaves the same at 1 mph and mach 3?

There is a lot of guessing going on, but as they say the proof is in the pudding - I hear less wind noise in my LS430 than any BMW I've ever sat in and that's all that matters to me. Beyond that, this is simply me rising to the challenge of correcting the record for anyone who might view this thread in the future and to fight misconceptions. E.g 'that torque matters' without any hat thrown to the idea of torque multiplication.

Unfortunately, we got involved in this discussion because OP had a point of contention around selling the Cd and said that drag matters too - he's not wrong but if we're going to talk about drag, we may as well talk about power required to push things through the air. And why talk about power if we're not going to talk about BSFC - the fuel cost of power? But all those parameters become the experience: most of us get at least high-20 mpg cruising down the freeway in peace and quiet and perhaps that's the most important thing.

And we're skirting around a philosophical debate - to what extent can we reduce information to a single parameter? OP is right that somethings aren't as useful as others, but my point is that not all data points are created equal. Megapixels don't matter, but things like image sensor format can be reasonably good bases of comparison. And if we want to quantify things, we aren't beholden to just one element.

Johnhav430

In my car search which led to the LS, I was looking for luxury, and reliability. Why else would anyone spend north of 14k on a car produced in 10/05? But, I hadn't given it any thought until yesterday, and noticed that the windshield washer nozzles are not heated. Are folks paying 100k and lacking this feature on a 2017 LS? If so, and I don't know that to be the case, that imho is way behind the times....and in doing a search, I found a thread where RX owners were talking about this. Someone said lowly 3 series have them, and posted a diagram to show it. 1984 Sciroccos had them!

Johnhav430

Excellent....usually, when I tell someone I have a Sigma 10-20 3,5, they say 10? That's really wide. I say, actually, it ends up being 15-30, because of the 1.5X factor due to the image sensor. Usually we can't get anywhere from there, just like when a torque wrench has a range of 10-75, many don't realize it's not usable below 15. The question becomes how much understanding is reasonable in life? Back in the day, we were expected to be able to in my time, amortize a mortgage with Excel. In my dad's day, he did it with a calculator. In my grandfather's day, it was with paper and pencil. Today, it would seem either use a java based web browser, or just let a banker tell you. Imho, saying a motor has 200 HP and 140 ft lbs., vs a motor that has 200 HP and 420 ft.lbs., has some value and implication to me. Any motor whose peak torque in ft lbs is less than it's peak HP, is undesirable to me, based on an implication that it has related to rpms. As you point out, torque may have no value whatsoever to others, as they are interested in HP. Car marketers have catered to that....it's all good.