I like the rear view as well. The front looks like just a variation of past LS models. I've owned the 99 LS and to me, they look somewhat the same on the front.

 

I LOVE the new LS and have to agree with you guys that it is great looking. In my opinion, it is the best design thus far that Lexus has done on an LS. You guys are lucky to have this car, I would love to test drive it sometime.

 

Wish I could trade some miles with you. I have a 15,000 mi./yr. lease, and after my first two months, I'm about 100 miles "over" on mileage. And we haven't even taken our first road trip yet!

For the last decade or two I've averaged 30,000 miles a year on my cars, so I always spread it over two of them. When I got the LS, I decided to go with only one car and try to cut down on my miles. But our first trip this May will probably add a good 4,000 miles to the total. *sigh* My only out will be to trade the LS before the lease is up and hope for the best, since I'm not paying LFS thousands in mileage charges!

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shld use more of your nice cars then

 

I love to looks of my smoky granite mica LS460L. I love it even better now that I have just removed the orginal rims with the snow tires and have replaced them with the teleios rims with the all season Bridgestone Turanzas. I am declaring this horrible winter as finished ;-). Seriously, I had driven 5,400 miles since mid December on the snow tires and I did not want to over use them in one winter. My wife and I are taking a trip to Detroit again tomorrow and I am looking forward to it. I find that the all season Turanzas are considerably more quiet than the snow tires.

 

You are just fooling yourself. The more miles you put on new car, the more it depreciates. You'll either pay the pre-set overage charge per mile or that number will get built into some new deal that otherwise would not get built in.
In the real world you probably should have bot more miles up front. The current alternative is to budget extra dollars per month into some sort of savings account to cover the overage at the end. There ain't no free lunch, ESPECIALLY with rapidly and heavily depreciating new luxury automobiles.

 

You may be right, but I've dodged similar bullets in the past. I traded an "over-miles" BMW 540i for an Infiniti M45 and came out smelling fine. Got a lot more "extra" in trade than the penalty would have cost, and I still got a killer deal on the M ... not to mention I was able to save on sales tax.

Unfortunately, the sales tax advantage has been erased by a liberal state legislature, so I no longer have that. But I'd rather have some penalty dollars built into a new car's price than write a check to LFS and hand them the keys at lease-end.

Of course, there's always forgiveness ... if I buy or lease another Lexus at lease-end, most say they'll look the other way on a reasonable amount of excess mileage.

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actually about lexus leases.

there is a rumor where if you buy another lexus car and you are over mileage on your current lease, they will not charge you on your extra miles.

i bought extra miles on me RX300 lease, and when it was time to give it up, i was up by about 15K miles. i left it at the dealership and picked up my new RX330. never heard from them again

 

Mike....did you do a conventional lease or a single pay lease? I have always paid for my Lexus vehicles with cash, but when I bought my wife her RX 360 a couple of months ago, we did a single pay lease. I'm considering doing the same on my LS purchase, that is, a single pay lease. Anyone else done a single pay? Just curious. Thanks....

 

Nope - conventional lease here. I've inquired about pre-paid leases before and didn't get much joy from the dealers. But I'm retired now and don't want money tied up like that anyway.

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Again, I think you are just kidding yourself and have a convenient rationalization to buy yet another new car. Don't get me wrong, I am a car guy too but I am honest with myself about the money that I pyzz away. Any alleged "free miles" are just that....alleged.

 

If the dealership buys the vehicle off lease from Lexus you do not pay for mileage or condition. Always try and get the dealer to buy the leased car and not turn it in.

RXSF, you probably did not know but the dealership probably bought your car from Lexus to sell as pre-owned.

 

The dealer will only buy a vehicle if the price is right. Which proves my original point that the higher the miles, the less the price. Even if the original poster DID get out with "free extra miles"...it was just an illusion. There was probably just enough equity in the lease to make it seem like free miles.

Again, it appears that the original poster just needed an excuse to buy a new car.

 

Daryll, I wasn't going to answer your post, but you seem so sure of yourself that I felt I needed to.

Your primary error is in assuming that the lease mileage is somehow magic, and that if you exceed that magic number the car's trade-in value plummets. That's just not true. The car's value to a dealer buying it from you is determined as much by CONDITION as it is mileage. Ask any dealer.

A lease, on the other hand, is an up-front agreement that provides that you will pay the lessor x cents per mile for miles in excess of the agreed number. That of course applies only if you keep the car until lease maturity and turn it back in to the lessor. That applies regardless of condition, and is a safety valve for the lessor, who after all doesn't know for sure what his car will be worth 3 years hence.

Many cars are actually worth more a couple years later than the lessor predicted and provided for in the lease - if only to the next dealer. To put that in simple terms, my pristine '04 BMW 540i was worth enough to the Infiniti dealer as a trade-in to more than offset any mileage penalties, and I would have been stupid to keep it another 6 months until lease-end and pay BMW for those miles.

That is, the Infiniti dealer didn't really give a rat's *** that BMW would have charged me for excess mileage, and he instead valued the car on its own merits based on his ability to turn it for a profit. One man's mileage penalty is another man's opportunity for a profit.

And consider this: What if it were a 10,000 mi/yr lease, and after 2 years, the lessee had 25,000 miles on the car. At that rate, the lessee would be paying Lexus (or whoever) x cents per mile for 7500 excess miles if he kept it for the full 3-year term. But are you REALLY saying another dealer would look at a 25,000-mile, 2-year-old car in great condition and downgrade the trade value just because of the Lexus lease? Duh.

Last but not least, when I trade a car before lease end (which I almost always do), I don't even tell the dealer it's a lease until AFTER we've agreed on trade-in value. So he doesn't even know (or care, for that matter) that it's a leased car until after we've cut our deal. So how could "excess miles" on a lease document even come into play?

You're entitled to your opinion, but remember that doesn't mean you're right!

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I still don't buy it. If two cars are mint clean, the one with 20,000 miles will be worth more than the one with 30,000 miles. It sounds like the leases as examples have high enough payments that the value of the vehicles remains higher than the residual/buyout. Even with the higher miles. The car would be worth even YET MORE with lower miles.

You are confusing a more expensive lease (enough to keep the car value less than owed on the lease) with the idea that there are "free miles". Again, a vehicle might bring more in good condition, but it would bring EVEN YET MORE in good condition with less miles.