Hey guys,

I'm looking to get a used LS460 soon (I hope). Looking around for a 2007 or possibly 2008 model.

I'm wondering what are some of the common problem that the LS460 has and is there certain year model I should avoid (07 or 08). Please give me your honest opinion (and I'm more interested in the 'cons' side of the car). The more ruthless, the better.

 

Randomwalk- I purchased one of the early 07 LS460 models. You might expect that the first year would have issues but closing in on three years and there have been none. I used the jmcraney fix for mild wind noise and all has been perfect since.

 

A few minor issues, but nothing to lose sleep over. They live up to their reputation of rock solid reliability. Best buy in the luxury market; used LS's are becoming more and more attractive especially as the imports are costing more with the sinking value of $$. FYI - In some regions (i.e. Texas), the dealers are ordering new models with fewer bells and whistles. This weekend at a dealer in Houston, I saw a few new 09's with no Nav, ML, air suspension.

 

As far as I have been able to determine, the Sates of Florida and New Jersey are the only states that have open internet accessible data bases of cars that have been "bought back" under their state Lemon Law statutes.

The Florida site is: http://www.myfloridalegal.com/#

The New Jersey site is: http://www.nj.gov/lps/ca/ocp/lemreport/lemonvin.pdf

If you go through and tally up LS models for several years you will get totals like this:

2002 LS430 NJ-1 FL-10
2003 LS430 NJ-0 FL-3
2004 LS430 NJ-1 FL-20
2005 LS430 NJ-0 FL-6
2006 LS430 NJ-1 FL-9
2007 LS460 NJ-4 FL-85
2008 LS460 NJ-2 FL-13

These list are "live" and 07 and 08 cars are still being added so it's hard to tell where the 08s will settle - perhaps somewhat more, maybe not.

The totals for 07s and 08s look sort of alarming. But without some context they don't mean much and the reason for repurchase is not given.

You can put some context to the numbers by inference, and you can do that by correlating the VINs of buyback-cars in the lists and the VINs of cars offered for sale by resellers. I was able to cross-correlate the VINs of 12 cars from the FL list with reseller ads and the reason for repurchase given for each instance was "wind noise." So it looks like that many of the cars in the list may have been repurchased because they had wind noise.

I am not telling you this to dissuade you from purchasing an 07 or 08 LS.

To the contrary. A small defect with the trim causes most of the wind noise problems and it is easily and inexpensively repairable.

So really the lesson here is that most of the problems that rose to arbitration and eventual repurchase by the manufacturer were related to the wind noise and otherwise the cars are very reliable and a real pleasure to drive.

I continue to be very pleased with my 2007 LS460.

 

If you want a quiet, comfortable, reliable sedan, the LS is your car. The German lines are a bit sportier to drive but nowhere near as reliable.

Get the L version with the touring package. You won't regret the purchase.