Hey guys,

I wanted to share my pride and joy that took me over two years to find. Here is my 1999 Lexus SC 300 in Angora beige metallic, with 213000 miles on the odometer.


I was searching for over 2 years for a clean and most importantly as close to bone stock as possible example. I also wanted 98 and newer model years only as I was set on the facelift body and gated shifter - so pretty specific. Every day was spent on facebook marketplace, offerup and craigslist, and I was even prepared to drive up to Florida (I live in AZ)
since it was so hard to find clean examples. Finally one day I tried something different and searched for SCs on Autotrader - lo and behold, a gorgeous SC was waiting for me. I drove down to California that very weekend, fell in love with it, put down a cash deposit and flew back next weekend to drive it back home. The previous owner was am older gentleman who treated the SC like a newborn child. Pristine paint, perfect interior (apart from the window trim of course, those MUST be broken according to SC law) and it drove like a top. Even the center AC trim was intact!

Here is a picture just after I finished titling it in my name and filled it up for the first time!






Pretty 97+ taillights + gold badging!



Safe and sound in my garage next to my workhorse!

I have so, so many plans for this car. My initial plan was to go NA-T - I had a built 2JZ from my older GS 300 that I was going to drop in, but my awful experience with the machine shop who built the engine led me losing my trust in the work they did. Therefore I scrapped that idea, and for now I am focusing on mechanically restoring the car since it's cosmetically in very good shape. My main focus is to keep that stock, or drop in an engine that was actually made for the car OEM (like a 1JZ-GTE or 2JZ-GTE). That is definitely far down the line so for now I'm focusing on fixing up little niggles like a floppy side mirror, reinforcing the door panels, dropping in a nice amp/sub combo and so on. Then I'll be moving on to more mechanical stuff like rebuilding the suspension/subframe, followed by dropping in a nice exhaust setup too.

Another priority of mine is finding replacement/spares for hard to find parts. I've made some progress, but here is an initial list:

1. Taillights - 95 style and 97+ style
2. Headlights
3. High beam lamps
4. Fog lights
5. Interior trim pieces - door panels, a pillar trim, basically anything that has plastic tabs that can break
6. Every seal on the car - door opening, sunroof, etc. (this one makes me paranoid as a leak could be catastrophic and almost all the seals are discontinued)
7. Brake booster
8. Steering rack
9. Supra seats to get rid of motors that will eventually fail

I plan to document my progress here as I go, hopefully it helps someone out or is simply a nice read.