I bought a new car! After 12 years I’m driving a Lexus again. Back in 2011 I sold my lovely LS400 to buy a Prius, and I sold the Prius in 2016 to buy a MINI Clubman Cooper S. Now I have a Lexus again and it’s an absolute beast of a car. I bought the car back at the beginning of October 2023 so it’s taken me a while to update this site!
I managed to get loads of information about the car from my local Lexus dealership. It was manufactured on 25th Feb 2008, and sold on 30th May 2008. What was I doing back then? According to this blog I was visiting London Zoo with the kids.
When I bought the car it seemed to be in very good condition considering it had been driven over 190,000 miles. The previous owner seemed to be a bit of a car enthusiast, and supplied the car with a complete set of components to overhaul the rear brakes - disks, pads, seals, pins etc. - I have yet to install these as the weather hasn’t been great. Note to self - don’t buy a new car in winter!
The day I bought the car was the last truly hot day of 2023, and the test drive was a sweaty affair as the air conditioning didn’t work - at least I knew that before I bought it. I agreed to buy the car in the blazing sunlight, but during the long drive home the sun set and I realised that all of the windows (except the windscreen) were tinted. I could barely see anything in the wing mirrors. As soon as I got home I removed all of the tint to return the car back to factory specs.
I clearly neglected some inspection items while looking at the car, because I didn’t realise that the rubber seal around the sunroof was completely shot. On doing some research I found that the seal isn’t available as a separate item for the LS600, it is only sold ready bonded to a brand new piece of glass. So, I had to buy a new sunroof at a cost of over £700.
In the first month after buying the car I had the following major expenses:
- 5 new tyres (one had a large piece of tread hanging off, the others weren’t great, and the spare was OK but 14 years old)
- a very major service at the Lexus dealer, including the new sunroof.
- re-gassing the air conditioning - something which I’ve still been unable to test
Since owning it I’ve started fixing and updating the car and I’ll cover more of that in subsequent posts.