Have any of you had experience with the Lexus LS 460?
That’s a very broad question. What exactly do you want to know?
Yes
No.
This Is My First Experience With One. I Believe It’s A Car. My Nearest Lexus Dealer Is 4 Hours Away.
CSA
I Used The “Search Car Talk Community” Box Up And To The Right On This Page. You Might Find What You’re Looking For In The Discussions.
Here are example excerpts from some of the Car Talk Community Search discussion headings to give you an idea.
“Lexus LS 460 Spontaneous Fire!”
"$2200 to replace a single Lexus headlight?"
“I HAVE A 2013 LEXUS LS460. THE BATTERY HAS GONE DEAD ON 3 OCCASIONS.”
“The dealer charged $128 for an oil change for the LS 460. …”
CSA
Parts and service are more expensive than with a cheaper car. On the other hand, Consumer Reports had a long term car survey and one couple had such a Lexus with 450,000 miles on it and no excessive repairs.
If you are going to buy an upscale car this would be the one.
Sorry for this being such a broad question. Was just wondering if any of the reading audience had one of their own or knew of someone that has/had one and some of the plusses or minuses experienced. Researching this car gives mostly positive reviews so was looking for some personal reviews.
The LS for years has been written up as a good bet for a used luxury car, with much better chance of a reliable, low(er) cost experience than with the German brands. A friend has one, bought it after 3 years, nothing but good things to say about it. It will, however, be more expensive than a Toyota, it’s not based on a Toyota model. An ES350 would give you not quite the luxury or power, but better mpgs and lower maintenance, since it heavily based on the V6 Camry.
I suggest you look it up in a Lexus forum. Friend had one and the cooling system failed before 100K miles and the engine was toast. Did not give any warnings and by the time the water temp was creeping up the engine stopped running. He states that he had been on top of things and the car was maintained meticulously and being that he is a perfectionist, I don’t doubt him. But then again this is only one Lexus LS out of many.
Sorry about your friend’s LS. At least according to Consumer Reports that’s very uncommon. Out of 10 years, 7 are ‘much better than average’, 1 is ‘better than average’, and 2 are ‘average’ for ‘engine cooling’.
A friend has had one for years. She loves it.
One of my regular customers still drives a early 90’s LS400 which hasn’t given her much of any trouble other than the normal wear items. Things like the air suspension are somewhat expensive to fix but no worse than other luxury brands.
Alan Mullaly, the former Ford CEO, proclaimed that the Lexus LS is the finest car in the world
If I was in the market for a very expensive luxury sedan (I’m not!), the Lexus LS would be my first choice.
If I wanted something similar–albeit with maintenance and repair costs many times higher than what would be needed with that Lexus–then I might consider a Mercedes S-class or a BMW 7-series.
Thanks all. That’s what’s nice about this website…good, solid recommendations and folks that provide personal experience, evidence and articles to back it up.
That damaged car sure sounds like a bad thermostat. I have written about my high-rel plan, which involves replacing parts with known failures BEFORE they fail.
Not everyone grasps that. Docnick did, though, which is why he is high on my list of men to admire. One guy asked, sarcastically, why I didn’t replace the transmission, too. Actually, if I knew when transmissions start to fail just from being used and maintained correctly, I would do just that. As best as I can tell, properly maintained Toyota Transmissions seem to last longer then the car does. But, I digress.
On my Toyota, I try to replace the thermostat at less than 100,000 miles. An engine builder told me he starts seeing damaged Toyota heads at around 130,000 miles, due to failed thermostats. After some thought, I added thermostats to my high-rel list.
@irlandes Yes, in industry it’s variously called “proactive maintenance” or “failure prevention” as well as Reliability Centered Maintenance or RCM.
In tracking maintenance costs in the oil industry I’ve seen figures as low as 40 cents per barrel and as high as $4.75 cents per barrel for refinery maintenance. The low figure was a well designed and operated unit practicing RCM and failure prevention, while the latter was a basically good refinery in Africa practicing “Breakdown Maintenance”. The cost of downtime was not calculated in those figures, but the good refinery had an “uptime” of 98.5% while the bad one ran only at 65% capacity and could not make airline quality jet fuel.
Industry always has to factor in the cost of downtime, and that often far exceeds the early replacement costs.
In the airline industry safety is an overriding factor. The military is also sold on Reliability Focused maintenance.
Next week I’m conducting a workshop in RCM for a major oil company’s maintenance and plant engineering staff. Most companies now have “reliability engineers” on staff.
The March Issue of Car&Driver has a feature near the back about used cars to buy at certain price points. A 2009 LS460 is their safe bet at $25,000 with only the shocks and possible replacement of the stereo amp as issues, assuming the 90,000 mile or so Lexus has been well maintained.
If you get scientific about car maintenance you have to classify the components as to how they might fail and how they should be maintained:
- Run to failure; light bulbs and non critical items you cannot check the condition of.
- Condition-based: Tires, battery, brakes, drive belt, and other items you can determine the condition of.
- Time-based replacement: items you cannot easily inspect but statistically need to be replaced at certain intervals, based on experience and needed safety factor: Spark plugs, coolant, timing belts, etc.
The idea is to take as many items out of the “run to failure” category and place them in category (2) or (3).
My own best record was with a 1984 Chevy V8 Impala which over 12 years covered 200,000 miles (and 10,000 trips) and experienced only 3 unplanned breakdowns; a water pump failure (blown seal) while parked, a burned out windshield wiper motor, and a burst upper rad hose. The rad hose I could possibly have predicted by squeezing it regularly to detect deterioration.
If all the above sounds tedious and boring, the result was a cost per mile just over HALF! of what the AAA and others publish for this type of car! So, being proactive pays off.