Friday 18th December 2015

Shed Of The Week: Lexus GS300

Big barge done the Japanese way for Shed's festive favourite

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Christmas time, mistletoe and whine. That's the festive menu Shed is looking forward to this year, along with (he hopes) a new pair of trainers to help him escape the clutches of Mrs Shed as she tries to corner him for the annual snog.

Styling inoffensively Japanese

Shed knows it's going to happen, and is resigned to it. His only comfort is knowing that, once the foul lipstick-smearing event is all over, he'll be free to enjoy the laid-back Christmas lifestyle in front of the box with a cigar-flavoured vape in one hand and a giant mince pie in the other.

It is in this relaxed frame of mind that Shed has selected the final SOTW of 2015, a festively wafting Lexus GS300.

What do you get for your one thousand English pounds? The GS300 could be seen as Japan's equivalent of the Jaguar S-Type, an interloper trading off the reputation of its bigger brother. Viewed in isolation, however, the 300 has a lot going for it.

This early example of the second-gen 300 looks like a car that is maturing nicely. The start was shaky, lukewarm pressers complaining about its ride and disappointing lack of Lexusness, but remember that the LS400 was in its pomp at this time. Any addition to the range was going to suffer in the comparison.

Condition looking pretty good for a car approaching 18

But with 220 in both hp and torque, an eight-second 0-60, top speed of 140mph+, a brilliantly screwed-together leather-lined cabin and the PH Holy Grail of rear-wheel drive, the 300 ticks plenty of Shed boxes. Admittedly the handling won't blow a warm gust of pleasure up your trousers, but for cultured, well-built and luxurious drifting (straightline rather than full-lock) at a bargain basement price you could do a lot worse. By buying a Mercedes of the same vintage, say.

The front under-valance (is that even a thing?) looks like it's been nibbled by a few rough tracks, but better to have nibbled plastic than nibbled metal. Generic gen-2 GS botherations are few and far between, and may or may not include moisture in the headlights, non-functioning rear-door actuation of the interior and 'door open' warning lights, plus rattling dashes and sunroofs. Lexus rattles are not the same as ordinary rattles. They're pretty quiet. For some people that makes them extra annoying.

The wood! The leather! The grey!

Timing is by chain. The one on this sub-80K mile car should be good for at least another 10K miles, or more if you're the type that fancies a flutter and has full trust in Toyota's engineering integrity.

Odd Lexi (not just the 300) have been known to smell a bit musty and have damp passenger carpets. On earlier GSs at least, if you ran the AC on full blast with the windows open until you could see water dripping down from the nearside wheelarch, but water didn't appear, your HVAC evaporator drain was blocked. That problem wasn't exclusive to the 300; the IS got it too.

The official fix involved lowering the transmission to access the drain. The Shedly fix was to jack up the car, shove a mirror on the end of a stick up there to locate the drain, and then use a bent bit of wire to sort it aht.

Mmm, gold lettering

Now, the ad does have that dreaded phrase 'sold as seen' in it, but it's reasonable to expect that 'sold as seen' means something different when it comes from a vendor like this, a top-end multi-franchise dealership where customer expectations are going to be high and trade-ins that most of us would happily buy and enjoy are treated with snooty disdain. The seller's website is studded with quality marques and, despite some redundant apostrophes that will get PH grammarians searching for their comfort blankets, it looks professional and polished. So we're thinking their castoffs could be good buys.

Talking of which, goodbye until next year. Have a very merry Christmas.

Here's the ad.

Grey Leather Upholstery with Grey Carpets, Electric Glass Sunroof, 17 inch Alloy Wheels, Cruise Control, Climate Control, PAS, ABS, 220 BHP, 3 owners, service history with many original receipts and old MOT's, 3 x keys, part exchange to clear, sold as seen.

[Goofnik]

Toyota MZ engine, right? Fairly heavily over engineered, though not as much as the more modern (and current) Toyota GR engine which sees regularly duty in Manhattan taxi cabs (Avalon Hybrid) for 500,000 - 1,000,000 mile duty cycles before being retired. Regardless, if properly maintained it's hard to find a Toyota MZ that won't go at least 300,000 kilometers.

I've always had big respect for the Lexus GS. It isn't sporty like a 5-series, but if you want to go from A to B in comfort, and being isolated from the outside world, it does its job without failure, every time. For a lot of people, that's all they really want and need.