Lexus IS 250 Sport | Shed of the Week
Remember when Lexus sold a manual, naturally aspirated, rear-drive saloon to rival the mighty BMW 3 Series?
Fancy a rear-driven normally-aspirated manual V6 from a firm with a reliability record that’s second to none? Yes? Well, today is your lucky day because here’s a Lexus IS 250 Sport.
It’s seven years almost to the day since we last had a Lexus IS on here. That one was a first-gen IS 200 SportCross estate from 2004 with around 125,000 miles on it. Today’s specimen is an early gen-two IS 250 Sport from 2006 with 131,000 miles on it. Shed is only bringing this comparison to your attention because that SportCross (which would have been priced below the old SOTW limit of £1,500 when he wrote about it in 2017) is still going strong today. Its last MOT in May this year suggests another 25,000 miles have been covered with nothing more scary than normal wear and tear.
Is there any reason to suppose that this week’s IS won’t follow a similarly trouble-free path? Not according to its even more typically spotless Lexus MOT history. The last two tests have shown no advisories. In fact, the only advisories to have appeared in the past 100,000 miles-plus have been to do with worn or perished tyres, with just one mention of thin brake discs to break up the welcome monotony. That’s pretty incredible. With only 13,000 miles covered in the last six years, this IS has got to be worth £2,000 of anyone’s money, Shirley?
ISs could run through consumables, mind. Some believed that this was down to wonky factory geometry which put too much stress on the inner edges of the front tyres. Other than that there were very few endemic faults with the IS apart from maybe the odd lying sensor, failing coil pack or injector, or leaky rad.
The direct-injection 4GR-FSE 2.5 V6 produced 205hp at 6,400rpm and 185lb ft at 4,800rpm. In other words, it liked a rev. That wasn’t something the fun-killing torque converter automatic was keen to promote, but with the six-speed manual that’s fitted here you’ll be able to enjoy regular Italian tune-ups on the dual carriageway to er keep carbon buildup at bay officer. Keep it on the boil and you might just about get this 1,570kg saloon through the 0-60mph run in the high sevens. You’ll be mightily impressed by the refinement too but you won’t get modern fuel consumption figures from it. Anything starting with a three will be worthy of a small celebration.
There’s nothing outdated about the rest of the IS’s spec, which as standard included heated seats, satnav, dual-zone climate control, rear camera, power sunroof, headlight washers, cruise control, keyless entry, drilled aluminium pedals, a leather wheel and gearknob and probably a lot more that Shed can’t be bothered to research. Like the 14-speaker Mark Levinson audio that this car has. Was that standard on UK cars? Shed can’t remember, but he does know that nobody whined about the quality of the 13-speaker setup that was supplied to other markets so you’re unlikely to have many complaints about the ML system, which was thunderous and accurate at the same time.
When the gen-two came out in 2006 it seemed a shame that Lexus had replaced the gen-one’s cool chronograph-style instrumentation with a pair of conventional electro-luminescent gauges, but if you looked at it objectively the old clock arrangement was more about form than function. There wasn’t much room in the back of an IS but its build quality couldn’t be questioned and the 250 Sport was a little cheaper than the equivalent BMW 325i when it was new too, despite having all the gubbins mentioned above thrown in. Most of that gear cost extra on the BM.
The IS’s suspension design looked right, with double wishbones at the front and a multi-link rear, but outside of the engineering design office the Sport’s ride turned out to be a touch nobbly, the steering a touch over-eager and the handling generally a touch under par compared to that of the 325i. It wasn’t helped by an over-intrusive stability control system, but smarter owners found out that this could be temporarily disabled. All you had to do was start the car with the handbrake on, press the brake pedal twice and hold, engage the handbrake twice and hold, repeat until the skid warning lights appeared on the dash, then twirl a fortune-teller’s shawl over your head three times in an anti-clockwise direction and throw a pinch of salt over your left shoulder. Shawl and salt apart, Shed promises you that he is not making this up.
There are two issues with this shed that might trouble potential buyers. One is the annual tax bill which you would expect to be high. In fact, it’s the increasingly shed-standard £395 if you pay it in one dollop, or £415 if you do it on the drip at £34 a month. The other one would be the velour seats. The first buyer of this car must have specified this material because Shed is fairly sure leather was standard on these. Now, Shed likes a bit of moo as much as the next whatever you’re allowed to call yourself these days instead of ‘man’, but his liking for leather is more about its wipe-cleanability than anything else.
On the velour seats, I prefer it! It even sounds better on the tongue...... vellloooouuuuurrrrr [insert your own tiger growl here]
Seems tremendous value for money and has the benefit of a 'proper' layout big NA in front, RWD and manual.
No one really is going to give you a more reliable version of this form than lexus. More fun versions available yes. But I wouldn't delve into those at this price point.
Great car for the money.
Plenty of life left in that, would want to get a wet and dry vac on those seats and give them a good shampoo though, look a bit grubby but can almost guarantee they will come up and look almost new.
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