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There is no argument that Mercedes makes a Beautiful car...Unfortunately that beauty is ONLY skin deep...SAD.
denaliinpa - Phrase it however you want but Lexus and MB are going in opposite directions when it comes to quality, reliability, sales volume and profits. Everything you talk about is purely subjective and everything the Lexus crowd talks about has real world proof wherever you look.
Nobody made a "claim" I said that in my opinion that one car looked like another. I didn't pass it off as fact or make a bogus claim like you've been doing for over a year. I gave an opinion, not a factual claim. The difference between what I said and what you "claim" is that mine is just an opinion about styling, yours are based on a limited knowledge of any other car beyond a Lexus and automotive technology in general.
M
So now I guess you've changed your mind about the Mercedes SL which you've stated you wanted back in the day? What should really make you go "hmmmmmmmm" is that Lexus still can't design a car that looks worth squat 15 years after their debut. The new IS is about the only hope. How can anyone that fancies Lexus styling call any other brand of car bland is beyond me. Whether it be now or a car from 20 years ago because Lexus is the epitome of bland and nothing designs...today. How easy is it to post picture of a 1971 Benz and call it bland. Lexus' entire 2005 Lexus lineup stylistically forgettable at best. 70s and 80s Toyota looked like the junk they were and if the first ES250 is any indication of what Lexuses would have looked like before 1990, they would have looked like blenders.
M
Nah a good looking car looks good no matter how many times you see it. VWs are plentiful too and the Passat in particular is still a very good looking. Where I live on a good Saturday you'll see more Mercedes/BMW/Lexus than you could count and the story is always the same, German lookers and Japanese blanders. What I find really interesting about Lexus is that their chief has shot his mouth off about this new look and so far the car have only come out looking worse, especially the GS. Now the new IS does hold promise. It has the small tight, lithe look of the best European cars, at least in pics.
One element of good styling is the way the sheetmetal appears to be stretched over the chassis just enough to cover the wheels. Another is no space in the wheel wells. Look at an Audi to see what I mean here. This is one reason why the 7-Series BMW is so ugly, their is too much space in the wheel wells. Ditto for the 5-Series which depends greatly on color and wheel size to look good. The Japanese are getting better at this, but in the past Nissan and Toyota were terrible with this. Any Maxima up until the 2004 model looked like it had an air suspension locked in the highest postion possible. Acres of space between the tire and the body. Mercedes and Audi lead the way in styling, imo. Nothing from Japan even comes close to a E, M3, CL, SL A6, or A8.
Infiniti is getting there for sure, they're way ahead of Lexus on looks.
M
For you Merc1, you'd make everyone think that Lexus owners don't live in the real world. And their Lexus is all they care about....Just absolute nonsense...
"How easy is it to post picture of a 1971 Benz and call it bland."
To prove how truly BLAND and ugly those MBs were. You'd look at them and call them classic; I'd look at them and call them UGLY.
"Lexus' entire 2005 Lexus lineup stylistically forgettable at best"
Really ? Then car styling must be totally out of fashion, when you consider that these bland Lexus cars and trucks COMBINED are the #1 selling brand in the entire NA market. And the beautiful Audis and MBs are going backwards in sales, and hence, market demand. Hmmmmm.... Interesting, don't you think ? If I understand you correctly, buyers of Lexus have no styling taste whatsoever, right ? While those beautifully-styled MBs and Audis are just so gorgeous buyers cannot wait to buy them..... Something happened on the way to the bank, buyers quickly found out that exterior styling is only skin-deep, whereas build quality, reliability and excellent customer service are what matters most. Hence LEXUS' success. Need we remind you most ardent MB fans that you do not even own an MB, nor would you even buy an MB today. Or would you ? Enquiring minds will like to know !
"70s and 80s Toyota looked like the junk they were...."
Wanna know what JUNK is ? Ejerod's 2001 and 2002 S500 ? Those were as junky as junk can ever be. Comparing $20-30K Toyota cars of the 70s with $90K+ 2001 and 2002 MBs. Which is junk-ier ? You be the judge...
auto issue. here is a link about the upcoming issue.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cars5mar05,0,5658976.story?coll=la-home-business
a couple of interesting things. first the Lexus GS is the top Lexus. i find this strange because Lexus hardly sold any GS's last year. this leads me to believe the samples that Consumer Reports use are extremely small and therefore imo not credible. and Audi is right behind Lexus 11% to 12%. you know what this means to me...nothing. when it comes to purchasing an automobile CR's is a very small informative tool when making a decision. to rely solely on what they say is "better" is imo ridiculous. when they start reporting how many surveys they received for each vehicle and year i would feel more comfortable.
i am amazed that people look to CR's Jdpowers as being gospel when it comes to automobiles. keep in mind they are selling you news. they make their money hyping even the smallest of differences between automakers. keeps a roof over their head. just like newspapers, news channels and the like the more they can hype and sell the better "they" do. all information needs to be filtered and weighed with your own personal experiences.
i receive CR's. i did not fill out a survey. i don't remeber getting one. who know's my 1 survey might have put Audi over the top! i sent them an email last week asking them for information on how they come about their opinions. specifically sample size for the cars in this thread. they have not emailed me back as of yet. i wonder what everyone would think if CR's only receives 20-30 S class surveys a year...if that and even less for the A8.
Here's the bottom 4 of the CR list in terms of problems per hundred cars.
04 03
BMW 21 19
Volkswagen 23 19
Mercedes-Benz 25 22
Lincoln Ford 26 31
Here's a quote on response rates:
"Some brands, including Hummer, Isuzu, Jaguar, Kia, Mini, Mitsubishi and Porsche, were not rated because of insufficent owner responses."
CR made it very clear that cars with insufficient responses weren't rated.
One more Audi return wouldn't have changed it's problem per vehicle rate. Statistically it's unlikely that 100 more Audi returns or any one car brand or model would have changed the numbers. That's the way statistics works. It may be hard to understand but study can always help.
The results might be illuminating.
Yes my wife and I always had a desire for that old SL but looking at it now in that picture it is a boxy very bland design.
as for the style of earlier MB models i think everyone is forgetting the super bland Toyota Cressida. it was a box on wheels. even in the first photo the MB hood has move curves and bends than the current LS430 has today over the entire exterior surface!
like i said earlier...until we as consumers have some idea of the minimum sample that CR's uses we have to take with a grain of salt their opinions and actually use the brains we were born with and make a decision. if not....is everyone here going out to the local Subaru dealership to trade our vehicles in for CR's new number 1?
as for extended warranty pricing. the S has many more engines, drive trains, and options. plus it is a larger car that is priced higher. so it makes perfect sense to me that the extended warranty would cost more. whether or not most people agree with me and i am sure everyone who drives a Lexus on this board won't....price decides 99% of everything. the LS is cheaper...Lexus should sell more units.
55k vs 70+k. to me that is simple statistics that i don't have to "study" to understand.
geez...nobody mentioned Audi's results....hmmmmmmm.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/03/05/cars.survey.reut/index.html
Then in 8277 you said "all i am trying to point out is that the surveys that the seem to appeal to the Lexus buyer so much are limited in value and scope."
I am mystified as to how you made that conclusion.
I think that the independent work that is done by Consumer Reports is the standard for testing consumer products, including automobiles of every variety.
Their work is the ethical standard of the industry and given the impact of their ratings, and like JDPowers, if they were off-base, the lawyers from every 'offended' automaker would be filing suit to get them rescinded or changed.
None of the car companies make a peep when the CR ratings come out except for the ones that move up the ladder. Everybody in the business knows that the reports reflect reality.
These reports and surveys are VERY important in the Edmunds discussion because the CR reports and road tests are funded by consumers, not by advertisers.
In addition CR has the most advanced, independent test facility in the world for measuring car performance. And their testers are unbiased by 'orientation', i.e. car buff, racer-head, greenie, etc. or 'target audience' car buyers, advertisers, etc. The problem with the mags and most auto-related web pages is that the testers ( aka, journalists ) have agendas.
hpowders
Audi is indeed like a supermodel but lacking a little in character, not very dependable ...Lexus is like a wonderful attractive woman who you can always love and trust.
Good luck which ever way you go - you have time on your side.
Found a 2004 pre-owned LS430 with euro-tuned suspension and 18" summer tires at another Lexus dealership. I will be trying it tomorrow. The consensus here says to try the car with this particular combination, so off I go.
I will report back tomorrow afternoon on the LS board how it turned out.
Unfortunately, although this dealership has 2 GS430's on the premises-both have been sold. I did want to drive one again. But I will do a comprehensive walk-around since some folks here are rather emphatic on how ugly it is. Hope one of the GS's is silver which looks dynamite in the brochure I got from the other dealership. This brochure, by the way, contains some breathtaking photos of the Capetown, SA area. I must get down there sometime.
Yes, I do have plenty of time to decide, but the GS430 is already on my short list of one.
Regards,
hpowders
Based on what you wrote, I should not have tried this vehicle.
Yet I did and I'm glad I did.
03 and 04. GS 1348 2078. approximately 3500 vehicles. out of those 3500 vehicles i wonder how many owners subscribe to CR's and then how many of those owners even noticed the survey and actually filled it out? we're not talking Camry and Accord type sales numbers. so "plenty of data"...i doubt it.
Sorry, but this is an excuse plain and simple. A design doesn't have to be "racy" to look good. So it it too much to ask for a brand to have at least one or two good looking cars? I bet you won't think this way when Lexus adopts the GS/IS style across all their models because then you'll say they all look great - watch.
If my view of styling isn't held across the market with the buying public, and it isn't of course - your view about people not buying a car because of some bad press surely isn't shared by everyone either. Its amazing how you seem to know what the buying public is thinking on every issue.
"Yes my wife and I always had a desire for that old SL but looking at it now in that picture it is a boxy very bland design."
Very disappointed to read this. I'd like to know what luxury car back in those days was swoopy in design?
"But MB never had any widespread sporty or racy designs and as OAC states it really all started with the headlights on the E in 96 and accelerated with the new S design in 2000.
Its called progress. Styling can't possibly stay the same for 30 years, to suggest that is ridiculous. Every brand moves foward in styling, well except Lexus.
M
It is amazing to me that everything resorts back to sales like every Lexus vehicle is a best seller when the truth is that Lexus got lucky and cashed in on the SUV boom. Without their SUVs and fwd Camry based wagon they'd be behind even Acura in car sales. Its time to quit exagerating the same hype and tell the truth, Lexus has some duds, namely the GS and IS. Will that change? We'll see.
The bottom line is that styling isn't everything, but neither is reliability otherwise Lexus and Mercedes wouldn't co-exist. Also, your sales theories have been wrong before based on even more data than just 2 months so I'd stay out of the assuming business until at least Spring before blindly thinking that all of a sudden for the first 2 months buyers are walking away from Mercedes simply because of reliability. Every year its the same incorrect prediction/assumption about sales.
Like I said before digging up pictures of 30 year old Mercedes and calling them bland is just a desperate attempt to make up for Lexus' current vehicles being the worst looking group of luxury cars on the market, well Lexus and Cadillacs.
As always when styling is talked about, something you can't spin in Lexus' favor the desperate "you don't own one" statement appears. Time for a new line.
M
as for those photos....ugly...not in my eyes.
Let's for the moment forget that other "ardent MB fans" would buy today's MB, BUT you would buy today's MB, right ? So why didn't you when you had the chance, instead purchasing the A8 ? So what was it that gave the buy to the A8 over the S-class ? was it current needs, size, price, looks, features, ride, handling, performance, luxury, quality, reliability, customer service, etc...?
"an MB will break down on you the moment you leave the dealership is beyond idiotic"
Go tell that to ejerod on the S-class forum. He will remind you of his $90K+ 2001 and 2002 S500s which were duds/lemons/junk... He believed in MB as much as you and Merc1 did. He even ponied up serious $$$$ for 3 MBs. I don't think that his real-life experiences jell with what you described as "... a fantastically innovative and beautiful automobile a Mercedes Benz is..." Only an MB die-hard fanatic would believe that crock...
Sales - it reverts back to sales because that is the ultimate barmometer that is indisputable. Much of your stuff is subjective to each person which is quite disputable and always will be.
Surveys - what a ridiculous statement it is to say we buy because of surveys. Where were the surveys about Lexus in 1990?? Didn't exist of course. But the brand skyrocketed right out of the starting gate. It's too bad that the surveys bother you so much and you have to resort to nonsensical BS to try and counter them.
there are horror stories for every brand. on a vw board there is a poster who just purchased an LS430 a week ago and wants to dump it for a Phaeton. and it seems he is willing to take a big hit in resale value to do it. I've had 4 MB's...2 of the dreaded ML's and i didn't have the experience that ejerod had. these are the vehicles....00 E430, 02 S55, 00 ML430, 02 ML500.
so it is not a "crock" that i feel the way i do toward MB, it is real world experience.
as for surveys purposes. if you don't value your own real world experience over what CR's is selling you that is your choice. i wonder how many people who will believe what CR's sells as being 100% accurate will even ponder how many
vehicle surveys did they actually receive to justify that opinion? like i said in an earlier
post...Audi did quite well in CR's survey. big deal. i don't need CR's or JDpowers to be in agreement with me. IMO it is an irrational fear that just because the car i drive isn't on the top of some surveys list it is not manufactured with quality and care.
You are right. But there are a lot MORE horror stories for MB than any Japanese or Korean brands now.
denaliinpa is not against CR, he is against all evidence that shows Lexus is safer, more reliable and retain more value that those European cars. You can't reason with denaliinpa. Let the market speaks for itself. As I said before: If Lexus weren't here, the sales of those junk European cars would be a lot higher. But thanks to Lexus, we now know better.
Pins and needles, needles and pins,
A happy man is a man who grins.
Now say to yourself
What am I mad at?
SERENITY NOW! SERENITY NOW! SERENITY NOW!
It'll be interesting to see how quickly they pose a stronger challenge to the perceived Merc and BMW superiority in the USA, because it's obvious that in Europe by now that is a thing of the past. Moreover, Audi's surging strength in Europe is supposedly making Toyota reconsider some of the goals for Lexus.
But I need to point out - again - that things are getting too personal. Talk about the cars. Leave out your opinions of other posters and we'll be just fine.
Now raise your arms, shout about needles and pins and ask why you are mad at serenity... or something like that...
:-)
Only Jaguar and Land Rover are worse.
happy reading...
http://www.automobear.com/WhatThe2006LexusISIsAndIsnt.html
I was given a 2004 pre-owned, euro-tuned with the 18" summer tires and modern luxury package which had about 12,000 miles on it.
This vehicle was better than the bare-bones LS that I drove at a different dealership.
This time, I found the driver's seat quite comfortable.
The suspension created the illusion that I was riding on air and very high off the ground.
The combination of seat and suspension made for a very relaxing ride. I see why so many people love this vehicle.
The only negative and it was a big one is there was a quite noticeable hesitation when accelerating which I wouldn't expect from a $55,000 vehicle.
Others have posted on the LS thread in response that they too have the same problem with their LS430.
It is especially noticeable on turns when you either take your foot off the accelerator or apply the brake and then after the turn is finished, you attempt to re-accelerate. For a long fraction of a second, nothing happens.
I would invite other LS 430 owners to please let me know if they have a similar experience.
I couldn't get over how you can set the ac vents so they rotate from left to right continuously.
I also liked how the rear window's sunshade removes itself when you put it in reverse so the rear-view camera can do its thing.
I felt very relaxed driving this vehicle but would not consider buying it with that annoying and sometimes scary hesitation.