silversprucesc3

Marshall.... Since I have not driven the LS460.

In your opinion, how far off is the RL in comparison to the LS460 both in features, quality and value??

I love Lexus but am seriously considering a pre-owned RL next year....

Threxx

Be careful with that pre-owned RL purchase. The RL, especially the first year, (but not just the first year) has had quite a few reports of shoddy quality. Not with the build so much as with the gadgets and features. It's just susceptible to gadgetry bugs, kinda like Mercedes or Audi, that you wouldn't expect out of Acura, much less from their flagship car.

silversprucesc3

I will keep that in mind...

BTW... Have the 06 GS models experienced any "bugs" so to speak? That may be a viable option for me in the price range of the RL...

mmarshall

I thought the RL was a superb machine, especially in the characteristics of the SH-AWD, which is one of the most sophisticated AWD systems on the planet. The 290 HP V6, with 260 ft-lbs of torque, of course, does not quite match the LS460's RWD 380 HP V8's acceleration, especially with the weight and drag of AWD, but it is no slouch, and will easily get out of its own way. Both cars had superb paint jobs and overall fit-and-finish. The LS clearly had a better stereo, more luxury and convienence features, and ran quieter. The RL had more solid-feeling doors, more realistic-looking matte-finish wood trim, and, of course ( though I did not drive it in the snow ) the promise of better winter traction.

Choice? For my money, given the 49K price tag of the RL ( including all options ) and the 61K base price of the LS460 ( the one I drove ran 73K, and even more expensive versions are available ), it would be a no-brainer......take the RL and keep the extra 20K in the bank.

However, if you want the absolute best in luxury.....and are willing to pay for it.......the LS460's tomb-like quiet and unbelievable stereo are hard to beat.

mmarshall

The RL couldn't have had that many reports of bad quality.....not many of them were sold. Consumer Reports gave the car an average repair record for the first year ( 2006 )...mostly for body integrity items.....and it was on their Recommended list. The LS460, of course, is too new to have any kind of repair data yet.

encore888

Can't we say "museum-like" quiet or "relaxation chamber" quiet? Well maybe some people want to be driving in an institution.

mmarshall

Call it any kind of quiet you want. That's the LS460.....Q-U-I-E-T. Until you crank up that irresistable Mark Levinson stereo.

rai

I suppose it's better than previous ML in other Lexi?

mmarshall

Hard to say. I haven't listened to a sample of every ML unit in every type of Lexus vehicle it is installed in. I CAN say, though, without hesitation, that the LS460's is the most impressive factory-original stereo I myself have ever heard in a car. And, of course, it benefits from the very latest in speaker and amplifier technology....which you would expect from Lexus's new top-line vehicle.

Threxx

OK... it had a lot of reports relative to the number of cars sold.

Does that work better for you? I mean if you say not many reports of Accord having problems in 2005, what you actually mean is yes there were thousands of Accords with tons of problems but relative to the massive number of Accords sold, that's still not many.

By the same token I think that despite the low number of Lamborghinis sold over the years, people can pretty much tell you that most of them aren't exactly cars to depend on.

So yes their review from CR's data wasn't very Acura-like, and reviews from JD and CG and others seemed to confirm this - as well as just general hearsay around the web forums and such... heck I think even a couple of the mags with long term tester cars reported some pretty ridiculous problems.

And yeah the LS460 is of course too new to tell. I'm kinda anxious to see... some of the people at Lexus have said despite this being their most advanced car ever they also plan for it to match or beat the SC in terms of initial defects right from the beginning launch. I think that's a pretty lofty goal, but they've proven history wrong before.

encore888

^^^
I heard that meet or beat SC goal elsewhere too!

mmarshall

Well, that's one of the reasons WHY more of them are not sold....besides the obvious ones of a six-digit price tag and astronomical insurance.

You can't always tell a car's long-term reliability, of course, from a one-day inspection or a 30-minute test-drive. The Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique were good examples. Spun off the German Ford Mondeo, they were introduced to the American Market in 1994. They seemed very well-built on the surface, with bank-vault solidness...yet quickly ran up a rather poor Consumer Reports repair record that persisted until the cars were dropped several years later.
Though I agree that the RL's CR-based repair record for the first year could have been better, especially for an Acura flagship, it was far from being a lemon, and the first-year rating is not always indicative of the long-term average, either. Case in point.....the Subaru Baja, an Outback-based vehicle with a pickup bed, scored much worse than average in its first year....highly unusual for a Subaru. It rebounded last year, to jump way up to better than average. Another good example.....the Hyundai Tuscon also scored poorly in its first year ( again, today, highly unusual for Hyundai, unlike the poorly-built Hyundais of years ago ) , yet rebounded in the latest figures to score above average now. The Ford Focus was perhaps the best example.....extremely unreliable for the first two years, and subject to many recalls, it has now been average for several years.

I still stand by my high opinion of the RL. It is, IMO, a superb machine, and one of the most impressive cars I have ever looked at. It doesn't park itself, its stereo is not quite the equal of the LS460 ML unit, and, of course, it doesn't have the LS460's boderline muscle-car performance...the weight and drag of the SH-AWD takes its toll on the smaller 290 HP V6....but it has many excellent points. I actually like the RL's matte-finish wood trim more than the LS460's, and the RL's doors close like bank vaults.
Its interior hardare is also first-rate, with an extremely solid feel. In fact, about the only thing I DIDN'T like about the RL was the BMW-Type controller on the middle of the dash.....but it is less complex than I-Drive.

In summary, for ordinary street use, was more impressed with the LS460 than with any RWD car I have ever driven, and I was more impressed with the Acura RL than any AWD car I have ever driven ( though the 2006 Lexus GS300AWD was very close ). Despite the lower-than-average reliability record for an Acura, if I had 40-50K to spend on a new car ( or maybe a lease ) the RL would probably be in my driveway.

Tell you what. Since you feel that my opinions may not be trustworthy ( and that, of course, is your prerogative as a CL member ) , go see these cars for yourself, form your own opinions, and then come back and share that with us, as I do. I read a number of different automotive publications myself ( Car and Driver happens to be one of my favorites, and of course Consumer Reports for reliability ratings ) and I welcome other opinions.

Threxx

You are preaching to the choir here. You're speaking of perceived quality making people believe the true quality of the vehicle is better than it really is. Look what I drive - an Audi, one of the companies known best for having amazingly solid-feeling and well built appearing cabins, yet also known for developing rattles like nothing else after not long at all. Of course I fully expected this to happen and didn't really care if it did or not being that it's simply a 24 month lease - not my problem and doesn't bother me so long as it doesn't leave me stranded, which it hasn't yet.

I never said and didn't intend to imply the RL was a lemon. I do however intend to imply that if somebody walks into an Acura dealer and plops down the cash on an RL they COULD end up with a lemon quite a bit more easily than they might have expected considering Acura's historical reputation for making good cars... and especially consider it's their flagship.

Again, I'm only here to talk about the data that we DO have so far. I understand fully well that, for example, JD Power's IQS survey doesn't necessarily directly correlate with their results from 3 years and 8 years out. Over the average of a given brand, it seems to have a pretty good connection, but on a model by model basis, certainly not always. However, again, I'm talking about here, and now.

Right... I think you've said that a few times now. I get it - you like the way the doors sound and you like the fact that the wood trim isn't glossy in finish.

I don't feel your opinion isn't trustworthy - I don't believe you have some hidden agenda to promote a certain car because you're on that company's payroll. I just don't think you understand how some components of a car truly interact and work together... as I've already shown as an example (and as you keep ignoring) nearly every review you write, you talk about the series of the tire as though that were a completely self-standing number that explained all that needed to be explained about the tires themselves. You don't mention the speed rating, compound, rarely mention the brand/model, nor of course the section width which as I've shown directly affects any and all meaning of the series (aspect ratio) number that you bring up so frequently. Do tires make a difference with the way a car rides and handles? Sure... but if you want to be so detailed as to bring up the aspect ratio of the tires as though that one number is just as important as the entire rest of the suspension itself, then why ignore all of the other variables... unless you don't actually have a full understanding of what you're trying to talk about?
That's the only point I'm trying to make. I'm certainly not saying your reviews aren't appreciated or anything else along those lines - I'm just saying I think you might be selling the extent of your knowledge a bit much, which can lead to a misinformed audience.

Your reviews actually remind me quite a bit of Consumer Reports magazine itself - when I read a CR review it's obvious to me that for the most part they're just reading off a spec sheet when it comes to performance and technical details. They don't drive the cars hard, they focus a lot on reliability reports and various aspects of quality and practicality within the vehicle, but they don't get into the technical aspects of the car because that's just either not within the realm of their knowledge, or not within the realm of their reader's interests.

I'm actually kind of like you when I first get in a car - I focus a lot on the tactile sensations - noise, feel... heck, even smell. My buddies will make fun of me and call me a 'dash stroker' because I'll literally feel every component I can get my hands on, apply pressure to see how it's reinforced, if it makes any noise... I am a 'nerd' about those aspects of a car, too, but I make a concerted effort to let somebody know if they ask me a question that I can't fully explain, too. For example, I've read a lot of pros and cons and basic overviews of CVT transmissions and how they are a more natural fit for hybrid and AWD applications due to the placement and interaction of the various components, but for the life of me I still don't understand WHY and if I don't understand WHY then I hesitate to simply repeat what I read on some engineer's brief overview, because for all I know he might have been biased toward such a setup and failed to mention any 'cons' associated with such a setup.

Anyhow... enough rambling from me.

Gojirra99

The RL's wood trim is matte-finish ?

Everyone I saw has the polished, shiny type wood trim in it

mmarshall

OK, perhaps I could have worded it a little differently.....maybe not real flat-matte, but the 2006 RL had less highly-polished wood trim than the new 2007 LS460. ( I have not seen or reviewed the 2007 RL yet ...maybe they changed the finish a little ). I generally like more matte-type wood trim than the very highly-polished type that looks like a mirror....to me it looks more natural and plush. The LS460, though, however, like most of its features, does the polished wood very well....up in Jaguar territory.

Another car, BTW, that does semi-matte wood-trim very well, if you have seen it, is the new Infiniti M35/45....I noted that in my review last year of the AWD M35X.
http://www.infiniti.com/m/photos/interior_photos.html