There aren’t many around. They were designed by Italdesign Giugiaro. The North American market only got the 3.0L I-6. I had one from 2002 to 2015. Not exactly quick, but it was comfortable and smooth. It was sort of a saloon car. I heard it’s changed hands a few times since I sold it.

 

I remember when the original GS300 debuted and I got to see one and sit in one at the auto show. I was completely blown away by it.

 

I always thought it was funny that the first-gen GS300 design was originally proposed to Jaguar. When they rejected it Italdesign took it to Lexus.

 

RWD, plenty of power, nice styling... What's not to like.
Do you remember if they were "pricey" back then or was it a bargain?

For real?
OOOOOOPS lol

 

Yes, they were expensive. They were super nice but kind of slow, even for the time. But a perfectly legit Lexus.

Everyone remember the third brake light integrated into the rear window that spanned the length of it? It was kind of neat, then.

 

I thought that this was debunked?

Not sure if I remember correctly, but I have something around $35k in my head.

I just looked it up on Wikipedia. Not sure if this is correct or not:

 

Oh wow, rare time where I didn't fact check and perpetuated a rumor. My apologies. From Italdesign's own website:

Project: GS 300 (Aristo) - 1991 - Italdesign

Jaguar Kensington:


Lexus GS300:

 

For the first gen GS, plenty of power is subjective. It was 220 bhp at the crank and mated to a 4 speed automatic transmission in the NA market at least from 1993-1995. I am not sure if the 96-97s had a 5 speed transmission.

I was 31 when I bought mine and it was the first luxury car I had ever purchased. I bought it to have a comfortable car for visiting family and guest as well as to have a nice road trip car. When my parents visited the first time, they liked the car a lot. My Dad described the acceleration as “deliberate” which is quite fitting.

Since the Aristo was available with a twin turbo engine, lots of guys here boosted their first gens, typically opting for a single turbo. The 4 speed automatic fails pretty consistently with upwards of 350-400 bhp at the crank. My understanding is that the stock internals of the 2JZ-GE inline 6 are very robust as the architecture is the same as the GTE turbo engines. I never did any performance mods to mine.

 

220 horsepower was a lot of power for 1992 or 1993. But it was still slow, in the 9s 0-60. It must have been heavy.

 

Wow, so for 9k more you could get the flagship. I looked it up... in 96 the GS got the 5 speed auto. Strange that it took two more years for the LS to gain a 5th gear. And yeah, if it took 9 secs to get to 60 with over 200 hp it must have been close to two tons.

 

I remember back in the day a fast car would do 0-60 mph in 6 seconds. Pretty much needed a Mustang GT with a V8 for that.

Even still, 0-60 in 9 seconds may be considered respectable to many for that time period Im guessing.

"The whole world went and got in a hurry".

 

Our 98 LS400 was 0-60 in 6 seconds and it was fast.

 

If a person doesn't have a stopwatch in their car, a 6 second 0-60 is pretty fast regardless of era.

 

Nine seconds is adequate for most normal driving situations.

 

I don’t disagree, but the point is that was fast enough back then to attract attention.

I have driven vehicles with 9 sec 0-60 times that were painful to drive they were so slow.