Hi there,
I’m new to Lexus with my first Lexus purchase around two months ago and I’m new to Club Lexus of course!

I’m originally from Germany and live in Abu Dhabi / UAE.

My vehicle history in reverse order:
Lexus ES 350 (2018) + Toyota Landcruiser Prado 4.0 (2016) - both current
Audi A4 2.0T Ultra (2016)
Audi A6 3.0T Supercharged (2012)
Mercedes ML 500 (2009)
Toyota Corolla (1996) during Island life
Mercedes ML 320 (2002)
Mercedes 450 SE (1979)
Volkswagen Golf 1.6 (2005)

I bought the ES mainly due to the fact that Lexus enjoys an excellent reputation in the UAE, paired with high resale value. Lexus in Germany has no reputation and zero resale value :-) I was also impressed with all the ES cars over here in the UAE that are used for uber etc. and I noticed that they were all riding so quietly even with high mileage on them. I’d say that this is a weakness of many of the German cars. Even the ones I bought from new made rattling noises etc right from the start! Additionally, in this class of vehicle the Germans don’t even offer any more 6-cylinder engines unless you go for an AMG or Audi S or BMW M. But those are quite noisy with hard suspensions.

It’s been 2 months and around 2,000 miles so far and I’m super pleased with my purchase!

Strong points:
- engine sound is just wonderful
- ride is super smooth and quiet, no rattles whatsoever
- leather on seats is super soft, much better than in my German cars. I have the semi aniline leather with ventilated seats
- seating comfort is excellent, again I feel that I’ve never had any car that had such comfortable seats
- quality of sound system. I love listening to music and have high expectations. I don’t have ML but I have the premium sound system and I’m very pleased. Bass is nice and firm, and low, mids and highs are clear.
- suspension is super nice and hides all those potholes
- the way the power windows close slowly and without any sound is a really cool touch of quality. I’m not sure, but I don’t think any other brand does that!
- rear seat legroom. Plenty of space for my family.
- relaxation factor, I always arrive super relaxed and actually look forward to going back and driving my ES every time
- did I mention the engine sound is sooooo wonderful:-)

Areas that are lacking:
- feel for the road / agility. Yes, it is true, cornering and feel for the road is quite a bit worse than all my previous cars, then again I don’t race around!
- A/C comfort. This is really strange. On all my German cars, I could set one temperature, press AUTO and leave it like that forever - literally, I NEVER had to change the setting for several years. Unfortunately, the Lexus A/C goes way too cold. To me it seems that the Lexus A/C cannot actually mix cold and warm air. This is especially apparent when it is moderately hot outside - say 77F outside, I set the A/C to 73F. The car cools down way below this temperature unless I manually reduce the fan speed and even then the air coming out of the vents is extremely cold, feels like around 62F! I’ve raised this with the dealer but they advised it is operating as intended.

My ES 350 is pretty much what you have as the UL in the US - everything is there with the exception of the ML sound system. I have the radar cruise control, blind spot monitor, lane keeping alert with steering assist, illuminated door sills, Lexus logo projector lights on the floor, semi aniline leather, electric trunk operation, ventilated seats, automatic high beams, BI-LED lights

Thank you all for your kind messages.

The way I've dealt with this is to leave everything on full Auto and when you get in the car and the air blowing is too cold, just keep bumping the temperature up (ignore the actual number) until the vented air feels right (will end up reducing fan speed as well). The issue isn't being able to mix cold and warm air, it's that there is no relative intensity controls for the climate system compared to your other cars. It's always going to try to get to that set temperature ASAP when you are in full auto. You can't control the curve of how fast or slow it should get there.

Lexus sells only around 2,000 cars per year in Germany - just to put it into perspective, Mercedes sells 10,000 S-Class cars alone per year.
It is all about the fact that Germans buy primarily German luxury cars.
Lexus has the reputation of being an expensive, glorified Toyota (they also have very bad resale value in Germany) and therefore very few people buy them.

I paid USD 50,500 including free service up to 40,000 kms.
Lexus doesn’t offer the ES in Germany.
In the UAE, Lexus keeps value very well. In the first year it’ll loose around 25%, a German car will loose around 40+%!

Another strong point for the ES - you can customize all the info screens with different combinations of current fuel consumption, since last refill, since starting etc. On all my previous cars there was a small variety of those combinations, but you weren’t able to configure them yourself. This is really a great feature!

Actually, I don’t mind that the AC will blow VERY strongly to cool down to the set temperature and then reduce its air flow once the set temperature has been reached. However, from what I can see, it seems Lexus is only regulating the cabin temperature by varying the fan speed, the air temperature of the AC air always seems to be the same. On my other cars (other than my Toyota), the AC would cool down with high fan speed and very cold air initially. Once the set point is reached, it would reduce the fan speed AND the air coming out of the vents will be only maybe 1 degree colder or equal to the set temperature.
On my other cars, I could leave the AC on all the time on AUTO, even down to maybe 41 degrees F outside temperature with a set point of 73 F inside. The air condition would have the benefit of removing the majority of humidity due to the AC, but be nice and warm. It seems the Lexus doesn’t have this at all.