Sam is at it again. For someone who appears to have so much distaste for the IS500, he sure does post alot of IS500 videos. LOL

 

For the love of Lexus, right!! If you hate it so much, Sam, then keep your a$$ out of it. 😒

God I hate that guy.

 

He has a very poor way of setting up the drag races. I find the results to be suspect at times. Drag race videos are popular so he is getting clicks. But he's a terrible car reviewer. He's one of the few people I actively avoid clicking on because then they get paid. He seems to be full of contradictions.

 

Last year, he bought a caviar IS500, and sold it after logging 4K km or so because it looked too much like an IS350 and he couldn't drive it in the winter. He blasted the car, left right and centre.
Fast forward 1 year later, he gets his hands on yet another caviar IS500 and is making videos again, taking it out to the drag strip, etc.. The guy is just bizarre. Where is his M3 that he was drooling about for so long?

 

You can't winter drive it if you're a *****. If you get winter tires, it's just fine.

 

Slightly off-topic, but I will say, I had a few bouts of buyer's remorse around the time I did my first oil change on the car. Then, I went to the mountains for some spirited driving with a friend who was visiting from out of town, and immediately after, I went on a 500-mile roundtrip excursion to visit family. The fact that this car can do both of those things back-to-back while being extremely good at both is amazing. I started to really appreciate what this car offers, at least to me personally. I have to remember that, on boring back streets here in the suburbs with low speed limits, this car can feel held-back. It's still a great daily, but so was my IS 350. But, up in the hills or on an open highway, this thing really is able to demonstrate what it's good at.

So I will say, I can understand how maybe this car doesn't scratch the exact itch everyone is looking for, but at the same time, never once did I think I'd sell it as soon as I could or something like that. I still knew this was a special car and loved it even when I was feeling a bit unsure if it was actually the right choice. But now, I feel lucky to own it and don't have plans to dump it any time soon.

(None of this is meant to defend Sam, because in general I just don't like him anyways lol)

 

Have similar perception. There is simply too much traffic, too many stop signs, too many slow minivan/SUV drivers asleep at the wheel, to really go on throttle and feel you getting the most of the vehicle, or even enjoying it as much. You are just wearing out your brake pads quicker. LOL. I sometimes feel I have more fun driving my wife's 6-speed manual Golf in this type of close quarters road environment. The IS500 comes to life on the open road and highway when it can breathe and be unleashed. Then, you have this wicked smile on your face and say yup, that's what I'm talking about. It is just a monster in these conditions, and pulls like crazy at speed. Having said all that, the 0 to 60 run from traffic light to traffic light is not shabby at all, and every so often is needed just to keep everyone else on their toes. LOL.

 

I felt the same thing about my 350 that I had before this. I got to a point where it was “meh” to me. After I prematurely sold it, I spent a few weeks testing out other cars and all they made me do was miss my IS. Lexus really did engineer something else that I just didn’t get out of similar cars.

 

In a nutshell, this is 100% why you cannot focus on spec sheets.

1. How many of us are seriously taking cars to the track?
2. Zero to 60 times are irrelevant if 90% of the time is in traffic.

When factored in the IS hits way more of your senses than many other cars.

I personally never had buyer’s remorse, because the one thing I wanted from my 350 was more power. The body refresh and enhancements to the underpinnings were the icing on the cake.

 

 

Love the molten pearl car!

 

 

 

These guys got 382.7 hp at the wheels on a 22 IS500. So assuming 472 at the crank, about a 19%, which is not unreasonable, maybe a bit on the high side.

https://dsportmag.com/the-cars/first...-lexus-is-500/

 

Yeah 19% drive train loss is on the high compared to newer cars.

Interesting also that the torque mostly hovers around 325 for the peak zone with one tiny blip up to 350. The torque lines up with ~19% drive train loss as well using 325 as the result.

As a comparison, most of the 460hp A8 corvettes would only lose ~12% and typically put down 400-410rwhp. 19% is more than a 150% increase, kind of silly its that much.

Oh well, I guess it's just more bench racing/data analysis that doesn't give a complete picture of this amazing car. It could be more amazing if the car was putting down another 40 hp though!