ILikeBlue

Hey everyone, first time posting here. I have been working on a bit of a passion project that I wanted to share with the IS500 and greater Lexus community.

I created a Google Spreadsheet of as many North American IS500's I've been able to locate with all of the VINs, Exterior, and Interior colors. So by my findings, there are 931 MY2022 IS500s: 500 Launch Editions, 431 Premiums. Analytics and detailed breakdowns of each color combo are in the Google Sheet linked here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...gid=1045031456

If you have some information you'd like to contribute that is missing, I would ultimately like to get all of the Launch Edition car numbers entered, I left the spreadsheet open for commenting. Feel free to find your car and leave me a comment to help me out!

The SUMMARY sheet has an overview of everything most people want to know: How many cars, how many of each colors, number of each interior colors, and percentages for each. There are also sheets for MY2022, MY2023, and MY2024 that break down every single VIN I could find with it's respective data. I gave each sheet it some visuals to give a better perspective of each and every spec and also have some details on which location they were first sold, like US vs CA VS Puerto Rico. The spreadsheet is nowhere near complete and it will be updated as I come across more cars online and all of the data within the spreadsheets will automatically update from it. So check back in if you want to see how things are going.

If you don't care to see the Spreadsheet and just want the data as of July 2024:



My quick notes here:

• Never would I ever have thought that Infrared would be more common than Cloudburst Gray or Iridium, but as of Sept 2023 Reds are creeping back down in rarity
• Incognito being sold as a "Limited Production Color" is a load of dog water, they currently represent 1/3 of every IS500s sold thus far(now still 1/6th)
• White interiors are relatively uncommon, except for Infrared
• Let's be real, all of these cars are rare. Producing 931 cars in a model year is not a lot. GM literally sold 80k C8 Corvettes in the US in the last 3 model years. But if you want the rarest IS500, find a Grecian Water. The numbers are so tiny it's ridiculous. They'll be 's one day
• Update July 2024, around 4.1k IS500s in the US over 3 model years, but they already sold 12k Tesla Cybertrucks in 6 months(and they've sold 80k C8 Corvettes over the last 3 model years &#128517. It shows how little you'll see of our cars on the road

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If you care to know why or how I did it, I can explain below:

Awhile ago I reached out to my local Lexus dealership and asked if they would release sales numbers on the IS500 or details on how many of each color car they created, they didn't respond. I know a few other people in the Facebook groups reached out to Lexus as well with no success. I was in contact with someone in a group after I mentioned I'd love to know that information even if I researched it myself and someone that worked at Lexus reached out to me on Facebook Messenger. I asked if they would tell me how many IS500's were sold in 2022 and they said "Lexus will never divulge that information, so don't waste your time.". But this is something I wanted to know and after doing some research and getting some tips from some great friends, I knew how I'd do it, so I got to work.

First of all, finding how many cars were made in 2022. I knew by searching the VINs I could count the number of cars created. A VIN is categorized by the following info:

When looking at an IS500, digits 1 through 8, 10, and 11 are exactly the same within the same model year. Digits 12 to 17 are the serial number of the car and are unique to each car by model, and the IS500 model line all have lower Serial Numbers (at the time all were under around 2000). So in theory, I could find the lowest serial number, highest serial number, and get the difference and get a rough idea. So I started searching.

I found on Vinwiki, there was an Infrared IS500 with the VIN JTHAP1D23N5001105, which was the lowest serial number VIN I could find at the time. Online I also found VIN JTHAP1D21N5002043 for sale on Autotrader, which was the highest VIN I could find. Okay, easy. Probably about 1000 MY2022 cars. I wanted an EXACT number. I asked around to a friend who was also searching around for IS500 data and they introduced me to a way of verifying VINs, The Toyota Recall website(https://www.toyota.com/recall). This website lets anyone with a Toyota product enter a Toyota VIN to see if there is an active recall, it ONLY accepts valid VINs. I punched in 002043 and of course, it's fine. I punched in 001105 and saw this:

It seemed weird that it was labeled a "1900 Lexus IS500", so I decided to start seeing how low of a serial number would verify. But I needed a way to somehow figure out the VINs and calculate the check digits on VINs, and since we know every other details on the VINs as we mentioned above), a good friend gave me an Excel Spreadsheet he created that you can calculate check digits for a VIN. I modified the layout and math in his spreadsheet to be able to calculate hundreds of VINs with the drag of the mouse. Excel is magical:

So now I have every potential VIN I could want, with a small catch. In 2022, Premiums have an "A" in the 4th digit and Launch Editions have a "U", but we also know they supposedly made 500 Launch Editions. So I had to make two spreadsheets, one with potential Launch Edition VINs and one with Premiums.

Using the Toyota Recall website, I started punching in VINs, one by one, for premiums and got down to VIN Serial Number 001101, and it still came up with "1900 Lexus IS500". I punched in 001100 and it gave me an error. I tried each VIN down to 1090, all errors. I tried up from 001105 starting at 001106, error. I kept going up and the first VIN to validate on the Recall site was 001113, as a Launch Edition. It all started from there. Since I knew we had about 1000 cars, and the majority of the higher serial number cars were Premiums, I did mostly Launch Edition "U" VINs at first. When it errored out, I entered the same serial number VIN but calculated for a Premium trim using an "A" in slot 4 instead, for every single MY2022 car. The last MY2022 car was 002044. This made sense since I saw a MY2023 IS500 for sale with the VIN 2047.

But in my list, there were 501 Launch Editions. So assuming the first Launch Edition I verified could've been a press car(001113, remember him?), I attempted to run a Carfax on it. It came back with no displayable records, which means it was never sold. I excluded it from my list. I later found out that car 001105 I first found on Vinwiki was a press car, it was seen in person at the Atlanta Caffeine and Octane car show in person with a manufacturer plate on it GET-719. and it was reviewed by Matt Maran Motoring on Youtube using that same exact plate and is also the same color. And since the VIN can't be grabbed off of a manufacturer plate to enter into an app like Vinwiki, the person at Caffeine and Octane would've had to have gotten it off the windshield. This let me to believe cars 001101 to 001113 are press cars.

Showing the plate is the same from the VINWIKI car and Matt Maran Motoring's review.

So moving forward with MY2023, VIN Serial Numbers start at 2045. This can be verified using the Toyota Recall website:

And the good news is all cars start with JTHAP1D2, even the Special Appearance Package Molten Orange cars and Base Models. Remember Base Models? Lexus was supposed to make Base Models. They didn't make any for MY2022 and it's basically impossible to verify which cars are base models besides the price listed online, but I found one. It's VIN JTHAP1D24P5002105.

So now armed with my massive spreadsheet that can generate any quantity of VIN that's possible, I now just casually check Auto listing websites for IS500s and scan the internet to see when new cars are posted for sale, document their information as I come across them, and add it to my datasheet. I also have some friends helping me when they see a car, they send me the information for me to update.

If anyone needs to find an IS500, join the IS500 F Sport Performance Owners Club group on Facebook. We're always posting up cars we see for sale and have several salesman in the group to help you locate a car!
"https://www.facebook.com/groups/is500owners"

Answer

Awesome Work!
Glad I could help you with the VIN generation since the Toyota recall site was blocking me due to the fact I'm in Canada! At least, I was able to confirm all 50 2022 canadian LE's!

I'll update for the new ones I see!

LH1

Incredible first post! Welcome to Club Lexus.

Cloudburst Grey/White NuLuxe is way more rare than I thought. That's the combo I want.

Xanadu350

Wow great detective work.
I see you got the 2022 Iridium/Red one I posted that is for sale at a BMW dealer. Ha

I thought Infrared was a much rarer color but it’s almost as much as Atomic Silver. That’s a huge surprise.

MYIS500

Thanks for the passion and great work with this. I am very pleased to have stumbled onto my 23' Atomic Silver/Red 500. When I walked into the dealership to check on availability. I was very unfamiliar with the car and all the colors. Never seen any of the colors and was relying on the Lexus website. Cloudburst Gray and Iridium were my front runners. The dealership had the IS 350s and RC's well represented covering the full color line. Atomic Silver held my attention the most. Fell over for the USB and Grecian Water. Tomorrow, with your information I am putting a deposit down (if necessary) for Grecian Water. No digity No doubt! No wonder my dealer assumed so wrongly on Grecian Water. Doubt I will get it, but I am going for it. I cannot lose. I love MY IS 500. Thank you again.

303CIDV8

Wow, great information and excellent detective work! And it looks like I have one of the rarest combos out there: Atomic Silver on White!

23usb500

The spread sheet master!!

macmaster

Scary accurate. Amazing job...

DLPTony

This. Is. Awesome!

In your free time, you should hunt down the build dates. 😜😜

Then we could use the Star Trek Next Generation ‘7 of 9’ naming convention. I would love to see where my baby falls within the 10 units of 2022. 💙❤️

ILikeBlue

I mean, in theory, you could just count the number of USBs before your car based on the VIN, and get a quantity. I know in practice they're not exactly built in order, but it would be the most accurate way to do it until Lexus themselves comes and corrects it, which probably won't happen 🤣

tapjoy

That feeling when your car is more rare than a LE.

inovashn

Nice work....if you're bored feel free to do the ISF's next...

macmaster

Lexus has been doing LE owners dirty since day 1.
First it should never have been $5000 extra. At most it should've been $3k for the BBS wheels.
Next, they slapped incognito on IS350s.
Now we're learning production #s for LE's far exceed any other color combo, and will likely stay that way through the end of production.

Answer

Does indeed suck, but I still love my LE and wouldn't trade it for any other color! (even though mine is technically one of 50 since I have the Canadian version)

cajun

To your point, there appears to be significantly more Molten than Grecian as well...