Every vehicle is going to have problems, eventually. The longer they last, the more you'll hear about.

Mercedes, Lexus, Acura...any of them, and if you look at forums, you'll find there are a few things which seem to be a problem on a huge percentage.

Mercedes, for example, used to be the odometer gear in the cluster. Also, if you have to change an A/C evaporator...sometimes selling the car is a viable financial option. The V8s of the late-80s had a problem with timing chain guides breaking. Then there was the mid-90s wiring debacle.

For the LS, it's interior panel funkiness, Levinson amp repair, and front-end bushes, but that's about it. However, the car is still young. Check back in another 7-10 years.

All of the above can be addressed, though some is not a 'fix', just a way to buy time until it happens again.

At the same time...and this is where the value is for many of us, while you may be driving (eventually) a 17 year old car with 225K miles on it, it's still a really nice car, and is likely more reliable/comfortable than a three year old Kia/Hyundai.

 

This is not just about 10 year old/100K plus mile cars. I am seeing expensive issues pop up over and over again in cars that are not 10 years old, many half as old. I have been doing Lexus Service History checks on 2010-2014 cars on sale for months and it is pretty shocking the amount of issues that were diagnosed/fixed, mostly the same 5 or 6 expensive issues over and over. Every LS I have test drove so far has had loud noises coming from the suspension that I don't recall ever hearing on family sedans/economy cars with over 100K miles. My family and I have owned 10 year old+ vehicles and have never had these very expensive issues, mostly just wear and tear maintenance stuff. I know German makers make some incredibly unreliable and expensive to maintain cars, that is why I don't bother with them and stick mainly to Acura and Lexus, I do expect more from Lexus and find it disappointing that there are many known issues that they never seemed to address, or pick and choose who gets covered in a extended warranty/coverage, and the dealerships charge a fortune to fix. It has not turned me off to getting one, it is just disappointing coming from Lexus, if people just have the attitude it is okay/happens/gotta pay to play, don't complain, then Lexus likely won't see the need to design vehicles to be more durable/extend coverage which is a loss for buyers.

 

As far as expense goes, that's more of an economics lesson there. 2k repairs on an 80k car is a very small percentage. 2k repairs on a 20k car is a different story. But more to the point, when a car maker manufactures a lot of a certain type of vehicle, costs for parts go down. In 2017, Lexus sold about 4000 LS cars, they sold 387,000 Camry's. Which one do you think is going to have the lower per-unit cost on parts?

 

My car is in incredible shape IMO. The only thing that I worry about is the air suspension going out to soon. If I can get 5 years out of it then that's money well spent. I had a amp scare but thanks to the forum and a really stand up Lexus tech it did not cost me anything but some hours in the dealership. I also had a heat problem when I bought the car. They flushed the core and changed the water pump and thermostat all on the selling dealers dime. Guess what, It still turned out to be a partially plugged heater core. The tech at the dealer flushed my core for hours , I was at the dealer from 8am-6pm. Finally he gave up and recommended a new heater core with a very slight discount. There was no way I was going to pay $1700 which would have been mostly labor. I downloaded the whole Manual with a 2 day subscription to TIS and planned this job for the warm months. I tried 1 last thing that I kept seeing online which was to flush the core with CLR. I saw so many posts and videos that I gave it a try. I bought a pump from harbor freight and 2 gallons of CLR and flushed, back flushed the core ALL day. Lots of stuff came out of that core. Now I have to turn the heat down at times. I don't mind putting money into the car since ALL the LS vehicles I have had going back 22 years have never cost Loads of money to maintain. I would be pissed if I had to fix a big ticket item every year though.

 

In many cases the replacement parts are shared on both Toyota and Lexus cars. You bring up a good point about the 4k LS sold at $80k each in 2017 compared to 387k Camry sold at $25k each. I have a feeling that Lexus is more of a test market for the new technology to work out the bugs before going more mainstream in the Toyotas. And it is a good thing for Toyota that the LS buyers are as finicky as they are rich to work out these bugs.

 

Thats less true of something like the LS than it is something like the ES. If cheap parts are of a primary concern to a potential buyer, they're much better off buying an ES than an LS, because so many suspension components, etc are shared with the Camry, the systems are much less sophisticated, etc.

 

I don't think there is any question there that things come out first on the Lexus line (or any luxury line for that matter) before they become mainstream and are put into mainstream cars like Toyota. I wouldn't call that test bed per se, its just a function of pricepoint. New tech is expensive and you can't burden 20k car with a two thousand dollar VGRS system. Its just not in the budget because now its 20k car that costs 22k. The demographic for the 20k car wants a 20k car, not VGRS and they won't pay for it.

Now once VGRS becomes a norm, part cost decreases due to demand and economy of scale and you start seeing the technology on more mainstream cars. On the flip side, for items that aren't special, don't need to be special and are commodity, there is no sense in departing from a standard commodity part that is shared between Toyota and Lexus. Things like switches, pulleys, some suspension parts, light enclosures etc.

 

Thanks for sharing your CLR heater core flush story which frightens me down to my "core" as you mentioned you saw so many posts and videos about this CLR flush.

I wonder how many people simply paid the dealer $1700 to replace the heater core after being flushed for hours without seeing an improvement. And then you mentioned that you saw lots of stuff come out of the core while doing the CLR flush, which I assume the dealer was not able to get out doing their flush (wonder if it was more of a flush to get $1700 out of the customer).

 

He says he flushed ALL DAY with CLR. Start doing the labor hour calculation for a shop on "all day" and you'll start seeing why 1700 isn't out of the ballpark.

 

In his story, the $1700 was for a new heater core, most of which would be labor in replacing the heater core.

Here is his story:
I also had a heat problem when I bought the car. They flushed the core and changed the water pump and thermostat all on the selling dealers dime. Guess what, It still turned out to be a partially plugged heater core. The tech at the dealer flushed my core for hours , I was at the dealer from 8am-6pm. Finally he gave up and recommended a new heater core with a very slight discount. There was no way I was going to pay $1700 which would have been mostly labor.

 

My point exactly. Its 1700 (parts and labor) vs more-than-1700 for just labor to flush all day. The dealer has to pay for their time, the shorter/cheaper path is to just replace it.

However, given a 1700 dollar job that I could do myself, I would have done the exact same as you. I bill my labor at 0 dollars + 1 beer per hour when doing work on my own cars. So case of beer is all it costs me to do the work myself.

 

Carmax called me today and confirmed that the parts came in and they will be replacing the steering rack, the passenger side mirror and do the transmission service Monday. BTW, they gave me a Toyota Camry to drive.

 

Actually you'll find that Lexus technology is seldom "new" or "ground-breaking". usually, Toyota and Lexus let the other manufacturers come up with it and then Toyota perfects it and makes it reliable. BMW, MB and some others are usually the ground breakers, but their innovations are usually notoriously unreliable or buggy. Then Toyota comes along after a while and perfects it. many of the features my 7 series had, were new at the time and crazy, but man.......sheer crap for working as advertised (power self opening trunks, nav, bluetooth, etc. And then there was their "I Drive" which was a disaster at the time but now is seen on every new car out there and actually WORKS.

 

Ok, I finally got the car back from Carmax and when I drove it down the street, it still pulled to the right. I turned around and pulled up to the door and asked the manager to come drive the car. He had an attitude from the start. I told him that the car still pulls right. So, he drove up the street a few yards and said,"it's not pulling to the right. We get on the highway and I told him to take his hand off the wheel and see what happens. He did and of course, it pulls right. He said, what do you expect, the car is 10 years old. I told him to turn around and go back to Carmax. I was done with you guys. Anyway today I went to the local alignment shop and one hour later they were done. 64 bucks and guess what, it drives straight. They (Carmax) didn't do the transmission service either because they said, they couldn't duplicate the not so smooth shifting. Oh well, I got the car I wanted so now, I can start tweaking it like it needs to be. I'm happy with the car.

 

The alignment guy said, man, there's alot of knew parts under there including a new steering rack!!! Oh well, I guess I'll call Toyota and Lexus tomorrow and schedule a Transmission service and firmware update. That will take care of all the issues I have.