sayow

While I am getting very familiar with the LS line since I have a few, I am looking to get my wife a used RX to use as a daily driver. Are there any recommendations or a general consensus on which year/generation of 300s are best/most reliable?

I know to look for transmission issues, where these resolved or improved on any particular year?

Are the RX 300s considered as bullet proof as the LS 400s?

Any other signs to look for?

Thank you in advance!

hypervish

Go with an RX300 mid year- 2001 and newer.

Transmission issues can likely be avoided, if you change the ATF every 15k miles. FWD has less failures than AWD.

I've got 203k miles on my RX300's original transmission, my uncle has 400k+ miles on his original transmission in his 99' RX300 AWD. The only thing we have done is change the ATF every 10-15k miles.

Make sure the oil was changed for RX300's year's 1999-2002. (Mid year 2002- 2003 has bigger oil return holes to prevent slugging even if neglected.)The 1MZ-FE engine can be prone to sludge if you don't change the oil on time. This is something that is easily avoided, as long as you change your oil on time. If the car you are looking at has sludge, you can pretty much guarantee the owner didn't give a crap about it and it's time to keep looking for another one.

I wouldn't consider the RX300 as bulletproof as the LS400. As the LS has a legendary engine, which is damn smooth. I've done a ripple test on my uncle's 91' LS400 with nearly 300k on it, and it passed with flying colors!

The RX300 can be considered bulletproof though when compared to other cars from this era as long as it has been maintained.

Now that these RX's are as old as they are, issues such as transmission problems have probably already been addressed. Which is a good thing!

lexus114

Agree^^ 2001. Loved mine.

salimshah

With that many years on the road, maintenance and use/abuse trumps everything else.

Once you verify those, then look for feature differences ,,, turning radius, gas capacity, trac etc.


Salim

Lexmex

Do also take a look at the RX330 (the turning radius is light years better than the RX300) if you can find the right price.

However, with the RX300, I also echo the sentiments above about later models. As much as I love the PWR/SNOW button (great for racing) in the 99/00 models, the 01-03 had more going for them including the GPS option, improved tranny, and a host of other amenities (Coach/Silversport editions were nice).

You can also switch to a synthetic transmission fluid from the non-synthetic Type-IV for some extra comfort there, but yours truly was running the Type-IV stuff in Mexico, though I did do some tranny upgrades a few months before I left there.

You can check out my homepage below, but I just found out CarDomain radically changed the page layouts for their pages and I am still scratching my head over whether they are going to change the pages back to the way they were (saw a lot of complaints) or I have to set up the homepage on a separate site.

Drewman84

We have a 2001 RX300 SilverSport

its monotone instead of the two tone, has a more stylish grill,silver crossbars, nice silver/metal trim instead of the wood and supposedly a suspension upgrade...


We really enjoy it!

Silversports seem quite rare though....

kalali

Sorry this might be a tangent but is there an easy way to figure out a production date on an RX300? We have an '03 model year and I am trying to find out how much of the product improvements made in the mid-2002-on were applied to our RX. Thanks.

carguy07

The sticker on the drivers door has a month and date on it, I would think it is close to the build date. With an 03 you should have all of the updated stuff, it you don't have it, who does?

kalali

Thanks. Well, some manufacturers apply changes throughout their manufacturing cycle and in some cases early production cars like a 2003 made in late 2002 don't get those changes.
I just checked and our RX was made on 10/02. Probably an early production '03.