sc43069

Why is this car so damn reliable after 20 years and cars today have so many issues when new much less 10 years old or more. New cars with blown transmissions, engines. Tops that won’t go down….

dan25man

The 2001 to 2007 era of LS430 and SC430's was a literal golden era for Lexus as a brand. Pre-2008 crash they were building regular cars (high volume) at a Bentley or Rolls Royce engineering/quality level. And at that time Japanese electronics were best in the world. Right before they got too complex.

I have a story about my 2006 SC430. I bought it as a salvage car, sight unseen, I needed to replace the radio and AC panel due to water damage, but then the only other thing that was wrong was the drivers side headlight. One day I go about the process of removing the front bumper and removing the headlight. I disassembled the electronics control board on the bottom of the headlight, and MAN IT WAS RUSTED. I had ZERO hopes of recovering the board, but went ahead and doused the entire thing in isopropyl and scrubbed it with a tooth brush. (because that was free-99) After blowing it out and letting it dry for a few hours, I reassembled everything and BAM, headlights work perfectly now. That old-style, surface mount, through solder with heavy epoxy backfill, is just so darn robust. They don't even really make boards like that (expect for the military).

Edit: As an engineer, I think I can make this statement. Overall computers have taken a lot of the "critical thinking" out of product design. Sure the tools in the computer allow for a much faster product cycle development, but the "why" is generally lost. If the computer says it's strong enough, or designed correctly, then you send it into production. I think the Japanese companies still take their time with product development more so than American manufacturers, but still. In those 2000's era, sure they were using the computer to design the car, absolutely, but the 30-40 year experience career engineers were still doing pencil and paper calculations to make sure the computer was correct. Just my 2-cents.

sc43069

But why are new cars today so unreliable if technology improves every decade. The 90 s cars were better than 80s and 70s. 2000-10 were better than 90s cars. Now we are going backwards. How is this possible

NEWONE1

Simple answer: It's called throw away mentality......good for a few years and the built in obsolescence kicks in.....car industry can't make money if a product lasts forever...

ZedNotzee

I bought mine to be a classic and drive it to events. No complaints except for the power antenna.

Today it still turns heads and valets leave it in the turn circles of hotels.

Sc888

I think reliability has gone down because modern cars have newer designs that add more complexity which decreases durability. In order to meet the newer emissions standards more cars are going back to turbo chargers, smaller engines, and direct injection engines which have had an adverse effect on longevity. The old reliable toyota v8 and even v6 is slowly being phased out for 4 cylinder hybrids with turbo charging.