Lexus IS250 Review I

The Lexus IS is pitched against a Mercedes Benz C-Class, the BMW 3-Series and the Audi A4. That's a pretty big ask for any Japanese brand. So is it pretend prestige or the real deal? To help us find out here's Car Advice road tester Al Bors-Fela. The Lexus IS250, I mean can you ever be a Japanese car and compete with those prestige brands?

I think you can. I think Lexus has proven that you can. It's taken them a couple of decades to do it, but I think at this very moment the IS250 is a great competitor to the three series. You have to remember the 320 also starts at about the same price. So, the difference is Lexus comes with a lot of things that the Germans will ask you for a lot more money for.

They have been voted as one of the best customer services in their market. So I think they do sort of go after the German biased customers knowing that what they want is real quality service. Lexus do have great NVH levels, you can't hear little or no noise inside the car.don 't you like about the Lexus IS?

Well I think the IS250 particularly is little bit under powered for me, thankfully Lexus Australia has the addressed that with the 350 coming out end of this year. What is the convertible Lexus like? It wouldn't be my pick of the bunch. The driving dynamics aren't that great. It doesn't feel like the kind of car that you would have the roof off and go for a spirited drive.

It seems like the sort of car you'd buy to go and buy your weekly shopping in. So if you jump out of a 3 series or an A4, a C class so then you jump into an IS for the same sort of spec level. What differences do you notice? I think getting into a base model IS250 you might feel like you're in a glorified Toyota.

It looks very similar to a couple of their Toyota cars. I think they suffer from handling. I think the German of course do a lot better job of going around corners, but Lexus does a much better job of being comfortable. So if you're a Mercedes Benz customer or a BMW customer, Should you go maybe and mystery shop Lexus and see what you're missing out on or see if you're making the right call?

Absolutely, some of the interesting features in the IS250 now included radar cruise control, which is something that you probably won't see for the price on the equivalent German's. And that essentially means you get into a car, you tell it to follow the car in front up to a set maximum speed and it will just do that and it won't hit it.

And its great for long distance driving.

This isn't just the base model Lexus. This has really got a lot of guts to it. And thanks to an eight speed automatic it goes really hard and it changes gears really quickly.

The M-Division has been around for donkey's years and they do a very, very nice job. Lexus doesn't have the heritage so where did the brains come from and how's the execution?

Look, I think they knew that in order to be a proper luxury brand they needed to go into the performance side of things. So, I think it is a luxury car. It has earned it's right to be a luxury car; doesn 't matter that it's Japanese, doesn't have to be European to be classified as a luxury car. I think that perception is slowly dying off, and Lexus has done a really good job of making sure that happens.

Well, the Japanese, most people don't know this I guess, but the Japanese have a reputation for building the best built cars on earth. And Lexus is up there with the best of the Japanese, right? absolutely, so, you know, while you might not have that many problems with the Germans, you're guaranteed not to with Lexus.

All of us thanks very much That is what I was felt on the elephant series of lexus prestige brand. You can read the Lexu IS review dam the specification add your comments and even get a quote from a Lexus dealer. Just follow the links on this page.