2011 Lexus Lx 570 Excellent Condition on 2040-cars

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Junkyard Gem: 1991 Lexus ES 250

When the Lexus LS 400 first appeared here in late 1989 (as a 1990 model), sellers of German-made luxury sedans broke out in the shaky sweats and car shoppers flocked to see — and buy — this well-built statusmobile that retailed for about 60% of the price of the cheapest S-Class. Not attracting nearly as much attention at the time was the other introductory vehicle of the Lexus brand: the ES 250. Sold here for just the 1990 and 1991 model years, the first-generation ES was the most Camry-like of its kind and the hardest to find today. Here's a '91 in a San Francisco Bay Area yard. All of the ESs for the model's first couple of decades were based on the Camry, so they benefited from the Camry's famous reliability while suffering from its not-so-exciting image. Toyota made a good effort to make the 1990-1991 cars look something like their LS big brothers, but their Camry origins are quite obvious from most angles. Later ESs got more distinctive body panels and sales got stronger when that happened. Power came from this 2.5-liter V6, which was the hairiest engine available in the 1991 US-market Camry. 159 horsepower, which was pretty good for a car like this in the early 1990s. A five-speed manual transmission could be had in the ES 250 and ES 300 through the 1993 model year, but those early-1990s American car shoppers wishing for a midsize luxury sedan with three pedals generally opted for an Audi or BMW, with most of the rest settling on the Acura Legend. I'll keep looking out for a five-speed ES in a car graveyard, of course, but finding any first-gen ES has been a tough challenge in itself. This one got within 252 miles of the 200,000 mark, not bad for a typical 1991 car but also not especially impressive for a member of the Camry family. The interior was much nicer than what you got in any Camry, but junkyard shoppers have hit this one hard and its opulence no longer shines through. Toyotas had some variation of this switch from the late 1970s and into our current century. This version comes straight out of the Cressida. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. That Lexus noise-testing room sure is impressive! This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. Good in the rain, too. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.

Earthquake causes most of Toyota's Japan operations to shut down

Toyota is idling a large portion of its Japanese assembly plants as a result of the devastating earthquake in Hokkaido, Japan. The earthquake had such a big effect on the carmaker's supply chain that a number of its plants will have to be shut down for an undisclosed period, starting on Saturday. The 6.7 magnitude earthquake occurred early on September 6 th, resulting in more than dozen casualties and hundreds of injuries, cutting power to the entire island; the powerplant supplying half of the island's power was located so close to the earthquake's epicenter that it shut down automatically, bringing down the rest of the island's grid with it. Tens of people were also reported missing, as reported by Reuters. The affected factories are the Kyushu, Tahara and Toyota Auto Body plants, according to Automotive News, and they manufacture vehicles such as different Lexus models and the Toyota Land Cruiser. Some of the models produced in these factories are exported to the United States, but a Toyota spokesman said that North American operations are not likely to be significantly affected by the plant closures. As well as the automobile assembly plants in Hokkaido, Toyota also has a facility there that manufactures transmissions and transfer cases. As it was also without power, Toyota could not confirm when the plant would be back online. Out of Hokkaido's 2.95 million households, 1.54 million had regained power by Friday afternoon. All in all, Toyota has 18 manufacturing facilities in Japan; spokeswoman Akito Kita said that from Monday on, the shutdown will affect all Japanese Toyota and Lexus lines — not including two Daihatsu facilities that are also used for Toyota products. The shutdowns come directly after Toyota also announced a recall for Japanese-built hybrid models, mainly Prius. Related Video:

Anything but boring | 2018 Lexus LC 500 First Drive

This is it, the headliner, the main event. After years of Lexus promising to make less-boring cars and instead giving us countless spindle-grille facelifts, the 2018 LC 500 is here as the brand's new North Star. It's the official halo to mark where Toyota's luxury brand is headed. This is the car that we hope can bring an end to the relentless mentions of boring cars - which are themselves needlessly boring. And besides, "not boring" is a terrible metric for evaluation. What Lexus is really trying to do is give its cars some spirit, to transcend the paint-by-numbers stereotype that made this brand the luxury juggernaut it is today. By that yardstick, the LC 500 is a success simply based on how it looks. It's beautiful in a way that we couldn't predict from the 2012 LF-LC concept that foreshadowed it. The kind of beauty where instead of reflexively grabbing your phone to take a picture, you just stand there and keep looking. And pictures don't do this car justice, anyway. They soften the edges and reduce the massive draw of the wide shoulders. In person, looking straight at the LC, the car looks like it's 80 percent hood. In the rest of the lineup, the trademark Lexus grille's execution ranges from caricature (RC) to botched nose job (LX). Here it pulls everything together. From every other angle, the LC has some feature that seems excessive – in the best way possible. The proportions of the LC give off a distinctively functional vibe, and it's genuine. That hood is so long because the 5.0-liter V8's center of mass sits three and a half inches behind the front axle. The extra space up front is mostly empty - Lexus uses high-strength steel cross-braces to shore up torsional rigidity instead of adding structure ahead of the front wheels, and the battery sits under the trunk floor. For all the visual excitement, the LC is still a conventional vehicle. Aside from some advancements in the LC 500h's hybrid powertain, the innovation here is of the iterative type. It's interesting, in that Lexus is betting on emotional appeal and driving character at a time when the future relevance of both is up for debate. If anything, the LC is a car for the current automotive world, not the one to come. And despite extensive use of aluminum and sheet-molded carbon, the LC 500 weighs in at a hefty 4,280 pounds. That's right in line with the BMW 6 Series and a good deal below the Batali-esque Mercedes-Benz S-Class Coupe's 4,700 pounds.