lexus salvage : To put these back together correctly takes time and talent. You can easilyend upwith a piece of shit. Nobody is going to give you all the new or wreckingyard partsto fix it back up, and some could be hard to find. These things often sell at auction for some hundreds of dollars, not tensof thousands.The '95 Lexus is clipped, meaning a salvage and rebuilt auto with twoseperate halves joined in the middle. I suspect it can be a crapshoot if not done properly. It has been on road for three years inthis condition.Thanks for everyones advice. I had also hoped for someone to chime inwho has had experience with a clipped car.Any way to speak to the person who's driven it those three years? If I couldn't talk to them; it'd getcrossed off my list right quick.Rich,Her name is on the title but I couldn't find her in any internetdirectory. She wasn't listed in information either. It was a lien soshe may have been thrown out of her house as well. The dealer is amember of the BBB if that helps. I'm still undecided.Someone who was sloppy enough with car payments to get the carrepossessed may have been sloppy with car maintenance as well.
lexus salvage : This bit of discussion brings up an interesting point (see original postingbelow). Do the "well-heeled" have money to shrug off? No. If yes, thenthey don't stay rich very long because they will be stupid with their moneyin so many other ways. So what do the "well-heeled" do. They, or we, aresmart and buy new or close to new Lexus LS and trade them in before theyreach, say 60,000 miles. The "near well-heeled" buy these "mid mileage"prestige cars. Lexus knows they are wanna-be or noveau-rich and sock it tothem with all kinds of ego-stokes including prestige prices. I think if youown a Lexus LS for a full couple hundred thousand plus miles you may breakeven and enjoy your ride a bit more. If you buy one at anything around60,000 to 100,000 miles you will pay an inflated price due to "value"retention and nearly constant "little" known design weaknesses or problemsthat are dearly expensive to fix (e.g., $250 speedometer needle display(just the part), $500 or more for repair of heater display, minimum $1,500A/C compressor system repair, steering pump/hose failure that frequentlytakes out the alternator too).
lexus salvage : I've driven a couple Avalon XLS and Camry XLS , they provide all theimportant aspects of the driver experiences of the Lexus GS, LS, andespecially the ES. However, they don't provide prestige, but the cat isgetting out of the bag - anybody that buys a used Lexus is a sucker. And,no matter what you want to believe, mechanically and electrically Lexus isbetter than MB or BMW. Times are changing in the used Lexus market. Plusfor the amount of money of a used LS you can buy a new top-end Toyota withbetter warranty, equal reliability, Toyota parts that are 25% to 50% lessthan Lexus, and system designs that less costly and catastrophic to repair.So to all new Lexus buyers enjoy them for a long time. Your depreciationexpense is going to go up dramatically by 2005 because reliability is goingdown and repair expenses are too high. The market will react by then. Toall you used Lexus buyers, enjoy the satisfaction of spending your tangiblemoney even faster and less wisely than the well-heeled - but the intangibleprestige of owning a Lexus is about to lose it's appeal.
lexus salvage : I disagree about used Lexus (I got one this year of course). I leased acertified 98 LS and have a 3 year/100k warranty. Also since the bigdepreciation hit already is gone, it's a hell of a deal. My payments arethe same as buying a $15k car over 3 years. To me, that's a bargain for thenice car I have.Appreciate the point of view for a lease, I pay cash for expenses andfinance assets. A non-collectible car is a depreciating property expense.Hence, I pay cash for cars. A house or tangible business is an asset. I amcareful not confuse the two. When I went through the math the top of theline Toyota and Honda still came out ahead. The durability is the same, infact, a little better on a few systems. The salvage value is just as highon a NPV analysis with characteristic depreciation for both late models.Repair costs, and there will be a few, are dramatically less with Toyota andHonda than Lexus. Insurance is less. Fuel economy is better. Comfort isclose, but granted not exactly the same. Lexus has slightly better crashperformance on older model vehicles, it does not appear as far out ahead ofToyotas and Hondas on later models.
lexus salvage : All things considered, Lexus still appears to be in trouble with respect toan economic "hell of a deal".The reasoning of "value for money" and "breaking even" only goes so far. Iknow that a Camry is cheaper to drive and to maintain. A Corolla is cheaperthan that. I can ride my bike to work no sweat. Anyone arguing that a Lexusis a cheap car is fooling himself. I hate to sound snobbish, but the feelingI get when I park my Lexus next to the sucker in the Pontiac is simply, tospeak with Mastercard, priceless. For me, it's not a matter of economics,I'd be curious to hear from Lexus owners who think it is.Mischa.I like your response. It gets to the passion of the Lexus buyer more thanthe cold calculated "facts". But, what attracts a buyer to Lexus overBritish, Italian, and German prestige automobiles. The European machineshave more passion and less value proposition. And, why Lexus over the otherAsian machines like Infinity or Accura?It looks to me like Lexus built the passion on a foundation of quality,mechanical precision, and attention to detail. However, the quality anddetail elements started to erode with the 430. The "tweaks" and "makeovers" were necessary but they have essentially removed the "over built"nature of the car for us detailed oriented types.
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