Used 2009 Lexus IS 350 Consumer Reviews
Performance + Luxury = IS350
Let me start by saying I test drove many cars before selecting the Lexus IS 350 (C350, 335i, G35, G37, CTS). I believe it has the best combination of performance and luxury in this market segment. The car is very fast, the interior is terrific, with very soft leather and a nice dash layout. The seats are very comfortable. I have the navigation and the Mark Levinson sound system options and the sound is fantastic! The gas mileage is not that great but is costs a little extra to go fast! Best car I have ever owned and the service at the dealership has been excellent. So far I have about 6000 miles with zero problems. Did I mention that this car is fast!! And comfortable. ++
2008 Lexus IS 350
My last car was a 2001 BMW 330. I like the power of the Lexus. The car is much quieter then the BMW; both cars are first class. The Lexus looks too much like a compact car. At the same time it still come with a lot of luxury. The cost of the Lexus is pretty high too. I plan to keep this car for around 5 years. We'll have to see how much it cost to keep it up.
- Base SedanMSRP: $10,99028 mi away
- Base SedanMSRP: $6,9991,122 mi away
- Base SedanMSRP: $12,0001,627 mi away
Not bad, not great
So close to being perfect, a shame they blew a few details that make it less than so. The luxury/sporty balance is second to none. ML stereo sounds wonderful although XM sounds crappy (not Lexus's fault - it's XM's signal compression). The nav is awful. It suffers from obvious language/requirement translation issues in the design cycle - such a shame. Stupid limitations and just not user friendly. Nothing about it is intuitive. Speech recognition is worst- in-class - inability to recognize simple commands render it unusable. Bluetooth only auto-connects with one phone - how dumb is that. Very limited steering wheel controls mean constantly trying to navigate menus.
Poor quality long term
Bought a certified pre-owned at a Lexus dealership that at the time was 5 years old, just under 70k miles, and every year had at least 1 major issue or recall. Within the first 4 years, I have had the car die on me three times while driving it, and towed to the dealership. At the 5 year mark, 150k miles, had to replace a CAT (over $1000), and car burns a quart of oil every 300 miles (piston rings). $30k for a 5-year car was not worth it. Looking forward to mainstream electric cars.
sport :( or luxury :)
Coming from a 2002 BMW 330ci, the Lexus IS 350 leaves a lot to desire. My main concern is the transmission, first of all they don't even make a manual transmission for the car, second of all, the "manual" shifts with paddle shifters are horribly delayed, it's at least 1.5 seconds when I am driving hard, this defeats the purpose of a high performance car. Even the 02 bmw had faster steptronic shifts. I agree with the quick acceleration and engine smoothness. My second concern is the handling, the car feels heavy when taking turns at +/- 25mph speed. Suspension must be improved a little bit. Aside of those two things I think the car looks great and its got a really nice "classy" interior.