SA Roadtests
South Africa
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This is the home of automobile road tests in South Africa. We drive South African cars, SUVs and LCVs under South African conditions. It also just happens that most of the vehicles we drive are world cars as well, so what you read here probably applies to the models you can get at home.
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*Please remember too, that prices quoted were those ruling on the days I wrote the reports.
Published in The Witness Motoring on Wednesday March 28, 2012
Sleepers: People or things that are not what you think they are; like cold war spies waiting to be activated on receipt of a coded command, or bland suburban mommy cars fitted with awesomely powerful V8s. The Lexus IS 350 is rather like that. It’s an innocent-looking bank manager’s car that can blast the paintwork off supposedly hotter vehicles. For example it’s fractionally faster, zero to 100, than a 3,6 litre Panamera or a Nissan 370 Zee. Real Porsches and GT-Rs would have it for breakfast of course, but you catch the drift.
Its place in Lexus’ grand scheme is between the nice-but-not-startling IS 250 and the adrenaline charged IS-F that defers only to big engines with turbochargers or cars costing a lot more money. We drove the basic EX version retailing at a whisker under half a million, but there is an SE model with extra toys and a more comprehensive motor plan, that goes for R550 000 once you have finished with the paperwork.
Power is supplied by a 3,5-litre, naturally aspirated, all-aluminium V6 that puts out 233 kW and 378 Nm. It drives to the rear through a six-speed, Aisin-Warner A760E torque converter gearbox. It’s electronically controlled, making it very clever indeed. The description runs to 46 pages, but we will touch on some highlights later.
As expected at this price level, standard equipment includes leather upholstery with electrically powered adjusters, including lumbar support, for the front seats, smart entry and keyless starting, a 13-speaker, six-CD sound system, HDD satnav and Bluetooth with voice command, parking distance control with reversing camera, filtered dual channel automatic air conditioning, cruise control and all the safety kit you can imagine. There are eight airbags because the front passenger has a knee bag too. As with certain of its peers, there are ‘normal’, ‘sport’ and ‘snow’ engine and steering response programs as well.
The car’s suspension was set up for superior handling without sacrificing comfort. Anti-dive, anti-lift and anti-squat characteristics were built in, while strict camber control and fast-acting shock absorbers optimise stability under cornering and braking loads. Lightweight components, including cast-aluminium suspension uprights and aluminium brake calipers help minimise unsprung weight. It’s all boringly technical, but it works. The ride is pleasantly firm but comfortable, it handles very nicely and your dentures remain secure over speed humps and rough bits.
The automatic transmission mentioned earlier includes a ‘sport’ setting that allows sequential manual selection by means of its stick shift and the option of shifting gears, in either sport or drive mode, using steering wheel paddles. Unlike most other paddle systems, this ‘box holds the selected gear until the driver decides to change, although it does revert to first gear when stopping the car.
Another neat trick is something Lexus calls Artificial Intelligence Shift Control. Working only in Drive mode, this detects whether the car is being driven uphill or down, or whether a trailer is being towed. Briefly, it prevents unwanted upshifts while ascending and selects the most appropriate gear to provide engine braking when descending. We all know that most automatics default to higher gears the instant one relaxes pressure on the accelerator, usually when that’s the last thing you need. This one doesn’t. Pity they don’t all behave this way. In normal use it kicks down readily and changes quickly and smoothly, without hanging on to gears or hunting. There is even a driver-selectable display that shows which gear is presently in use – for those “Monk” moments we all have occasionally.
As interior fixtures and fittings go, this Lexus is generally tasteful and well crafted. Some testers have complained about siting of inconsequential items like cup holders and we always wondered who actually uses those things? Apparently, Americans and Canadians do. It seems they all buy huge cups of coffee in insulated containers to keep themselves going during their endless commutes to and from work. We're so glad we live in a small city. And that we work from home.
There is one almost universal complaint with which we agree, though. Despite being marginally longer and wider than a C-class Mercedes, this car has a dreadfully cramped rear seat area. The SA Standard Tall Passenger struggled to get in and out, but while in there, allocated only seven points for head room and gave sixes for foot- and knee space. Briefly, it’s for shorter people only and women not issued with magnificent legs and exhibitionist tendencies might want to stick to trousers. Apart from that, it’s a brilliant car.
The numbers
Price: R499 700
Engine: Toyota 2GR-FSE
Configuration: 3456 cc, quad cam, 24-valve, V6
Power: 233 kW at 6400 rpm
Torque: 378 Nm at 4800 rpm
Zero to 100 km/h: 5,6 seconds
Maximum speed: 230 km/h
Real life fuel consumption: about 10,8 l/100 km
Tank: 65 litres
Boot: 398 litres
Warranty: 4 years/100 000 km
Maintenance: 4 years/100 000 km Distance Plan Plus, that includes the cost of parts, labour and replacement of brake pads for all Lexus specified scheduled services.
This is a one-man show, which means that road test cars entrusted to me are driven only by me. Some reviewers hand test cars over to their partners to use as day-to-day transport and barely experience them for themselves.
What this means to you is that every car reviewed is given my own personal evaluation and receives my own seat of the pants judgement - no second hand input here.
Every car goes through real world testing; on city streets littered with potholes, speed bumps and rumble strips, on freeways and if its profile demands, dirt roads as well.
My articles appear every Wednesday in the motoring pages of The Witness, South Africa's oldest continuously running newspaper, and occasionally on Saturdays in Weekend Witness as well. I drive eight to ten vehicles most months of the year (press cars are withdrawn over the festive season - wonder why?) so not everything gets published in the paper. Those that are, get a tagline but the rest is virgin, unpublished and unedited by the political-correctness police. Hope you like what you see, because there are no commercial interests at work here. As quite a few readers have found, I answer every serious enquiry from my home email address, with my phone numbers attached, so I do actually exist.
I am based in Pietermaritzburg, KZN, South Africa. This is the central hub of the KZN Midlands farming community; the place farmers go to buy their supplies and equipment, truck their goods to market, send their kids to school and go to kick back and relax.
So occasionally a cow, a goat or a horse may add a little local colour by finding its way into the story or one of the pictures. It's all part of the ambience!
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SA Roadtests
South Africa
ctjag8