LEXUS IS 250 4dr (2005)

The Lexus IS250 - a good car (on paper)

The Lexus IS250 is a good car on paper - crammed full of features, reliable and well built with some fairly impressive performance statistics. But my experience of owning one has been disappointing.

The engine is nippy when it has to be but essentially it has to be worked too hard in order to perform sustainably. It's gearing is just odd, and I have no idea why Lexus repeatedly fail to deal with this important aspect of their cars. The gears have far too much length, which is all the more surprising considering there are six of them. There's nothing wrong with the performance in theory but it just feels painful in practice.

The handling on the Lexus IS 250 is probably average but personally I don't like it. There is next to no responsiveness and it's stiff and just not fun. The interiors, also, turn out to be pretty impractical once you've lived with them for a while - the back is cramped and the dash is insensible. It's not that the Lexus IS is a bad car, it just doesn't really work very well.