Lexus LS (2004) – Enthusiast Wanted

Lexus is treading a relatively humble path with its latest offspring: the LBX. That Lexus cousin of the Toyota Yaris Cross will be the cheapest Lexus in the range when it hits the market in early 2024. However, you can count on it being roughly four or five times as expensive as the Lexus you now have on your screen. There is a price tag of €7,949. He is also almost 20 years old, so that explains a lot of course. Nevertheless, you still get a lot of car for your money.

Lexus LS

We don’t just have a Lexus here, but a top model LS. Not the first version, but top version President that became available from the facelift of this third generation LS. Someone left over $112,000 at the Lexus dealer in 2004 to get their hands on the keys to this mighty limousine. Speaking of depreciation… Anyway, there are top limos from the time that depreciated faster than this Lexus and there is of course a good reason for that. They are simply very good cars. Not only in terms of quality, but also in terms of driving experience.

We tested an identical Lexus LS 430 President in 2004 and were quite pleased with it. “The Lexus has adaptive air suspension as standard. The chassis absorbs bumps like the best and unfortunately also takes away some information. Although less than was the case before, but still. The Lexus is still most like a magic carpet.” Isn’t the latter also what you mainly expect from such a car? That’s what the LS did. “After hundreds of test kilometers under varying conditions, this battleship appears to be of a really high level. We actually expected nothing else.”

Lexus LS

Although everyone’s taste is different, we concluded at the time that the LS did not quite make it with the competition in terms of appearance. That was especially true for the interior. Incidentally, you lack nothing in the LS: for example, it already has a touchscreen (in 2004, yes) that we really liked working at the time: “The most user-friendly system we know. You can change the route, the air conditioning or don’t set the presets. No fuss, just press the screen with your finger. The display also doubles as a monitor for the reversing camera, a nice gimmick.” That last one was quite something, 19 years ago. Heated seats with massage function? Also present.

In addition, the silky-smooth automatic transmission, together with the V8, ensures that you go smoothly (0-100 km / h in 6.3 seconds) but in peace from A to B. The V8 in this copy has 288,500 km on it and although that is quite a bit in itself, we would not immediately worry about it. What speaks a little less for the car is that it has already worn out eight private owners. The latter participated for three years and the one before that for more than five years, so in itself it was quite recently with the change. Will you be the ninth owner?