The Lexus IS sedan first debuted in its current iteration back in 2006, and has changed little since then. So when the Lexus IS 300C convertible debuted for 2010, it got saddled with tech that was already half-a-decade old. That’s not to say it is bad in any way. In fact, we prefer it more than the new gimmicky gadgets in newly-designed luxury cars.
Hey look, our Toyota Camry went to Las Vegas. Or rather, as close as you can get to Las Vegas without leaving Dubai soil. But why are we talking about Las Vegas anyway? Considering we neither drink nor gamble, the only interest we have in Las Vegas is that CSI TV show.
If you recall, we first drove this Lexus IS 300C back when it was fresh off-the-boat, with only 20 km on the clock. We used it during that last Eid-Al-Adha to haul recently-alive fresh beef, but we were hesitant to push it too hard, considering it was not even broken in. So when we got it back again now, as a long-termer, with a four-figure number on the odometer, we were in a good position to compare its straight-line performance, before and after.
For someone who’s not overly enthusiastic about cars, the Lexus IS 300C surely came as a surprise to me, something worthy of making a few good comments about. Looking from the exterior, personally, any 4-door sedan as I see it, is a ‘family car’ to me. This is what I thought of the Lexus IS 300C too as I got a first glimpse of it from our balcony. I later noticed it had only two doors.
This would be our first update on the 2012 Toyota Camry SE Plus long-termer that we picked up from Al Futtaim Motors more than a week ago. When we sat down to figure out what to write about this car, we came to the conclusion that there isn’t much to be said about the Camry. After all, it is a Camry. It’ll sell by the sackful, and there will always be a rabid bunch who’ll keep hating it. So after contemplating for a while, we decided to do the updates for this car differently. From now on, we’ll pitch our Camry against a variety of random cars,
There are few things in life you can be sure of, at least where we live — Death, Salik, and the dominance of the Toyota Camry on the midsize sales charts, no matter what spiteful names you may call it. If you hate it just for the sake of hating it, you are in the minority. The truth is, the 2012 Toyota Camry is a good car. And we now have one for two months to prove it.
No matter what one might say about the exterior of our Lexus IS 300C, you can be sure that we’d never give up this car as the one to pick for our daily routine. Because, you see, that interior, it is an awesome place to be in.
It has been a while since we last posted an update on our Mitsubishi Pajero, simply because there was nothing much to report about it. Apart from some minor repairs, all of which arose as a result of frequent off-roading excursions, absolutely nothing has gone wrong with the vehicle as it clocks over 30,000 km on the odometer.
Our 2007 Honda S2000 does not have a trip computer. So we have to calculate fuel efficiency the old-fashioned way. That involves filling up the fuel tank completely, reseting the trip meter to zero, driving until it needs refuelling, going “full tank” again and noting down how many litres of petrol went in as well as the trip-meter reading. The random-guy-on-the-street will tell you that a small engine equals better fuel economy. That is not exactly the case.
In the first week we had our 2012 Lexus IS 300C long-termer, we reset the trip computer to measure fuel economy while the car is in our hands, and not as an average carrying on from previous drivers. But just to test the accuracy of the trip computer, we decided to do some manual calculations as well.