I'm a new poster here. Not a Lexus owner, but I've long admired them and would love to someday own a 90's era Lexus.LS or LC.

In the Houston area where I live, there are a lot of older Lexus's. Mid 90's LS's are quite common. What I almost never see is early 90-92 models. I know they are 30+ years old, but there are many other 30+ year old cars around. Lexus is a high quality car and those were some of the best sales years, so I would expect to see them sometimes.

My question is: Was there some Achilles Heel mechanical trait that tended to kill early models? Is there a known reason the early models are so rare on the ground now?

Thanks for any insight!

 

I suspect there are two factors:

First: there were not a lot of them sold.

Second: they last forever! So, by the time they get to around 300,000 miles (like both my 1990 LS and 1999 LS did) they are often scrapped, simple because they are "cosmetically old".

But I can state emphatically that there was no "Achilles Heel" with these cars. Yes, both my 90 and 99 needed a transmission rebuild at around 300,000 miles (about $4000 each at a transmission-repair garage)

But you say you're from Houston, so you know that a 15+ mile morning commute on the Southwest Freeway (like mine was) can require 60+ stop/go cycles (yes, that's 4 cycles per mile). And anything mechanical can only stand so much torture!

BTW: I'm now on my third LS (LS460L AWD). And it's just now getting broken-in at 95K miles! I've owned over 40 cars in the past 5 decades, and these three LS'es are by far the finest cars I've ever owned.