1995 Lexus LS400 review from UK and Ireland

Chip on Windscreen. Easily repaired.

Drivers rear view mirror needs replacing. The silver part of the mirrors gone.

Gold paint on the badges. Soon to be put back to silver.

When these cars were launched in the UK in the 90's I fell in love.

15 years on, I have the opportunity of owning one.

Lexus. The luxury version of Toyota. But who cares? This beast from the east, for me at least, seriously beats Merc, Jag & BMW all the way.

I used to work for a local Merc dealer, and only the very, VERY high-end spec cars came as standard with what this does.

Electric seats with memory, air con, cruise, alarm, 6-disc multi changer, hand stitched leather seats. The list is quite long.

'Mags', as we've named her, has 130,000 miles on her, and it does not show one iota. The smell of leather is there when you open the doors, The V8 engine and auto 'box are silky smooth. No dents, dinks, rust or tiredness show.

My only small gripes are the seats. Not all that fantastic to sit in, and on a long journey, you'll probably have to stop for a stretch, but saying that, with the cruise on and the I.C.E. (which is PHENOMENAL) who'd want to get out of the car?

The steering's not a tight as I'd like, but these things are made for silent comfort, not speed. And when I say silent, I mean silent.

Little to no road noise, the engine at tick over has yet to fail to elect a smile from me. You can just about tell it's running.

Even though this is a heavy and long car (it sometimes JUST to say fits in a normal car park space) it still returns a decent 20-25mpg round town and 30+mpg on motorways.

All I need to do now is remove the silly gold paint, which somebody did before I got it, off the badges and return them to their normal, decent looking silver colour!