Like the title says I've recently purchased a 200 series LX after loosing my beloved LX470.
The story begins with my 100 series cruiser getting into a minor traffic accident with an F550 tow truck, the damage to the vehicle was minor but my insurance company totaled the vehicle over the slee bumper that they refused to even pay for.. This cruiser was triple locked with 4.88s, bumpers, sliders, roof rack, tons of suspension mods with an insane amount of maintenance.
The tow truck drive was a swell fella I'll leave it at that, trooper was unable to determine fault and my insurance company screwed us. I do still hold most of the parts from this cruiser to go into another when the right one comes along.
Since there was a new member of the family coming and our intended use for the vehicle out grew a cruiser i opted to buy a Ford Excursion. This would prove to be both a good and bad idea. The primary reason for this decision was obviously space but more power from a diesel engine while also being more fuel efficient on larger tires.
Heres the Excursion towing my 3rd gen to go trade for a 100 series that I recently sold for reasons as mentioned below as well others. ( I should of kept that 3rd gen )
This vehicle will remain in the stable awaiting a coilover conversion with some lockers and such.
Fast forward about a year and our family needs a bigger house sooner than originally planned ( happy wife happy life kinda thing ), this prompted the sale my IS500
and the 100 series resulting in the eventual purchase of my 2011 LX570.Heres the LX when it was brought home its a 2011 with 207k miles, not a great service history, paint isnt great either but it was a southern truck coming from Reno before landing in Colorado it also had a few decent mods and was local, the dealer offered fair money on my trade and fit the very tight time frame for purchasing the new house yada yada..
Car came with some Ill admit, pretty good looking Chinese cast wheels and brand new Goodyear ultraterrians. I believe this color is Twilight Grey Metallic, faded to almost look plain sliver.
I will do my best to catalog this journey, I only at this time have plans to perform maintenance on this and use it to haul the family on day trips into the mountains.
Though it looks to have been fairly well cared for it is in need of quite a bit. First order of business as with all used cars I buy was a deep clean of the interior.
No thanks to the local Toyota dealers detail techs that COVERED this thing with cheap greasy interior "detailer" and left wet carpet under wet floor mats for me at delivery.
Not much to see here just black interior viewed through a filthy camera lense.
All things considered im actually blown away with this 200. After spending nearly 10 years behind the wheel of a 100 series and owning a few other Lexus cars I had a certain level of expectations. If one things for certain newer cars have better features but in most aspects they're more cheaply made, I think the LS lineup is a great example of this.
I can say for the few things that aren't as good as the 100 there are A LOT of things that are done better, and sadly the 200 series marked the end of an era for Toyota truck chassis vehicles in North America.
I am blown away that Toyota could improve upon an already truly impressive platform and going back to a 100 will be very difficult.. That said I am excited to begin this journey and will make an attempt to catalog this process while not being just another thread of routine maintenance .