It drove and handled great, but I wasn't overly impressed with the acceleration. It revved pretty smoothly especially considering it was a new engine. I even did the push button manual shift thing on the steering wheel. The coolest thing was when the dealer took it hard under acceleration around a wet corner and it didn't fish tail due to traction control. It stuck to the road when I thought it would fish-tail out of control. Has anyone ever lined up against one of these? Just curious although I don't plan on getting one anymore. For 10k more than a Max, I was not overly impressed and it made me appreciate my Max even more!

 

I have raced against one during the infamous saturday night street races, and took the clown. I have driven three different IS's and can definately tell that they are marginally slower than our Maximas.

 

You took the clown?

 

Figure of speech for saying that the guy thought he was a bad ***, but then i took him. Hence, took the clown. Sorry, I am 19 years old.

 

Excuse Lovesick... he escaped from the 5th gen forum and is causing chaos.

 

Your excused LoveSick

 

My roomie has one and this car corners like its on rails. It'll KILL a Max at an autoX. I think we did a 65 in a 25 mph turn (I thought we were gonna spin out!). Anyway, the manual one should be on par with the current Max but have to wait until August to be sure. It's much more of a sport sedan than Max.

 

Yeah, that is true, but they still feel too soft in the steering. My Intrax setup is much tighter than the IS.

 

you do know that the is300 has the same power plant as the supra, its only a matter of time before we have 600hp is300's roamin around.

 

Lovesick Wanted. Dead or Alive. Reward of $10 to the founder. For more information Dial 411.

 

I raced 6 of them this weekend...

they maybe slow off the line.. but they got some highway pull

 

The IS300 is a nice car, but for the money, I would go with something else. Maybe a CL-S or TL-S. Although, the new IS300 5spd. have a lot of potential. First, it will have a 5spd. manual, plus sharing a similiar power plant as the Supra is a definitely plus. 500hp. IS300 in the near future? I'm sure that will happen, just question of when. Also, don't know about you guys, but I'm not too crazy about its instrument panel. Yeah, it's different, but it's also kind of hard to see and it's just...weird.

 

I read somewhere that TRD/L-Sport will be coming out with a supercharger for the IS.

 

Nothing could beat one if they put twin turbo's on it like the Supra.

 

They have the same motor as the NA supra. The MKIV TT supra had a different motor (slightly less compression ratio). It is harder to get the horsepower from the IS300 than the supra because of the higher compression ratio. There is a turbo kit that someone on the IS forum did that lets him get around 300 hp, but I wouldn't bet that transmission would last too long with that horsepower.

 

There's a company down here in Miami called Toyomoto that specializes in Toyota/Lexus and they've had a turbo kit out for months...I think it's more than 300hp, but can't remember...check out www.IS300.net if you're interested..there's another company called Swift Racing Technology that's supposed to be coming our with a bunch of different levels of superchargers for the IS.