2013-2018 Lexus ES 350 Buyer’s Guide - Reliability & Common Problems

a full buyer's guide video for the 2013-2018 Lexus ES 350. I like these cars because starting with this generation this is when the es got properly safe we saw some decent results from the iihs crash test results the vehicle looks more modern it doesn't look like a 10 year old car quite frankly keep it nice and clean you pull up in this people might even think that it's a new car I've also personally tested this car reviewed it and I do like the way this car drives it has a more sporty Edge to it if you will the handling is significantly better than the previous generation es while still being relatively comfortable and it comes with an amazing interior space as well and most importantly as we're about to see this is not a super problematic vehicle at all so let's get right into it I'm going to share with you the reliability of this car the maintenance schedule some great resources that you can use and if this car is worth purchasing in today's Market with current prices and interest rates we can even talk about some Alternatives towards the end of this video but for right now let's get started and talk about reliability foreign [Music] as always my most favorite resource to use for finding out vehicle issues problems recalls Etc is nhtsa.gov you come here you scroll down you have the complaint section this is where consumers like you and I would typically write in and talk about the issues that we're having with the car scroll over you got the recall section and this car did have one recall back in 2015 for an unexpected braking due to the pre-collision system obviously dealerships they take care of this for free and I'm sure most es's on the road have already had this fixed for free on behalf of the dealer there are no investigations for this car and the last section is called manufacture Communications this is also known as tsbs or technical service bulletins this is where the manufacturer themselves find and Report issues with their own product and we see 277 of these but make no mistake I've actually gone through almost all of these and there's no crazy easy issues to report because we have to keep in mind with these manufactured Communications or tsbs is there's a lot of repetition and a lot of frivolous things like Lex is communicating with their dealerships telling them best practices on how they should go about fixing or replacing certain parts and a lot of this is also the manufacturer telling the dealerships that certain tsbs are now obsolete so you have a lot of that in here as well and this is why I like to use another resource and website called carcomplaints.com I'd like to come to this website because they pretty much take the same information from nhtsa and they compile it in an easier to understand format they also show you a nice bar graph of which model years tend to have the most amount of problems I just happen to choose the 2013 model year because this is the first model year of this generation meaning this is the card that should have the most amount of problems but as we see there's nothing too crazy but there there are a few things that stood out to me like sunroofs exploding and some water leakage coming through this is why I'm not a huge fan of sunroofs apparently a lot of people in the United States they love them how do you simultaneously drive and look out for the sunroof it makes no sense and even when you're not looking out of it when you just have the thing open the sun is literally beaming through and reflecting off of the Plastics and the Chrome inside of the interior and now it's blinding you and it's causing more of a distraction so I was never a fan of sunroofs but enough ranting about that sunroofs replacing this can cost between a thousand to two thousand dollars but we can come over to the TSB section again they've pretty much doubled the number it's showing 429 but as I already mentioned it's a lot of repetition and frivolous things but here on card complaints now you can do command F and now you can search throughout this website for various problems like you can type in suspension powertrain transmission and honestly there's no real issues with any of these things according to the tsbs the only things I really found was the steering wheel tends to lock up and it's difficult to move the car from side to side I don't know not a big issue you know that was a TSB for the early model years there's the classic Bluetooth issues and people not knowing how to properly set that up and a fluid leak slash fluid seep from the powertrain components apparently that's something that affects almost every Lexus car if it's a common TSB I'm sure dealerships know how to deal with that but nothing crazy going on here you mainly find issues in the complaint section of nhtsa's website that's where you have people talking about their sunroofs exploding and one person had an issue where when they turned left the engine stalled and they lost power that could be due to an ignition coil we also have some door lock issues as well but overall I would say this car is not a crane crazy problematic vehicle so those are the two main resources that I like to use nhtsa and car complaints we can also use the forums it's a good thing to use just come to Google type in 2013 Lexus ES 350 problems and a whole bunch of resources and websites pop up one of which is Club Lexus someone's asking about you know any issues with the 2013 and up es350s also the es300h which I'm not talking about because that's the hybrid I would rather you avoid the hybrids because it's just more complexity I want to keep things as simple as possible for someone shopping in the used car market and almost everyone in the forums is saying that they've had pretty much no problems with their cars one person said that the 2013 and 2014 cars have some issues with the ventilated seats they don't work properly but again not a big deal the only other major issue I found with the person was someone with a dead transmission with the dealership that I was giving him a bunch of runarounds giving him different quotes for spark plugs yeah for whatever reason his transmission took a dump on him and the local dealership quoted him eight thousand dollars for a new transmission around four grand for a used one and a local shop was able to rebuild him a transmission for three grand so if your transmission ever takes a dump on you that's going to be pretty expensive but perhaps you can even find one in a junkyard who knows again this might be one of the few cars where I could tell someone to take their chances and buy it without a warranty but I would still suggest if possible find one that's certified pre-owned from Alexis dealership that way you'll have two years of warranty coverage and maintenance coverage and that will be a nice little buffer where you can purchase the car it's covered under warranty for a little while and you can test and see if the car is not being problematic but in the next segment I'm going to talk about maintenance [Music] thank you foreign okay if you just Google Lexus ES 350 maintenance schedule a lot of the dealerships themselves they run a blog post and they do a good job of illustrating to you what needs to be done and what needs to be replaced at each service interval so the dealer blogs they're doing a great job and if you want to see an estimate on how much each of these service intervals might cost you you can go to repairpal.com or you can go to kellybluebook both of these resources will give you an estimate of what you can expect to pay for each of these intervals but this car is pretty simplistic to where you can probably do a lot of this yourself and that's a good thing next let's talk about the ES350 Market [Music] thank you okay I like to come to cargurus.com because they make it really easy to sort the accident vehicles to get rid of the frame damage the the lemon and the salvage title the reason why I filter out those cars is because when the car has an accident a salvage history Etc it really lowers the resale value of the car so I don't want you to be stuck with that I would rather you buy a car with no accidents and a clean title because the other problem is a vehicle that's been in an accident and was put back together by a body shop it'll never be back up to its original OEM standard and specs so it's always going to be compromised in some way I would rather you avoid that but once you get rid of those cars and you do a nationwide search there was 1400 cars but once I filtered everything out there's only 728 cars left Nationwide for 2013 to 2018 the cheapest car is seven thousand nine hundred dollars with 201 1000 miles on it obviously don't buy that one but I know a lot of people will the design of this car is pretty modern when they see that they can get one of these cars with higher mileage they'll just buff out the headlights and now they're able to drive around in a relatively new looking car for less than 10 grand so I know that's going to naturally attract a lot of people a lot of first-time car buyers Etc and I don't know do a test drive yourself make sure everything is good what you're going to notice with some of these higher mileage cars is they're probably going to need an alignment some new brake pads and rotors because there's most likely going to be some vibrations and shutters and jolts most of that can be fixed with an alignment and brake rotor slash pad replacement because I do admit those are some pretty decent prices for this car but ideally I would like you to purchase a 2016 model year and up because that's when they gave it a subtle refresh it looks even better it looks even more crisp and they've also added some more sound detoning materials in 2016 to make the car a little bit quieter so it's just a higher quality experience I would rather you purchase that and I would rather you buy one that's cleaner with lower mileage on it so once you enter that in 2016 with less than 50k miles now we're looking at you know 24 25 000 Vehicles which all right fine 2013 that's already 10 11 years old 2016. that's about seven to eight years old now and you have to keep in mind you got to pay your title tag registration dealer fees Etc so you have to add that on top of the prices that you're seeing here and as we all know interest rates absolutely suck so we can go back to the 2013 model years with less than uh 60 50 000 miles and yeah you can get them for around 20 grand now but 2013 like I said that's over a decade old now and at those ages you really have to be worried about rust as well so you have to check underneath the vehicle that's another thing I don't like about used cars interest rates is probably going to be 10 to 15 percent on cars like this even if you go through a credit union payments they're going to be close to 400 a month even on a 2013 twenty thousand dollar ES 350 and you got your taxes Insurance tire replacement costs you got to keep all of that in mind when you're buying one of these used vehicles and you're financing them not to mention those interest rates suck but even worse some banks might not even Finance cars this old I remember there was one bank that said they wouldn't finance a 2016 card because they said it was too old yeah it's it's not an ideal position to be in the other thing is these are pretty much the exact same prices pre-pandemic so three four years ago that's what these cars were trading for these same prices but back then they were three to four years newer with less miles but hey you want a nice twenty thousand dollar car this is what you're looking at it is what it is if you're gonna buy it it would be ideal if you can pay cash for it but I understand over 70 to 80 percent of this country is not able to do that so you're looking at around 400 dollars a month probably six to seven hundred dollars a month with insurance fuel tires Etc is there another way well we can talk about Alternatives next foreign [Music] we saw the prices of a used es honestly in today's market you know what I suggest most people to get a brand new 25 000 Corolla SC sedan I'm not trying to be facetious I really think that is the better deal in today's market because a lot of car dealerships they will offer you two or three percent interest rate if you do a 36 month Finance so you can get that 25 000 car paid off sooner you can maybe even negotiate a slight discount that would be in your best interest and a three to four year old Corolla it's pretty much going for over twenty thousand dollars anyway it's also going to get better fuel economy and you're driving around in a new car as opposed to a 10 or an 8 year old car you can take it a step further and you can just buy a base model Nissan Versa with a manual transmission that way nobody's going to steal it because first of all nobody wants a versa and second of all it's a manual so nobody can drive manuals that means nobody can steal your car plus that's still brand new and just to give you some context a 1995 Corolla used to start at around 13 dollars so for four grand more you can get a new Versa that's bigger safer faster it's I mean it's just better in every way compared to a 1995 Corolla for just four grand more after 30 years so everyone complaining about inflation well there you go you got a Nissan Versa that's brand spanking new that's beating inflation I never understood the hatred that Nissan has gotten because I want you to bring that same negativity and that same energy over to Honda as well because Hondas used to suck in the early 2000s their Transmissions would crap out on people as well but they never got the same scrutiny that Nissan got and I never understood that double standard and that hypocrisy from the card Community never made any sense to me but I digress so yes I recommend you just purchasing a new economy car I really think you're better off with that the other thing is well how much does a new ES350 cost thank you a new luxury trim level ES350 that's around 51 000 but I did partner with auto companion and he does offer eight percent off MSRP so you can get about four grand off of MSRP and if you lease it you get an additional two thousand dollars off so six thousand dollars off of MSRP but you still have to add back in your taxes titling dealer fees Etc probably another two thousand dollars so effectively you get to walk away with a new 51 000 R ES 350 luxury for forty seven thousand dollars out the door and when you lease the car well good news is as of August 2023 the interest rate on the ES350 luxury lease is very low two and a half percent leasing deals interest rates incentives all of that changes month after month so if you're watching this in the future these numbers can be drastically different but as of right now yeah two and a half percent it can be almost zero percent interest if you do a one pay lease so that's great for whoever can afford these payments you know around 700 a month month in three years you're going to spend about twenty five thousand dollars all of that is not quite Equity you know that twenty five thousand dollars that you're spending some of that includes interest and some of that also includes fees and taxes but over three years you've pretty much built over twenty thousand dollars worth of equity in this ES 350 and at the end of three years well you have the option of buying it out for twenty six thousand dollars this is why a lot of people think that leasing is a waste of money because you spend 25 Grand and you still don't own the car whereas if you bought one of these clapped out es 350s these used ones you could literally own the car outright in three years but what people need to understand is buying that used es especially if you finance it it can end up being quite costly because a twenty thousand dollar es that's still gonna depreciate in three years like you have an escaped depreciation it's still going to be worth less and if you happen to finance the car well the way financing works with new or used cars is banks are going to front load the interest meaning the bank make sure that they get paid first so if you finance the car for 60 or 72 months the first like three years of that loan you've made very little equity in the car the majority of your payments went towards interest that way when you stop making payments and they have to repossess the car and they have to auction it off they've already made their money and their profit they already got their interest and when they auction off the car after they repoed it from you well that's just icing on the cake for them so that's why Banks make so much money that's why they're so lucrative and that's why I've always promoted leasing especially the new car market at least lease the car for the first three years and then buy it out at the end because in the example of this lease you got over 20 grand worth of equity if you had Finance the same new 2023 es in the first three years you probably only have ten thousand dollars worth of equity if you're lucky and it's this front loaded interest with financing that causes so many people in the United States and around the world to be underwater in their cars and you tack on the fact that these are luxury cars and they tank harder than economy cars or pickup trucks well you just compounded the issue almost nobody has equity in their cars in the first three to four years so that keeps people in a negative equity Cycle Plus if you drive less than the uh the amount of mileage on the lease that you signed up for you might even have positive Equity I don't think that the used car market is going to be as strong as it is now in the future but let's just say that it is and you drive the car maybe only 15 000 miles in three years and the cars were thirty thousand dollars but the residual value is 26. you just made a four thousand dollar profit so you just reduce the cost of your lease by four thousand dollars and these are the things that literally no other car Reviewer is ever going to bother to share with you they don't care and quite frankly most of them don't even know about this stuff and they're definitely not going to talk to you about whole life insurance policies at least especially engineered ones not the trash that you go out and you purchase from State Farm or Allstate not one of those the ones that Dave Ramsey yells at everyone forgetting these are specially engineered this is what most wealthy people use to create cash value and you can take out loans from those policies and they have a simple interest attached to their loans so they can go out and buy one of these used es cars for twenty thousand dollars there is no credit checks there's none of that they're using their own money as collateral from their insurance policy and they're borrowing against the death benefit and they can buy their cars used and not worry about even paying back the loan you technically never even have to pay back policy loans from an insurance company but those are tricks that the wealthy use and most people they're not sophisticated enough to understand such Concepts so that's why I never go into too much details about that but I just want to open up your horizons and your perspective so you know what's possible out there especially with leasing I at least want people to understand this concept of leasing because people for a long time have been lease hacking cars and driving very expensive cars for a low monthly payment especially with Toyota Tacomas they would just least hack that and they would have positive Equity left over at the end of their lease and they would affect just keep driving new tacos not worry about repairs not worry about tire replacement not worried about creaky crunchy clapped out used cars eventually they even get paid to drive tacos so I just want people to be aware of what's really possible if they just think outside of the box and they just learn some of these Concepts but next I want to conclude and I want to share with you one last resource foreign [Music] we did a pretty in-depth coverage and we talked about some great resources on what you can use to check potential problems with the card through nhtsa and carcomplaints.com this generation of the es is very solid I like driving it I like the interior and it's not a problematic machine it's pretty reliable one of the few cars where I would suggest not even getting a warranty I would actually roll the dice on this one same thing with the Toyota Avalon of this generation 2013 to 2023 those are some great driving cars as well pretty much identical and feeling compared to the es it just doesn't quite have the same interior quality as the es but with current circumstances High interest rates High used car prices most banks not even offering financing on these cars because it's too old that's what some banks are saying and not too many certified pre-owned options out there either because again it's climbing in age so it's hard to recommend in today days economy I would rather most people just get a new Corolla a new Mazda 3 or a new Nissan Versa with the manual transmission but if you like this car you can pay cash for it go ahead I just want to share with you one last resource and that's edmunds.com they do a great job in showing you what's new for every model year and this is important because now you can see what each new model year has to offer 2015 was a good year because they enhanced the mark Levinson audio system which the ml audio is one of the best in the industry definitely worth getting in an es if you can find it if not not a big deal but they upgraded the ml audio to make digital audio tracks sound better 2016 like I mentioned the car got a subtle refresh and they also added some sound deadening materials to make the car a little bit quieter so I like 2016 2018 was the last model year and there was no new changes in 2018 so edmunds.com great resource I'll have Auto companions information in the description box as well if you want to purchase a new one at eight percent off and lease one with the low interest lease deals that they have going on I'm also going to have Auto companions free leasing calculator in the description box so you can run your own numbers on whatever car that you want so hopefully this information was valuable to you and hopefully now you can kind of see and understand my perspective on how I evaluate car deals and how I evaluate if something is good value or not and if you appreciate that make sure to like And subscribe because this is simply information that no other journalist will ever bother to share with you I just want to help and edify people and to let you know how car financing how car leasing and car buying really works so if you like that please consider supporting the channel thanks again for watching take care and goodbye

Channel: Meyn Motor Group

Views: 40,586

Keywords: Meyn Motor Group, Main Motor Group, Mein Motor Group, Lexus ES 350 Buyer's Guide, Lexus ES 350, Lexus ES 300h, Lexus ES 300h Hybrid, 2013 Lexus ES 350, 2014 Lexus ES 350, 2015 Lexus ES 350, 2016 Lexus ES 350, 2017 Lexus ES 350, 2018 Lexus ES 350, Lexus ES Reliability, Lexus ES Problems, Lexus ES Issues, Meyn Motor Group Lexus, Lexus ES Maintenance, Lexus ES Review

Id: dHdTGsnvjho

Length: 23min 3sec (1383 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 23 2023