[gt86mods]

I was never really happy with my 01 IS300, partly because it was auto and partly because it was so heavy and unbalanced. I did Greddy coilovers, Hotchkis sway bars & some subframe braces and still the car was very unpredictable at the limit. I autocrossed it a few times and it was rather quick but I never really enjoyed driving it that much. I had a lot of close calls in terms of oversteer on the street, luckily my reflexes were quick enough and I never had an incidents but since then I've driven a few BMWs and they all were very progressive at the limit and felt much more balanced.

I honestly think the IS300 is one of those cars that was trying to be too many things at once. Lexus took the balance out of the car by adding the big iron 3L to give it that "luxury" grunt Americans want. The 2JZ made it front heavy, it got terrible gas mileage, I averaged around 16 city driving spiritedly. In Japan the car came with a lighter high revving 2L inline 4, which gave the car better balance and I'm sure it was a better driving experience.

The 5 speeds are notorious for being weak and having long term issues, and I blew my auto trans at 50k miles...luckily it was covered under powertrain but overall it wasn't the best owning experience. It was in pretty mint condition and I sold it for 10k with 55k miles with a new transmission in it. I just wanted it gone. Don't mean to be a buzzkill but just figured I'd give my $.2 since I owned one for a couple years. They look fantastic and in terms of a daily I think they'd be great if they didn't guzzle so much gas, which I don't mind if the car is quick but even with intake, tune & exhaust they are slow. You have to boost them in order to get real power and that's a total headache.

Here's an old video from 07 from the first autocross I did with it, was fun but again...felt like a pig! Excuse the terrible video quality!

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