A pretty Lexus GS300, seen in the Chinese capital Beijing in 2016. The good Lexus looked great for its years. The dark black paint looked almost as new, and it was still fitted with the original gray six-spoke alloy wheels.
I remember the day I saw this car very well. At the time, Beijing was gripped by unusually heavy air pollution. The skies were dark-gray and we had the air-filtering machines running at full speed at home. You could smell the pollution, it entered your nose and mouth, and everything was covered in a gray-black substance. Our kids, and their friends, had battery-powered air filter masks on their faces. They looked like aliens. Well, the whole place seemed alien sometimes, like you were on a different planet. Most folks in our compound stayed at home as much as they could. But for me, it was just another exciting time in China. So I went out. I may share some pretty pollution pics later on, but for now, let’s focus on the Lexus.
The second-generation Lexus GS (S160) was manufactured from 1997 until 2005, with an update in 2000. Our black car is a post-update example. Amazingly, it was sold officially in China as an import. Sales of the GS300 model started in China in 2004, just one year before the all-new third-generation (S190) arrived. In the early 2000s, China’s luxury car market was just taking off. Locally-made cars, like the FAW-VW Audi A6 and the SAIC-GM Buick Regal, were the most popular cars in the luxury segment, but many import brands tried to get a piece of the pie too. Like Lexus!
The interior was in great shape! Typical Lexus with beige coloring and contrasting wood panels. The center stack is so brilliant compared to today’s cars: loaded with buttons and switches, and a sound system with a cassette player and a CD player. The owner of this car didn’t cover the seats with the ugly-but-protective seat covers we see on so many ars f this age.
The 300 badge. At first, I thought the badge was incomplete. But I was wrong. The vehicle was indeed sold as ‘300’ in China, without anything in front of after. The GS300 was a rear-wheel drive car. Power came from a 3.0-liter six-in-line engine, good for 223 hp and 298 Nm. The motor was mated to a five-speed AMT. The top speed was an impressive 230 km/h and 0-100 took 8.2 seconds.
Price in 2004: 550.000 yuan. That was steep compared to the local competition, so sales of the Lexus GS300 were slow. Even today, Lexus holds on to its import-only strategy. That worked in the early 2000s when luxury was still an ancient thing, but it is outdated today, with so many new Chinese car brands entering the luxury segment. So we won’t see many new Lexus cars on the rod anymore. And that makes this brilliantly conserved Lexus ES300 a cool and hopefully lasting rarity.