Hello everyone and welcome in this video we are checking out the 2016 Lexus IS 200 T.
Now I have already tested the Lexus IS 250 last year and so we're going to be talking about the good,
the bad, and the ugly in comparison to the Lexus IS 250 as well as the Lexus IS 350
now the major change from the 250 to the 200T is of course the engine so
instead of the 2.5 Liter V-6 it now has an inline four-cylinder 2 Liters and
its turbocharged rather than naturally aspirated. The new engine produces 241
horsepower versus 204 and 258 pound-feet of torque from just 1650 rpm
so a lot of torque very early on. As a result of this the 0-60 has gone down
from 7.7 seconds to 6.9 seconds so there has been an improvement in performance.
Now some of the other benefits of the IS200 over the previous generation is that
now it carries over the brakes from the IS 350 so you've got larger brakes and it also
carries over the eight-speed transmission rather than the previous
six speed transmission. Finally the new turbocharged engine is more efficient
and so it's now returning 22 in the city
33 miles per gallon on the highway so an added benefit with the fuel economy as
well as being quicker so you can't really complain about that I did fuel
economy run it did 33 miles per gallon in my own testing which was primarily highway.
So we've covered the good moving on to the bad and I mentioned that this
now has the brakes from the IS350 which is great because it has larger
brakes that have been carried over both the front and the rear. Now the reason
for that however is unfortunate because this vehicle now weighs just 10 pounds
less than the IS350 so it got a 2 liter engine vs 3.5 liter V-6 and yet
there's only a 10 pound difference this car weighs 3583 pounds so pretty hefty
car all things considered you know it's got a 2 liter under there and it's
still weighs that much
and literally no different I mean just 10 pounds from the IS350 so even though
it has better fuel economy and its faster it is heavier. Now another
difference versus the 350. So the price difference isn't all that big it's
about a $3,500 price jump to go from the IS200 which starts around 37,000
versus the IS350 which starts at around 40,000. And the crazy thing is
that's not that big of a jump and you get a lot more performance for that
three and a half grand. The crazy thing though is if you go for the F-Sport so
I'm currently in the IS200T F-Sport and that starts at the exact same price the
exact same price as the IS350 starts at. And so you know if you're going for
performance, sportiness as the name implies F-Sport, you would think you
probably want a little bit more power and so I can't think of a good reason
why you would want to go with the IS200T F-Sport versus the IS350 aside from
fuel economy. Now it's gonna be a little bit better fuel economy but aside from
that the cars weigh the same. One has a lot more power so obviously it's going to be
more fun to drive so my pick would be the IS350 and that's kind of the bad news
about this vehicle as far as IS 200 T F-Sport and its just because the price is the
exact same as the base IS 350. So we've covered the good we've covered the bad
and now lets get ugly. Now looks are a matter of opinion it's a purely
subjective thing and I don't typically like talking about that but I do think this
is a genuinely good looking vehicle I was trying to find something that I
thought we could all agree on
that wasn't very attractive about it and I think even the engine cover on this
vehicle looks good which is saying something because I really don't like
engine covers but I thought it looked good on this car I think the one thing that I
was able to pick out is the front license plate bracket, didn't look
attractive and you know that's kind of obviously nitpicking and that is to say
this is a gorgeous car I think it genuinely does look really good.
One feature in the future that
you may want to avoid is the heated steering wheel because if you get into a
car with a heated steering wheel you're never gonna wanna drive anything else
it's so nice to have a heated steering wheel especially if you have like super
long lanky arms where blood flow never reaches your hands and so they're always
frozen and then you can put them on this nice warm steering wheel and then you go
back to your Subaru and you're thinking like aww man and I wish this thing had a
heated steering wheel it's really a luxury to have heated steering and I
always get kind of bummed when I drive cars without it now and that's very sad
because it's like how ridiculous of a creature comfort is it have a heated
steering wheel like something to heat your hands because they're cold while
you're driving but it's an amazing feature and if you can find one with it
yeah you should definitely go for it
now this vehicle does come with paddle shifters so you can change gears on your
own. Something that I've noticed with all Lexus is that I'm driven and this is a
transmission which I have used before in another Lexus they're just slow to you know
shift gear so the delay between pressing the button and the gear shift
actually occurring is fairly long and the shift itself honestly isn't even that
smooth so you know it feels best if you just leave it in automatic mode and let
it do the shifting but you know it's kind of fun to shift to yourself and
sometimes going down hills and things like that you may want to do it anyways
so I understand that. Uh the upshift there's actually pretty quick I think it's the downshifts
where you kind of get a long delay and maybe there's some logic built-in where
you want to be on the brakes and then it does a little quicker versus if you're
just randomly selecting between them.
Lots of people hiking today in Oregon it's a beautiful sunny day for once and I'm on
summer tires it's like hey things have worked out actually speaking of the
tires this thing has the sticker on the side that says that the tires may only
last for 15,000 miles
so you know a lot of grip on the tires that have come here and they just I
guess shred off fairly quickly. Now as far as the engine there's actually
really noticeable turbo lag and that's interesting to me basically what happens
when you get into the boost how it works is you floor it and then you get very
close to atmospheric very quickly so you hit atmospheric pressure with full
throttle and then you wait a little bit you get kind of slammed initially when
you put your foot down as it hits atmospheric then you wait a little bit
and then it goes almost to peak boost very quickly so when you do put your
foot down it's kind of like this two-step process where first you get
full atmosphere and then you get full boost and its kind of like a boom and then boom again
which is it's a weird sensation there's a very clear turbo lag there in the
engine. I have been impressed with the sound system in here it is not the Mark
Levinson which I would recommend upgrading to because all the cars
which I've had with that Mark Levinson audio
they've just sounded phenomenal the base audio was actually pretty decent but one of
the things I really admire about Lexus as a company is their Mark Levinson
audio systems throughout their line and it's just an incredible experience with
those speakers and the way they tuned it in the amplifier I don't know how it's
done but it sounds amazing that audio system. Coming into some corners
here this steering does feel good in sport mode I actually do like it it's got
a good weight to it its actually a pretty heavy steering overall and then in sport
mode it reduces the amount of assists so it's even heavier
and it does have a nice feel to it builds as you come into the corners not too
much body roll and these tires do have a great amount of grip because
they're shredding off I guess the only have fifteen thousand miles of life in them but
it definitely does kind of come alive in these corners here even though it is
a really heavy vehicle the turbos, bit of fun, rear wheel drive and the ability to
manually shift. Actually pretty flat through these corners
All right now we're going to test out the 0-60 so I've got it in
manual shift mode I've got the traction control completely disabled we're gonna
come to a stop
we've got great conditions excitingly so hopefully this will be a good time
put it down into first gear foot on the brake foot on the gas let off in about
2,000 rpm
little late on that shift there
And 60 it does have two shifts to get to 60 so that's going to take up a little bit of
time shifting gears and I could have done a little bit better with the first
gear shift I waited a little bit too late but not too much it just hesitated
a little bit there at redline. So overall we'll see what that comes out to. Driving
on the highway
its actually decently quiet I measured earlier going at about 65 about 75
decibels which is on par with the last IS 250 which I tested so decently quiet in
here you do here at a decent amount of road noise from the tires they're not
too much wind noise and overall you know it's quiet in here so you can hold a
conversation anything like that without too much worrying. So thank you guys for
watching and if you have any questions or comments feel free to leave those below.