This 2003 Lexus SC430 popped up on my Facebook wall recently. 93,000 on its digital ticker with an asking price just a tick or two under $17,000. Certainly, no bargain but it appears to be in great shape and if it's bolted and glued together like my wife's 1995 SC400, which it more than likely is, it'll run forever too.
The SC430 replaced the SC400 in 2001 and was quite the stylistic departure. My feelings were mixed about the fairly substantial update Lexus made to the SC for 1997 and they're even more mixed with these things. From some angles, like this one, is fabulous. Others not so much. Allegedly, Toyota sent designers on an all-expense paid soiree to the French Riviera in hopes of design inspiration. And this is what they came up with. All SC430's were "hard-top, clam-shell" convertibles that look amazing with their tops up. Top down is a different story.
Top up this rivals, dare I say, my beloved 1992-1996 SC400's which in my opinion have a beauty, purity and simplicity to them that few cars of the era did. Actually, any era if you want to be honest. Fun fact, for 1995, Lexus updated the SC enough that save for the hood, roof and trunk, no body panels are interchangeable between '92-'94 SC's and '95-'96 models. That's the reason fixing our car is so challenging; there just aren't parts out there for it. New or used.
With the top down they look like an old bath frumpy tub. The car is too thick and the belt line's too high too. It's a look and you either get it or you don't. Again, with the top up this a beautiful car. Top down, well...here in the Cleveland, Ohio area it's not that the top would be down that often anyway.
But the interior is to die for. Sure, tech-wise it's as dated as watching network TV but it's just gorgeous. I want to smush my face into that leather and slobber all over it so I can taste it. The color is delicious.
The back seat on our '95 is a cramped affair but once you're back there it's fine for short jaunts. This thing I'm not so sure any adult could feel comfortable in for any amount of time. Somehow insurance company's believe cars like this are 2+2's.
Reviews of SC430 were mixed. It's not that this is by any means not a good automobile, it's just that it wasn't the watershed of design, performance and refinement the original SC was. A lot of that had to do with the SC430's curb weight of nearly 3,900 pounds - not that our SC is a light weight at more than 3,600 but weight being the enemy and all, the added horsepower and torque of the SC430's larger engine were all but negated. That's saying something considering it has fifty more horsepower and sixty-five more foot-pounds of torque than our car has. Five speed automatic vs. our four speed as well.
There's also something "old" about the design. Sometimes I feel like an alta-cocker driving my wife's car, but it has a cool "90's vibe", as our twenty-five-year-old son calls it, that this "less old" SC430 doesn't have. It's a far more contemporary design and has aged so well most people would never know this car is nineteen years old. 2003 couldn't be nineteen years ago, could it? That said, though, expensive looking convertibles that aren't out and out sports cars do have a tendency to make their drivers look like they're visiting from Boca Raton.
I had made arrangements to test drive this, but I didn't make the appointment. In the end I couldn't make the value proposition work for me - mileage is too high and the cost is a good $5,000 more than I think reasonable. Perhaps $7,500. It still pops up on my Facebook wall three, four weeks later telling me that a lot of people may feel the same way.
*Alta Cocker is a Yiddish phrase to describe an older person, frequently a man
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