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Hi
Hi, I am an American service member living in Germany. I have a 40 mile round trip to work with about 95% of it on the Autobahn. I drive a 2007 Lexus IS 250 with a manual trans, the crazy thing is the automatic cars get better mileage than the manual. The car is rated for 29mpg on the highway, I mean autobahn.
Anyway, I am getting 31 to 32 on a warm day going back and forth to work at about 65mph. I replaced the stock 18 inch wheels with 17's removing almost 50 pounds from the drive train. I also blocked off the huge rear grill, pulled back the rear view mirrors. I removed the spare tire, removing another 35 pounds from the car. I also changed out the stock air filter and intake pipe to a K&N filter and a aluminum intake tube, which makes a nice warm air intake and I run synthetic 5w-20 engine oil.
My future plan is to replace the very heavy stock drive shaft with a light weight carbon fiber unit. Install a light weight battery, the stock one is almost 50lbs. Change out all the fluids to synthetic and finish what the factory started by extending the stock belly pan from the back of the oil pan all the way to the rear of the car. I would also like to change out the final drive gear, its 3.73 to the European IS gear ratio of 3.00 to drop the RPM's while driving on the autobahn. Right now the car sits at 2500rpm at 65 mph, kind of high for a V6. I am also debating about putting on rear wheel skirt, but I really think the car will look silly. Also the stock cd is .28 according to the Lexus home page.
Anything else I should think of doing?
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