Well, I took the GX in this morning. Had a new to me service writer who understood everything about the clunk, and wrote up the service order for new driveshaft and control arms. Picked it up about 8 hours later, and it finally drives like a Lexus should.

Other problem was the sunroof. The auto open and close feature to the switch had quit working. Also, the automatic position changing of the wind deflector had quit as well. Neither the service writer or the tech who worked on the car knew the wind deflector had this feature, and it took a trip to the owner's manual to make it clear. Seems the wind deflector feature is tied into the switch, and reprogramming the switch solved both problems.

Finally, evething that was a problem with the vehicle at delivery 34,000 miles ago is resolved. The rear AC problem took 25,000 miles, and the tire inflation indicator light problem took 20,000 miles to solve.

I honestly don't think I'll ever buy another Lexus. I'll likely go back to BMW. I've had good experiences with my local bimmer dealer, from whom I bought an 86 5-series 20 years ago. It has 225,000 miles and is still going strong. It required a new driveshaft after only 195,000 miles!

My brother and one of my co-worker both drives late model BMWs, their cars are in the shop every 3-4 months. If only thing you change on your 86 BMW is the driveshaft after 225,000 miles, you must have a one of a kind BMW. I bet BMW would buy that car back from so they can use it for R&D.

See, Lexus/Toyota had a little design flaw with their driveshafts, and control arms so it caused the commonly known "clunk". Now think of it this way, at least Toyota tried their best to find a solution (this is like their 5th or 6th attempt, and I've been thru all of those attempts) and they hit the jackpot this time. Other car companies won't even go to this extent to find a fix, especially if it's not a safety issue. So we should all give Lexus credit for trying all these years to finally come up with a permanent fix.

Now as for your sunroof issue, you can fix that yourself. I don't remember what page in the manual it is in, but all you have to do is,

1. Put the sunroof in closed position.
2. Tilt the sunroof open
3. Hold the "tilt" down (even if the window's already tilted) and wait for a few seconds.
4. The moonroof should close half way down
5. Finally, try it.

It's not at all unusual for the 1982-1988 BMW 5 series (Model e28) to be running well at 200,00-300 miles. I understand the newer models are less reliable and shorter-lived.

Check out the following to site for more information about the BMW e28.

mye28 web page

Roadfly

The old BMW are more relieable because it has less electronics, but they are still troublesome when compare to Toyotas. Its usually nothing major, but bunch of little things that breaks. Believe me, people dont buy BMW because of their reliabilty, they buy it for performance. In fact, some people might even consider BMW to be a high maintenance vehicle.
I agree with denslexusgx470, at least Lexus try to fix the problem. I remember reading a BMW forum about how the BMW 5 series XI had the same clucking problem and BMW didnt even try to fix it. They re-design it at the next model re-design.

I almost forgot to add that Toyota came up with this permanent fix for the GX. Guys in the 4Runner forum are having a difficult time convincing their dealers to use the GX's TSB for the same problem in the 4Runner. At least you really get your money's worth with Lexus for paying $15k more for a GX instead of a 4Runner. Eventualy they will get to the 4R owners but at least they put Lexus as their Priority.