In this episode of Marty Motoring, we meet up with 2006 IS 250 owner, Mike, and compare my 2007 IS 350 and our modifications to the 2nd gen Lexus IS. Thank you to Mike for making the drive!
In today’s video i meet up with an is250 owner and we compare it to my is 350 and show some of the mods for these cars hello and welcome to another episode of marty motoring today we’re going to be looking at the difference between the is 350 and the is 250 i’m here with the owner mike of the is 250 he drove down all the way here to meet me so we can make this
Video and yeah today we’re just gonna be kind of comparing our cars and builds and some of the differences between the is 250 and 350 in 2006 alexis released the second generation is and that was the 250 and the 350 the is 250 was available in all wheel drive or rear-wheel drive and you can get a six-speed manual or six-speed automatic transmission while the is 350
Was only available in a rear-wheel drive with an automatic transmission the is 350 came with 306 horsepower and a high compression 3.5 liter v6 and the is 250 has a 2.5 liter hence the name 250 v6 with 204 horsepower with both versions of the drivetrain so i’ve been getting a lot of questions on what are the differences between these cars and you know what’s the
Performance difference what’s the cost difference and today we’re just gonna look at some of that now both of these cars this is a 2006-2007 they were before the f sport line and before the isf before all of that lexus released the is line of the second generation and this is what you got i don’t think the f sport came out till about 2008 with the introduction of
The isf these were pretty much your options because the isf didn’t exist and these cars are both automatic but like i said the 250 did come in manual which is actually pretty rare for lexus they did that with the sc and the is but they pretty much don’t do that with any other models and of course the higher the horsepower is the more they like to stick to automatic
Transmissions so if you follow the channel you know that i have a megan racing start our bar and i have all my engine covers off i have the vip moto’s headlights the icon motorsports grill and i just put a stock emblem back on i think nikon motorsports makes this as well it’s just the blocked out plastic trim i’ve replaced my bumper and deleted the hid cleaners
Because you really don’t need those and a lip on the front here i am partially sponsored by option lab wheels so i’ve run an 18 by 8.5 in the front with a 225 tire and an 18 by 9.5 rear with a 245 stretch tire one of my more recent videos is the vlan taillight install so i’ll link that below you can check that out and i just kind of go through how i installed these
I think they look really good gives the car a very modern look for being a 2007 kind of looks more like the 2014’s and i also have this spoiler lip wing whatever you want to call it and it just kind of gives it a nice little push in the back i have the roof spoiler here and i have the f sport version one axle back and sounds really good and of course three-fitty
Because mine’s a d badge 350 and i just got to let people know you are one pathetic loser just real quick in the interior i have the luxury package so i have some seat settings in the nav but we’re gonna compare it to the 250 and kind of see the differences so mine is the luxury package 350 it’s kind of one of the more expensive 350 s when it was new of course mine
Is very used with almost 160,000 miles on it today we’re gonna be looking at the is 250 this is a base model and the owner mike has done some work to it so we’re gonna check that out so as you can see our cars have very similar fitment and setup mike actually has megan racing coilovers on his is 250 where i just have springs but in the engine bay here similar to
My car i have the megan racing and strut tower bar here’s the cusco i believe it said this is a little bit different style cusco versus megan racing strut tower bar i think this one probably is a little more expensive but it does the job a little better being thicker and it probably breeze this one limit with springs is you can’t adjust the dampening it is what
It is where with coil overs you can do that and that is an option here and you can dial that in exactly to your liking with the is line you can get different headlights of course these are stock ones these cars come with halogen or you can upgrade with certain models and trims you can get the hid this is just the factory set up one upgrade i’ve been contemplating
And thinking about and i think definitely helps with handling is the rear strut tower bar and that this one is also by cusco yeah yeah so that definitely helps with handling some more megan racing parts to go along with the coil overs are the adjustable sway bars and you can see there blue there and there’s another shadow the fitment very similar to my car these
Cars just have a very wide body to them kind of has a little flare in the fender area and it just looks really good with the right wheel and fitment mike has put these avid dot one wheels on here i was actually looking at these same wheels before i got the partial sponsorship from option lab i think they look really good they have a nice concave and they fit
These cars really well another thing you might have noticed is the tint so this is about a 5% tint this is a california car so you kind of need that for the heat and sun where my car is just thirty five and you can kind of see through it so coming inside the car with the 250 you guys if you watch the channel i’ve seen the inside of my car at the nav these are just
Leather seats without preparation for the heating and cooling but they still look just as bowls tree and comfortable and it’s alexis you get the leather and then that is how the non navigation stereo looks and so either you get a screen or you get this set up here so something i noticed is the gas and trunk buttons are two smaller buttons in the same column here
Where with my car it’s a little different and here we are in the 350 you can see the gas and trunk buttons are a little different that’s kind of the only thing besides the senator navigation area that i really realized with the 250 i do have the voice button too on the steering wheel i think that and the call and everything like that but that’s part of the luxury
Package with the navigation so i’m sure a lot of the 250s can come with that it’s just how these are set up so there it is the 250 and the 350 of course we both have our own mods and style with it but let’s hop in the car and see how they perform so as you can see the is250 does keep up with the 350 but the 350 pulls away because it’s a hundred and something more
Horsepower which makes sense they have the same gearing and same transmissions we both have the six-speed automatic it keeps up but the 350 just pulls and that’s exactly what we expected the 3/5 is just a little bit faster and of course then they came out with the isf and smoked both of these cars so there you have it that’s the difference between the 2.5 litre v6
And the 3.5 liter v6 with high compression which gives it that horsepower both of these cars handle really well with the modifications we’ve done of course roll racing isn’t the best way to see the difference but given that we had similar transmissions and just difference in horsepower and similar setups with our cars it was a pretty accurate way to test now 0 to
60 on these cars i think the is 250 is like 6 or 7 seconds and the is 350 is under 5 in that range it you know there are there are a lot of variables but that was a real-world test here so you might be wondering which one’s more worth it well it just really depends on what you need what you do that’s a daily they’re both great one has a little bit more horsepower
And uses a little bit more gas so that’s a cost the factor in there the 250s you can pick up cheaper than the 350s obviously and it just depends on your needs and once for your car there are two examples of what you could do with your is 250 or 350 you have to run 93 in these cars 93 octane of course in some other states you might only have 91 other countries you
Probably don’t even have the 350 you just have the 250 and 300 in pennsylvania we have 93 octane and that’s what you’re supposed to run in these cars the is 350 s direct and port injected while the is 250 s only direct injected and people have mentioned there are carbon buildup issues and that would be the reason but if you just redline it here and there it’ll just
Clear it out so you may have noticed in this video that the is 250 looks a lot cleaner and shinier than my is 350 that is because john at keystone power washers clean this all up so shout out to him for cleaning the is 250 up it’s very shiny looks great and he is located in milton pa so so check out keystone power washers if you’re in that area so that’s about it
For this video if you found it helpful hit that like button give me a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel for more lexus videos in the future be sure to follow me on instagram at marty motoring thanks for mike for coming out and driving all the way here with his is 250 so we can make this video and once again thanks for watching marty motoring where we’re not
Afraid to leave a little rubber on the road
Transcribed from video
Lexus IS 250 versus IS 350 (2nd Generation, RWD) By Marty Motoring