- What the heck? Several drivers of new Lexus SUVs are complaining of odd trim damage
- For one Arizona owner, it’s taken the form of the side mirrors showing unexplained heat damage
- Could all this allegedly melting trim be from the sun reflecting off a mirrored surface?
Buyers tend to enjoy it when they snag a hot deal on a new car — just maybe not quite this hot. Some owners of the tony new Lexus GX are sharing photos of their expensive SUVs apparently being damaged simply by sitting in the sun.
According to photos posted by Paul Yelton on a Lexus GX 550 Owners & Enthusiasts group on Facebook, Yelton’s new GX has suffered what appears to be heat-related damage to its sideview mirror. The images show a deformed and discoloured mirror cap, the forward-facing plastic part comprising the mirror’s housing.
Closeups show a warped surface, almost melted as if the material was exposed to extreme heat for an extended period of time. A separate GX owner, from a different part of the country, chimed in on the original post with a tale of similar damage.
Cursory internet searching turned up a Facebook profile under the Paul Yelton name, also living in Arizona and posting about the off-road capabilities of their GX Overtrail. But, unlike some other examples, there is no evidence of hard use or mistreatment on that Yelton’s part, including the off-road wheeling of a Rivian R1S about one year ago.
A person of the same name is listed as owner of an outfit called Arrowhead Cabinets in Arizona. Google Street View shows it as a business outside of which there are numerous highly reflective windows facing the parking lot, which is not unusual for Arizona, but may offer pause-for-thought in terms of the GX’s misshapen trim.
Some buildings, like the so-called ‘Walkie Talkie’ skyscraper in London, have inadvertently caused similar vehicle damage thanks to a freak alignment of the sun and its windows causing a focused refraction of heat. That being said, Yelton claims the damage happened during a stretch when the truck was parked in his driveway, as reported by The Drive.
Because your writer has inexplicably chosen to live on a rock jutting out into the cold Atlantic Ocean, the long-range forecast for this location predicts precisely no sunshine at all in the next seven days, so there will be no opportunity to examine local GX models in person for similar damage. Instead, we’ll keep our ear to the ground through online media and update this post with follow-up information if required.
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