Hello. Southern California resident here. And I have recently become the owner of a 2008 Silver EX35. I have most of the options, except for that around view system. My previous car was a pearl white 2003 G35 coupe, 6 spd and 20 inch wheels. I loved that car and would have kept it longer. But alas, at 113k miles it started burning oil. At my final oil change (after 3200 miles), I was short about 1.5-2.0 qts of oil. The car still ran fine, but I decided to look for a new car before the G35 really started giving me problems. At first, I was looking for a new 2011 vehicle. Some of the vehicles at looked at were the Hyundai Tucson, VW Tiguan, Chevy Equinox, and the Subaru WRX. I was really close to ordering the new MINI Cooper Countryman. But the poor car reliability reputation that MINI had scared me off. Ultimately, I went with the '08 EX35 because nice interior, the tech goodies, and the sweet engine. To get a comparable '11 vehicle, I would have needed to spend lots more. And now, on to my impressions of the EX35:
1. Love the interior and tech stuff
2. A much smoother/quieter ride than I had in my G35. I'm sure my 20" wheels factored in on that.
3. I got 18.1 mpg on my first refill. This is the manually calculated figure, not the figure from the car computer. I was expecting a little higher. Now on my second tank, I'm driving a little more conservative. I wanna see how much that helps.
4. 17 inch rims are way too small for me. I see myself upgrading the wheels in the not too distant future. I'm leaning toward 19" because that's the size on the '11 cars. By the way, does anyone know what the offset on the 19" OEM wheels are? I'm searching for aftermarket wheels that match OEM wheels as close as possible.
5. Not too many EX35 owners mod their vehicles. I've browsed through this forum for ideas on rims, but I didn't come across too many examples.
6. I miss driving manual. I've been driving manual for 15 straight years. It feels weird driving an automatic. And the tiptronic shifter isn't really doing anything for me.
That's all I have to say now. If you managed to read through my entire rant, wow.... you must have been really bored.
Except for tinted windows, my car is bone stock. So if I ever do some mods to it, I'll post up here.
bye for now.
QL