A Lexus LS400 sedan with black license plates, seen on a small car repair area in north Beijing in 2015. The good Lexus was covered with a thick layer of dust but it didn’t seem abandoned. It was painted in wine red and had its original allow wheels on.
I have seen this a lot of times on car markets in China, and also in some older areas of towns: wet shoes being drying on the bonnet of a vehicle, wrapped in paper towels. I was told people put it there because the car gets very hot in the sun and will thus ‘steam’ the water out of the shoes and into the towel.
The first generation Lexus LS400 (XF10) was made from 1989 until 1994. Power came from a super smooth 4.0 V8 engine with an output of 250 hp and 353 Nm, good for a 250 km/h top speed and a 0-100 of 8.5 seconds. Gearbox was a 4-speed automatic, sending horses to the rear wheels.
The famous black license plates were issued to foreign owned companies from the 1980’s to the mid 00’s. These companies could buy a car locally or import one. There were no limits on the number of cars or on price or on engine type. The numbering started at A·00001 and then up. So the lower the number the older the car. Each province and municipality had its own black-license plate program. This Lexus LS400 has 京A·10082, so that’s a pretty early one.
The first generation Lexus LS400 was not officially sold in China but quite a few cars arrived via gray imports, diplomatic channels, or, like this car, via the foreign-owned company way. Lexus only started selling the LS officially in China in 2004, with the updated Lexus LS430.