BMW E90 Replacement time. Lexus IS & ES reliability?

Hello all,

It has come time to replace my wife's E90 BMW with something newer and more reliable than the 10 year old car.  She has a long commute with a lot of stop & go traffic as well as a lot of highway miles once past the core of the city.  We want a car that is at least as roomy as the old BMW with my son and a jumbo dog in the back, comfortable, reliable, and able to get out of it's own way when needed.

I was thinking that a CPO 2015 Lexus IS or ES with the 3.5 liter V6 might fit the bill nicely.  I have heard about the legendary reliability of the Lexus LS series with the V8, but do the smaller IS & ES live up to that as well?  It would be great if we could get 10 years out of this one like we did our last car. 

What do you think?  Is there a better solution we should be looking at?  I've heard to avoid CVT cars if you plan on keeping them for the long run.  Thanks in advance!

IS's are very small. ES's are probably sized right for your back seat passengers. 

Es is a Buick, nice but no fun, very different from an E90.  Very reliable.  

IS is smaller than the E90.

Maybe look at a GS if you want a Lexus.  Lexus hybrids with CVTs have no reliability issues.

I'll echo the above statements, IS's are small. We've had a few come through our dealership as used cars. The backseats are small, the drivers foot-well is extremely cramped from the trans tunnel from what I remember.

A coworker has both an IS (his wife's car) and an ES (his main DD).  Based on his experience and how often both cars are at the dealer for various annoyances, I would not consider a Lexus very reliable. At least no better or worse than a modern BMW.

These days, I would base a luxury car purchase on how convenient the dealer is to get to/from as much as the car itself.  All of the brands seem to be needy to some extent. 

In reply to Ian F :

Oh wow, that is a surprise.  I always see Toyota, Lexus, & Honda near the top of best used cars lists.

In reply to Ian F :

So... that's all it took to convince you huh? 

In reply to yupididit :

It's a nice car - but in that price range, they're all nice cars. I've just spent enough time around enough car brands to take all of the "best used cars lists" with a grain of salt to the point where I wouldn't use potential reliability as the main criteria upon which brand I'd buy. 

FWIW, in the case of his wife's IS, it was an engine defect that had the car out of service for quite awhile as the repair parts were back-ordered from Lexus. The dealer basically had to rebuild the engine.  It's been fine since, but it goes to show that even Toyota/Lexus are not above the occasional engineering "oops."

To close the loop on this, I ended up going with a brand new 2018 Accord EX-L with the 2.0 liter turbo and 10 speed automatic.  So far we love it!  It is a bit bigger than the old E90 (huge trunk) with much better mileage at the cost of being a bit softer and a tad bit down on power by comparison.  Hopefully we get great reliability and low operating costs out of it.  Thank you to everyone who provided their input!