The interior is restrained but tasteful. Lexus will offer seat coverings in 12 shades of leather or 10 alternate hues of Alcantara, with three color choices for the Alcantara headliner. The supportive bucket seats have eight-way power adjustments, and the driving position is superb. Alter the vehicle settings, and the large central tachometer, which also incorporates a digital speedometer and a gear indicator, changes appearance.
Pressing the display switch on the steering wheel causes the tach to appear to scoot sideways in the instrument panel. This opens a submenu that allows the driver to access features such as a lap timer and even to change the point at which warning lights appear on the tach. Lexus claims a 0-tomph time of 3. Besides a Top Fuel dragster, of course. The engine is stunning, providing massive thrust from rpm and zinging upward to the rpm redline.
The V is so flexible that the driver can deposit the car in sixth gear at relatively low speeds—say 50 mph—floor the throttle, and the car will rocket to mph in a hurry. Use the full nine grand through the gears, though, and the soundtrack is unforgettable, as is the rate that the scenery and other cars close in. The shifts are smooth and eye-blink quick in manual mode but become a bit clunky in the automatic setting.
This is the case with most single-clutch automated manuals. When the tach needle approaches redline, the gauge glows red and there are all sorts of overwrought bleeps and bings. For all that, the most impressive aspect of the car is its stability at speed. We saw just over mph out on the Ring and somewhat lesser speeds on the autobahn , and even then, the thing feels as planted as a sequoia the great tree, not the lumbering SUV. The brake pedal, too, is linear and rewarding, while the carbon-ceramic brakes are sensational.
Out on the Nordschleife, even in sport mode, the stability-control system intrudes earlier than we expected, making it difficult to rotate the car into corners with power. But turn off the stability control, and the LFA comes alive.
Too little throttle, and the car noses wide; dial in the right amount, and the attitude is neutral. The car does everything instantly, with hardly any body roll and loads of grip. In many ways, its closest natural rival is the Ferrari GTB , although the Lexus is more visceral and exciting and better balanced and more nimble. At the same time, the LFA is easy to drive at everyday speeds, quiet at cruise, and refined, just like a Lexus should be. Whether people can equate the brand with a hugely expensive, hugely competent sports car will be interesting to say the least.
Exotic features of this engine include titanium valves and connecting rods, individual throttle bodies for each cylinder, carbon- and silicon-coated rocker arms with integrated oil jets, and magnesium alloy cam covers.
This was possibly an upgrade more suited to Lexus collectors or aficionados, or perhaps someone who felt the standard LFA just wasn't quite quick enough. This included a larger front chin spoiler, added canards, and a GT-style wing in place of the retractable spoiler from the base version.
There was also a slight increase in power from hp to hp. One large reason the LFA was so iconic and bespoke was due to the fact that Lexus only made LFAs in total , with around of these being built with a US configuration. It's truly Lexus's best example of what can be achieved with years of craftsmanship and dedication.
This also shows why the car is so unique and so completely customizable as they aren't produced at a volume comparable to other supercars even let alone your run-of-the-mill family saloon car. It should be clear now that the LFA is not your standard supercar and is much more special than that.
So much so that the car is completely bespoke, and each part was made specifically for the LFA alone. This included the engine, as spoken about earlier, as well as every single body panel as well as the Toyota developed chassis. There was a little mechanical compromise to deal with, meaning Lexus saw no need for adaptive dampers, and instead utilizing coil-over dampers attached to front double wishbone suspension and a multilink rear axle.
Lexus's reputation, before creating the LFA, was for making well-made and more conventional sedans. These always had nice interiors with decent materials but were never all that exciting. As expected, Lexus went all out with the interior on the LFA. They also had bucket seats in slip-resistant Alcantara rather than leather.
Aesthetically unlike any other Lexus, the LFA artfully integrated the infotainment and controls into a striking sweeping center console, while the infotainment screen itself was cleverly hidden away. The materials included milled aluminum and magnesium for the switchgear and indicator stalks, polished carbon fiber for the steering wheel, and soft leather for the sculptural seats and dash-top.
All things considered, the LFA is a fairly special one-of-a-kind creation when put up against almost any road car to date. This came at quite a cost for Lexus because the LFA took years of development before its introduction to the world. In fact, the LFA began its development process all the way back in and wasn't completed until a whole decade later, in The LFA name first appeared in , with Lexus revealing the first LF-A concept car at the Tokyo motor show, the initial LF-A concept was visually close to the eventual production car, even sharing the same surfacing quality.
It was no doubt in these sessions that chief test-driver Hiromu Naruse accumulated more seat-time around the Nordschleife than any other Japanese driver at that time. The same carbon fibre reinforced plastic CFRP material that was so instrumental in the construction of the LFA was used in the forming of attractive but highly functional aerodynamic components. These included a larger front chin spoiler that created a sharper division between the air being directed under and over the car.
Its upward curvature into corner winglets not only generated downforce to improve grip and steering feel across the front axle but helped to channel the air more cleanly down the sides of the vehicle. Canards enhanced these functions in the same way that a bi-plane generates more lift and greater manuverability than a monoplane aircraft. Nevertheless, this relatively small measure was not enough to overcome the additional drag of the aerodynamic enhancements combined. These were complimented by a choice of three interior colour schemes: black and red, black and purple, and all-black.
When that exhilaratingly fast lap was set in August , almost seven years after the first LFA prototype lapped the Nordschleife, it represented the fastest recorded time for a road-legal production car. Presented in the tasteful monochromatic formula of white paintwork and all-black interior, this significant piece of Lexus history was adorned with a simple plaque that identified it as Your email address will not be published.
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