OH SO SEXY
INTERNATIONAL LAUNCH/ Mark Smyth travelled to Spain to experience the start of a new era for Lexus with its gorgeous LC500
The gorgeous LC500 marks the start of a new era for Lexus
Lexus. Boring. These are two words the president of Toyota and Lexus, Akio Toyoda, has promised will never be used in the same sentence again.
To achieve this, he approved production of the dramatic LFLC concept car, which was first shown at the Detroit Auto Show in 2012.
It was a brave decision. Four years ago, the company was making cars that competed not on style, but on value for money and specification.
Lexus has always struggled to rival Germany’s Audi, BMW and Mercedes. Not so much in the US, though, where it all began. Lexus means “Luxury Export to the US”, and in that country, they are everywhere.
The same will be true for the new LC, where the company expects to sell more than 400 a month in the US.
With a hefty price tag of $100,000, Lexus will be lucky to sell four a month in SA.
It will be a rare sight on our roads, but what a sight it will be. There are clear styling cues from the LF-A supercar, but generally there is a whole new design language at play.
We drove it in Seville and locals and tourists stopped to take selfies with it. Its dramatic and stylish design makes it the first Lexus that would win in a bragging contest against its German rivals.
There is no one design feature. Every aspect of the car is a design feature, from the large honeycomb grille to the L-shaped daytime running lights and the teardrop vents.
The side profile has perfect lines with a cockpit look on the top. At the rear, there are creases and lines everywhere, but not in a way that is overdone. It is, in one word, gorgeous.
The major departure in terms of design is carried over into the interior. Elements stand out more depending on the colour scheme, but there are futuristic folds in the door trims, luxurious leather sports seats that have a true GT feel about them and hand-stitched leather on the steering wheel and gear knob.
Just like a luxury British marque, Lexus is making a big deal of the fact that its master craftspeople work on hand-making many elements of the vehicle.
“If we kept working with the same rules as before, this car would never have come to life,” said Koji Sato, chief engineer for the LC.
He said one of the ambitions was to “create a car that captures the heart and challenges the soul”. It definitely captures the heart when it comes to design, but challenging the soul requires a car that is more than skin-deep.
It is the first Lexus to use the company’s new rear-wheel drive GA-L platform, or Global Architecture — Luxury. It features a new 10-speed automatic gearbox, the first in the world, and in the top specification model we will get in SA, there is also a fully mechanical Torsen differential and rear-wheel steering. The LC also has active suspension, with sensors inside the shock absorbers that can adjust up or down multiple times a second.
The new platform means the engine has moved further back to sit behind the front axle for better weight distribution, something also helped by moving the battery into the boot. The chassis, body shell and various components are made from carbon fibre, steel and aluminium for strength and lightness.
Internationally, there are two engine choices, including a hybrid, but that will not come to SA. Instead we will only get the all-out 5.0l V8 with its 348kW and 540Nm of torque.
The basic engine is from the IS-F and GS-F, but with changes, and the engine is old-school in that there are no turbos.
“For now, Lexus still believes you can’t beat a normally aspirated V8 for torque and sound,” said Stefan Ramaekers, senior technical trainer for Lexus. “How long we can keep to that I don’t know. Perhaps in the future we will have turbocharged engines, but for now there are no plans.”
He sees turbo-charging smaller engines as a compromise. “With downsizing, there is always compromise. You have to compromise, but with a flagship, you cannot compromise.”
That 10-speed gearbox is a direct-shift auto, with four planetary gears and a newly developed torque converter.
To test its credentials, we took to the Monteblanco Circuit, a technical track with lots of tight corners which really showed what the engineers have achieved.
The steering lacks real feedback but, strangely, this becomes irrelevant because it is so pinpoint-accurate.
The responsive engine generates a sound that makes you want to keep the windows open, particularly in Sport+, one of six driving modes.
The gearbox reacts like a dual-clutch transmission.
The level of grip is superb, but the traction control is a bit like an overprotective grandmother. In all-out mode, it still grabs the rear wheels a little too much. Fortunately, there is time to correct this and the engineers have promised to look into this before the car arrives here in the middle of 2017.
On the road, the LC provided a superb balance of being a sports car and a GT cruiser. It was comfortable — Lexus comfortable. The torque even allowed for overtaking in 10th gear, although the digital instrumentation occasionally failed to display a new gear number.
We were advised that these were preproduction cars and the fault would be fixed in the final versions.
Lexus says it is stacking the LC500 against models such as the BMW 650i, Jaguar F-Type and Mercedes S500 coupe, although we would add the Maserati GranTurismo too.
It is a driver’s car, but not as much as the F-Type. It beats the Beemer in design and selfie appeal, but the BMW and Merc are German and they beat it on badge status, no matter how much Lexus tries.
In spite of its price tag, it is desirable for so many reasons, not least its design and uniqueness. It marks a major new approach for Lexus and one that should filter down into other future models.
It’s all change at the company — and change has never looked so good.