LE’XCITEMENT
Lexus is following the “No boring cars” edict to the T with their gleaming new hybrid offering
Said the big boss Akio Toyoda and the transformation, the radicalisation, the absolute banishment of watch-the-paint-dry dullness has a new poster boy in the LC500h
THE LC 500H HAS A TEN SPEED GEARBOX. And I spent an entire dinner with the LC’s chief engineer, over an orgasm of flavours crafted by a Michelin-starred purveyor of food porn, attempting to understand how a gearbox can be both a CVT as well as a torque converter. It is, what you’d call, peak Japan — a culture that celebrates an obsession with perfection that borders on the clinically OCD. The boss said no boring cars so our designers will curve and slash every single panel; our testers will spend their days thrashing round the Nurburgring; and our engineers will cause indigestion in anybody attempting to understand the workings of the drivetrain. A good thing, then, that the dinner stretches to ten courses. We need the time to understand why. Why not just a regular 10-speed? Why not a twin-clutch? Why is there no beef on the menu?
I’ll come to all that in a bit. First, wow, look at the LC will you. To be honest I think Lexus design is a bit extreme, especially its cheese-grater grille, but there’s no denying this LC is ridiculously stunning. You shamelessly ogle at it, tripping over the delicious details that crawl all over the car. The front wings swoop incredibly low over the wheels, so much so that to accommodate the suspension top mounts they had to be angled inwards. The triple LED headlamps are wonderfully compact with tears then dripping into the bumpers. The taillamps spell excess in three dimensions. The door handles sit flush with the sculpted bodywork. And the spindle grille, where no two apertures are of the same size, must have taken thousands of hours to design. In India the LC 500h will only be available in the Sport trim which gets concept car-like 20-inch wheels, a carbon roof and a deployable rear spoiler, all of which add to the drama, to the sense that this is a very, very expensive car. Which is a good thing because, going by current form, Lexus India isn’t going to hand over much change from two crore rupees when it arrives early next year.
Step inside and there’s that similar sense of a very expensive and very well put together car but the detailing is a mixed bag. The gorgeous aluminium door handles seemingly float against an Alcantara backdrop but then the indicator stalk looks and sounds like a regular Toyota. The central rev counter slides sideways to reveal an additional dial for g-forces, the trip computer or which among the ten gears you’re in, but then there’s that infuriating touch pad for the infotainment. The seats are incredibly comfortable but getting even kids to sit at the back is going to be an impossible ask. The Mark Levinson sound system is fabulous but what’s more stunning is the silence.
Press the start button and there’s a synchronised light and sound show on all the displays but the drivetrain silence is overwhelming. It starts off on pure electric power, and quite smartly at that. There’s also an EV mode button that will use only electric power as long as reserves are there, though I should hasten to add that this is not a plug-in hybrid and you won’t get much full-electric range. Depress the throttle more than half way and the V6 motor kicks in without a shudder; the refinement is impeccable. Floor it and the gearbox goes down half a dozen cogs and the LC gets a proper move on.
STEP INSIDE AND THERE’S A SIMILAR SENSE OF A VERY EXPENSIVE AND VERY WELL PUT TOGETHER CAR
BACK TO OUR DINNER. OUR CHOPSTICKS might be sending us on out-of-body experiences but our job demands we understand how this gearbox works. Mid way through, chief engineer Muto-san grabs a pen and paper and by the time the delectably rare lamb arrives we’ve finally got it.
The engine, as with all Toyota hybrid powerplants, runs on the more efficient Atkinson cycle and in the Toyota universe all those engines are mated to a CVT gearbox to enable the pure EV mode — just like the Camry hybrid or the ES. But a CVT doesn’t have
the breadth of a regular torque converter for a sporty application, nor can the rubber-band effect be banished altogether. And so the torque output from the 3-speed CVT is then multiplied by an additional four-speed torque converter (automatic), with the combination of the two, delivering one of the ten ratios.
It’ll be easier to explain this backwards. The first three gears on the torque converter are split into a further three reductions via the (3-speed) CVT. This means you get 1st, 2nd and 3rd via the CVT, then the torque converter shifts to second and you get 4th, 5th, 6th on the gear position indicator, then the torque converter shifts to third and you get 7th, 8th and 9th. Finally the fourth gear on the torque converter doesn’t have any further reduction via the CVT and this is the tall overdrive gear that corresponds to 10 on the gear position indicator.
While we are at it, let me quickly touch upon the Atkinson cycle too. Superior in terms of efficiency compared to the Otto cycle, it delays the closing of the intake valves during the compression stroke to change the compression ratio for a cleaner burn. But this has clear a performance downside. It is here that the electric assistance from the hybrid system kicks in to torque-fill the holes in the powerband and deliver the seamless performance. And with that I apologise for the long-winded lecture.
Once you understand how gloriously complicated all this is, the refinement, the seamlessness of the engine kicking in, the switch to full EV mode, the smoothness
TORQUE OUTPUT FROM THE 3-SPEED CVT IS THEN MULTIPLIED BY AN ADDITIONAL FOURSPEED TORQUE CONVERTER, THE COMBINATION DELIVERING 10 GEARS
of the gearshift, all of it is even more astonishing. For instance there’s no difference in the speed or smoothness whether the shifting is via the CVT or torque converter. Like I said, peak Japan.
Now I did not know how this gearbox worked when I drove the LC 500h earlier in the day but when I got aggressive with the throttle it did feel a bit like a CVT. Not in terms of shift speeds, that’s very quick at 0.2 seconds, but there is a faint whiff of a CVT to the shifting action especially in the lower gears. And it definitely feels like there are one too many gears. You always find yourself with one, two, three more gears in hand whether going up or down the ’box. And first is so low it defaults to second while starting off.
In any case, we were driving it round the tight roads of Shika island outside of Fukuoka in Japan and we didn’t have the space to get up to any crazy speeds. Definitely evident though was the chassis brilliance. It feels like, at least in my mind’s eye, what all Japanese cars should— light on its feet, agile, responsive and revvy. Colleagues who have driven the V8-engined LC 500 say the hybrid-V6 is no patch on the bigger natasp motor but, in all fairness, the 500h feels plenty quick. The V6 engine makes 299bhp and 348Nm of torque which is boosted to 354bhp with electrical assistance (Lexus and Toyota don’t quote overall torque figures). It’s enough to propel the LC 500h to 100kmph in five seconds flat, which is actually quicker than the V8. And the chassis makes it plenty involving too without the edginess of the V8.
That said, its rivals like the Mercedes-AMG S63 Coupe feel far more powerful, are far more dramatic and when you step on it can bonfire the rear tyres with absurd ease. The LC 500h is cut from a different cloth, kind of apt considering we spent the next day at a traditional Japanese weaver who once made the silk uniforms that Kamikaze pilots were honoured with. It was our immersion into the skill of Japanese master craftsmen, the so-called Takumi: chef Hiroki Yoshitake who took us on multiple foodgasms; the Hakato-ori who made parachute threads in WW2 and took three years to develop a silk fabric that will soon be offered as an alternative to leather on Lexus seats; the Lexus technicians who only get the Takumi tag after spending 60,000 hours on the line; a gearbox that is ridiculously, impossibly, needlessly complicated on paper but works so well you’d be none the wiser... unless an engineer took you to dinner. ⌧
LEXUS TECHNICIANS ONLY GET THE TAKUMI TAG AFTER SPENDING 60,000 HOURS ON THE LINE