As is the case with most Japanese cars, reassurance is their USP. With the LFA, however, Toyota had zero interest in making any profit. Lexus as a brand usually appeals to the middle-class where you can afford to spare a few bucks for something premium. The last thing that anybody would associate Lexus with is a horsepower supercar. Speaking of power; the Lexus LFA uses a 4. Power stands at horsepower to be specific and the engine manages to put out lb-ft of torque.
While the car is far more appealing than your run of the mill Lexus, it does share a few Lexus traits. For instance, the LFA is heavily understated in how it looks.
The LFA takes around 3. Primarily set up as a rear-wheel-drive supercar, the only gripe we could point out is the 6-speed sequential manual gearbox. A rather dated piece of kit on a car that is otherwise timeless. Everything is made entirely for the car. Part of the reason why the LFA had extensive development times was due to the engineers deciding on switching to carbon-fiber. Read full bio.
Related Articles. What do you think? Car Finder:. Lexus LF-A. Active filters:. About Us. Contact Us. Automotive journalist job. This is the kind of extreme cognitive dissonance that comes with driving the Lexus LFA, one of the most unusual, deeply misunderstood and utterly brilliant cars to grace this universe or any other ones in the last 15 years.
Beer me up Keep it simple or deck yours out with RGB lights, a touchscreen, and even a digital thermostat. It sat on a bespoke platform rife with carbon fiber weaved by a gigantic loom built in-house.
Its power came from a high-revving but relatively tiny 4. Later a more powerful, more expensive! Just LFAs were ever built between and All of that, from a brand that had spent most of its life up to that point cranking out some of the most narcolepsy-inducing cars on the road. You can see the issue here, and you have to wonder what Lexus or parent company Toyota thought this thing would do for their brand or their bottom line.
Not a luxury car, not a GT car, not a boulevard cruiser; a supercar. It is a Dodge Viper from 30 years in the future, made by people who grew up with posters of Gundams on their wall next to the posters of Countaches.
It is the car the Nissan GT-R could have been. The entire car is like that, from top to bottom. Its name stands for Lexus Fucking Awesome. This gunmetal grey car is not a press loaner from Lexus. It is owned by an enthusiast and friend of Jalopnik here in Austin who preferred to stay anonymous for this story, a man whose affable charm masks his considerable skills behind the wheel.
And then he was generous enough to let me have a turn with it. Sort of? In the meantime, he has no desire to stash it away in some climate controlled garage. This car and its mighty engine are meant to be driven hard, and he does exactly that. It is a visually dramatic car with a very Japanese approach to design: function over form, high technology over beauty.
Everything is done in service of the God of Aerodynamics, his will be done here on earth as it is in the wind tunnel.
The tri-barrel exhaust looks so weaponized you may need a permit to own one in some states. But what makes this car truly interesting is what lies under the skin: carbon fiber. So much carbon fiber. The frame is carbon fiber. The hood is carbon fiber. The little rod that props up the hood is carbon fiber.
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