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Curating Life’s Luxuries Since 1976
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Over a decade ago at Monterey Car Week, Akio Toyoda, the chairman of Toyota, was told that Lexus, the brand’s luxury division, was, in a word, boring. The brand was known in the U.S. for making refined, reliable, and luxurious people carriers but not for taking chances. The LFA, which debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show in October 2009, was designed to change that.
“Akio stood up and made a promise: No more boring cars,” said Simon Humphries, Toyota’s chief branding officer.
The LFA was powered by a 553 hp, 4.8-liter V-10 mated to a six-speed manual transmission that, as a package, single-handedly altered the brand’s DNA. Car and Driver said that it was better than a Ferrari 599GTB and “the most exciting car to come out of Japan since the GT-R.” Boring, it was not.
The LFA was part of a broader launch of higher-powered Lexus models branded under the F and F Sport names, starting with the IS-F and, most recently, the RC F, a coupe that is being discontinued and is the last current F car in the Lexus lineup. That may amount to an extended pause for Lexus F cars, with the second-generation LFA unveiled in December and not likely to see deliveries by 2027 at the earliest.
“Over the last 14 years, not only Lexus and GR but all Toyota Group brands have undergone a transformation,” Humphries said. “The emotional side has come back to the company.”
Indeed, the second-generation LFA is both hotly anticipated but also not quite a priority for Lexus, which sells nearly a million cars globally every year but only made 500 examples of the original LFA. The original would be hard to top, especially if Lexus was merely going to make another gas-powered supercar; such a car likely wouldn’t change the conversation about Lexus as the original did, and may also invite some comparisons to the underwhelming second-generation Acura NSX.
A second-generation LFA with solid-state batteries that could blaze a new all-electric trail for a company that historically has been battery-electric skeptical? Now we’re talking. That version of a new LFA could be a conversation-changer like the first, even as the reveal itself has been a slow burn. Lexus first showed the LFA concept at The Quail earlier this year with explicit instructions from Akio to let the car “speak for itself,” with an accompanying press release just a paragraph long.
Lexus showed a bit more at the Japan Mobility Show in October, including an interior, and then showed all of it at a special event in early December at Woven City near Mount Fuji. The new Lexus LFA is officially happening, with the weight of the world’s largest car company behind it and the best of its technical prowess.
“For the [new LFA], this meant big breakthroughs, dramatic proportions, and packaging innovation,” Humphries said.
That will surely mean big performance, too, though it’s too early for Lexus to give out numbers or make any predictions. One thing they are already sure of, though, is that the new LFA will make some interesting new sounds.
“When this car is finally finished, it will answer Akio’s last request: to completely redefine the sound of an electric sports car,” Humphries said.
That means not just the sound of rubber slapping the pavement or the whir of electric motors—the soundtrack of a Formula E race—but something new and artificial or, more generously, bespoke. The second-generation LFA wants to be a presence, a goal aided by a cockpit that was striking for being so driver-focused in an EV that won’t hit roads until later this decade, when semi-autonomous cars will be more advanced than ever before.
“The steering wheel was discerningly and suitably designed for use in a sports car, while steering operation that eliminates the need for regripping with a different hand, together with a switch layout that makes blind touch operation possible, enables intuitive vehicle control,” Lexus said in its release.
Lexus will be concerned about the competition: the second-generation Tesla Roadster, if and when that ever materializes; Rimac Nevera; Ferrari Elettrica; Lotus Evija; Lamborghini Lanzador; and, perhaps, an all-electric Porsche 911.
The exciting part for Lexus, if not consumers just yet, is that the world of all-electric performance cars is still in its infancy, lacking a dominant player. The situation was the opposite decades ago, before the launch of the first LFA, when Akio Toyoda went to the Nürburgring and realized his company didn’t have a car capable of taking on the Germans, especially Porsche. Not even close. Akio said the humiliation of that moment, or kuyashisa, made him determined to come back with a car that could. Enter the first-generation LFA, which set a then-record time for a production car of 7:14.64.
“It’s the first time I was able to drive the Nürburgring looking ahead,” Toyoda said the company’s chief test driver Hiromu Naruse told him after the LFA was completed. “Until then, we were constantly being overtaken by other cars, and now we had a car to overtake others.”
Lexus will be taking the second-generation LFA to the Nürburgring as well whenever it’s ready, targeting a time under seven minutes. That could beat the current record in the all-electric “super sports car” segment, set by the Yangwang U9 Extreme, which sped through the ‘Ring in 6:59.157 in August. Such an accomplishment will probably be the baseline expectation, since Toyoda said he still thinks about the time before his company was even capable of threatening.
“I will never forget that humiliation,” Toyoda, 69, said. “That pain is what drives me even now.”
Click here for more photos of the Lexus LFA Concept.
Erik Shilling is digital auto editor at Robb Report. Before joining the magazine, he was an editor at Jalopnik, Atlas Obscura, and the New York Post, and a staff writer at several newspapers before…
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