CarBrandLogos archive · Lexus · 2010

LexusLFA

Ten years, one V10 tuned by an instrument maker, and 500 cars that lost money.

Photo: Tennen-Gas · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story

A defining chapter in Lexus history.

Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Lexus LFA, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.

Lexus LF-A Gazoo Racing Goodwood Festival of Speed

Origins

The LFA started around 2000 as an internal project under Haruhiko Tanahashi to find out whether Toyota could build a supercar at all. It was shown as a concept in 2005, again in 2007, and did not reach customers until December 2010, by which time the original design had been discarded once. Partway through development the engineers concluded that the aluminium structure they had built was not stiff or light enough, and started again in carbon fibre reinforced polymer. Toyota could not buy the weaving machinery it wanted on acceptable terms, so it built its own circular loom to produce the material in-house.

Lexus LF-A Gazoo Racing Goodwood Festival of Speed · Brian Snelson · CC BY 2.0

Design and engineering

The engine was the part everyone remembers. A 4.8-litre naturally aspirated V10, developed with Yamaha, short-stroke and unusually compact, with individual throttle bodies and a redline high enough that Toyota fitted a digital tachometer because a mechanical needle could not track the revs fast enough. Yamaha's acoustic engineers, drawing on the company's musical instrument work, tuned the intake and exhaust deliberately, including a resonator that fed engine noise into the cabin. The result is routinely described as the best-sounding road car engine of its era, and that is not a subjective stretch nobody else supports.

Lexus LF-A I Megaweb · Lexus-LF-A.2.jpg: ? ???????? from TAINAN, TAIWAN derivative work: Altair78 (talk) · CC BY 2.0

Lexus LF-A Roadster Concours d Elegance 2008 02

In production

Drive went through a six-speed automated single-clutch gearbox mounted at the rear as a transaxle, a choice that was already dated at launch against the dual-clutch units in its rivals, and it drew most of the criticism the car received. A Nurburgring package with more downforce and firmer suspension followed.

Lexus LF-A Roadster Concours d Elegance 2008 02 · Ian Miller from San Jose, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0

Legacy

The development itself was conducted in public in a way Toyota rarely attempts. Prototypes were entered in the Nurburgring 24 Hours for several years running under the Gazoo Racing banner, finishing races rather than merely starting them, and that programme became the seed of what is now Toyota's performance division. The car taught the company how to work in carbon fibre, how to tune a naturally aspirated engine for noise as a design objective, and how to run a racing operation as an engineering school.

Chapter 5

Exactly 500 were built at the Motomachi plant between December 2010 and December 2012, by hand, at a rate of about one a day. They were expensive, and initially some sat unsold, partly because Lexus offered many of them on lease-only terms to deter speculation. Toyota is widely understood to have lost money on every one, which was never really the point. The LFA existed to teach the company how to make a carbon-fibre car and to prove that a brand built on refinement could produce something ferocious. Values since have risen well past the original price.

At a glance