By now you may have heard about the Lexus LFA’s stringent availability restrictions for potential buyers. One does not simply walk into a Lexus dealership and start arguing over finance plans as they would in at, say, Bentley. No, Lexus, the exalted ones, must choose you, Mr. Millionaire Rapper Astronaut Guy, in order to represent Lexus as the brand for trendy and urbane reality-show stars, unfaithful athletes, and Goldman Sachs employees under the Witness Protection Program. A barrage of deposits, credit checks, and painful dental extractions follow. Once you survive the Temple of Doom and successfully defeat Lexus of America vice president Mark Templin in armed combat atop Mount Hachimantai, only them will you receive the opportunity to own it—for a year. Then you have to give it back.
Meanwhile, across the stand, Mercedes—a brand with real history—thoughtfully left the doors up on their latest and greatest SLS AMG for journalists to climb around and spill Coke over the carbon-fiber/Alcantara racing seats. It’s a car that any schmo with $183,000 can buy, cherish, and oversteer into a Peugeot with. You can even walk into the showroom wearing a denim jacket.
Naturally, Lexus wouldn’t let any mere hack with a digital camera go near the car, for fear of staining the matte-black paint finish, which is mixed with the blood of peregrine falcons and polished by hand with the Bayeux Tapestry. But this is only the beginning of the story: here are countless more examples (6, to be specific) of just how badly Lexus wants the LF-A to fall into the right hands. This information was gleaned from press materials, industry rumors, repeatedly badgering attractive product specialists, and conspiracy-spouting forum members who have not yet found how to turn off their CAPS Lock. Just how exclusive is the LF-A? This exclusive:
1.) If the car is sighted outside any department store less expensive than Nordstrom’s, Lexus technicians will douse the interior in hydrochloric acid and perform a full chemical shower, in order to eliminate the stench of poor people.
2.) Once a year, the owner is required to attend at least fifteen (15) Coldplay concerts in order to maintain appearances among rival trendsetters. Expressing a dislike for the alternative post-Britpop band will be grounds for immediate lease termination.
3.) All members of Skull and Crossbones must pass a credit check. No exceptions.
4.) Only one man in the world is trusted to service the LF-A: 103-year old Yomuri Kanyahama, a blind, deaf hermit and Ningen Kokuhō who lives deep in the forests atop Mt. Hakusan. Despite his lack of sight, hearing, youth, and sanity (he still believes Japan is fighting the Russians), he is the only living person qualified to service the LF-A’s F1-developed 560-hp handbuilt aluminum/magnesium/titanium alloy 9000-rpm dry-sump V10 motor. Some of his 28 sons and daughters describe his mechanical prowess as “some sorta ‘Pinball Wizard’ thing.”
5.) When a scheduled service is requested, signed and approved by Lexus executives, the car is airlifted by Sikorsky Skycrane helicopters directly from their owner’s driveway onto an awaiting cruise liner that has been specially reserved for the occasion. It is then transported, with nothing else on board, directly to Ishikawa Prefecture. Here Taoist monks lift the car off the ship and carry it by hand (silk gloves, to be specific, lest the paint become damaged) the arduous 50+ miles to the summit of Mt. Hakusan. Once this journey is completed Kanyahama will then receive the car and proceed to summon the spiritual life force required to replace the car’s power-steering fluid (extracted from the cerebrospinal fluid of white Siberian tigers, prized for its viscosity), by meditating atop the mountain’s summit for forty days and forty nights. Here, he asks for the blessings of Benzaiten, one of the Seven Shinto Gods of Fortune. When he has received a satisfactory response he will then return down the mountain, spiritually and physically strengthened, and start the work. Kanyahama is a master craftsman, working without the use of powered or even hand tools, loosening every Loctite-doused bolt and tearing down every transmission casing by hand, summoning what little energy the feeble old man still carries within his battered and brittle frame. The process is long and altogether painful, but he will have the full trust of the Toyota corporation behind him. When Kanyahama feels that the spiritual and technical process has been harmonized by the universe and the car’s factory service bulletins (printed on the same parchment as the Meiji Empire’s rudimentary constitution), the monks will carry it through the forest again, the car will be transported atop the ocean liner, and the owner will be billed by the hour at a standard shop rate of $86.75/hr. The entire process takes 11 months.
6.) If the lease is not paid on time, Lexus has the ability to ensure that the owner’s next pop album will chart below Justin Bieber’s, or that the owner’s deviant sex scandal makes the front page of both the Huffington Post AND The Atlantic, whichever leads to greater embarrassment.
But hey. At least you get to drive around the Nurburgring for life.
— Blake Rong
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It's a cool car, anything with a 9,000 rpm V-10 is automatically cool. But it seems like Toyota is trying to create a Drama Beast around their car. Shut up, put it in GT3 class and make the car prove it's worth it's price tag. Until then, i'll be waiting the next NSX, even if it's a hybrid.
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so are there any actual crazy requirements to own one?
You do have to be selected by Lexus based on how wealthy and image-friendly (re: hip) you are. They'll only lease it to you for two years and keep the title themselves. You'll have to pay multiple deposits and they'll run at least 2 credit checks or so.
The rest may or may not be literary fabrication, though the bit about Mark Templin is probably true. He's an angry man.
http://jalopnik.com/5496332/lexus-lfa-lease-it-no…
Great job writing the article Blake. As for the car, I don't realy see anything on it that makes it worth half the price tag. The new Noble M600 that was on last seasons Top Gear is faster, looks beter and costs a little less. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6ELj9AmvaI The v10 might have 550 hp but torque is what matters, the one thing Toyota did acomplish though is getting a lot of people to talk about their only sports car.
Horsepower wins races, Torque sells cars to idiots who think they know what they're talking about. I.E. When ur driving in a race, your not ever low enough in the powerband for torque to matter. If you are, then your doing it wrong. Period. The only exception is of coarse drag racing, but i feel as though thats a moot point here.
That's a bit of an overstatement, no? Torque is more than just for "confusing idiots." In a street car application, a car with a good amount of horsepower but not enough torque will feel slow in most instances. There needs to be a balance between horsepower and torque for street car applications.
I agree entirely, however i was speaking in terms of legal track racing, and not in terms of street driving. In street driving your usually much lower in the powerband, so torque is needed. I am not saying to rev the crap out of the car on the street. I was only saying proper racing is done high in the powerband. Not trying to put anyone down, that was just a quote that i heard somewhere, and i thought it applied here.
You're right, but come on, what percentage of the 500 or so LF-A's are going to be competitively raced on a track? 10%?