Wednesday 14th April 2004

Lexus L-FC

V8, rear wheel drive and unique styling

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The chaps in crisp white coats at Lexus have been working hard over the winter to come up with the show car for the New York Motor Show.

The result is the new LF-C luxury sports coupe concept car which was unveiled a few days ago and is being used to test the waters for a bit of a new design direction at Lexus.

The LF-C comes complete with a four-position retractable hardtop. The mechanism allows the car to transform itself at the touch of a button from a coupe to a convertible, to a targa or to a speedster, depending on the driver’s mood, speed, prevailing weather conditions and presence of headwear or bouffant.

Up front is a high power V8 engine with a six-speed sequential automatic transmission driving the rear wheels.

"We used a combination of convex and concave surfaces to control the balance of light and shadow on the car which creates this beautiful contrast of having sharp lines within the sculpted exterior surfaces ," said Kevin Hunter, vice president of Calty Design Research, Inc. "The idea was to create a sense of strength and softness at the same time, adding an air of mystery ."

Other innovations include drive-by-wire steering and Formula One inspired shifter and steering wheel with the gauges stacked along the steering column axis, ascending toward the base of the windscreen. The gauges are transparent, with needles moving from the ring, rather than the centre.

There's no word on where Lexus are going with this but a favourable reaction would see many of the ideas incorporated into the next generation sports coupe.

[billb]

do u actually need to be qualified to be a car designer these days?? seems lots of cars like this are coming out that are just a botched up mish mash job done on a home computer. Where has beauty gone?

[PetrolTed]

Looks quite like an FBS Census

Gets coat...

[markburnt]

oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

After that excellent 2054 Minority Report Lexus concept it's all gone wrong.

Looking at the rear, nothing fits, all the lines clash.

Just wrong.

Just make the Minority Report car, everybody loved that!

[will_t]

Clumsy - TVR by Bangle ?

IMHO but what do I know I only design bogs.

Will

[DRG]

Drive by wire steering That can't be good surely!

[smele]

It looks like a cheap kit car. Almost something good there, but just missed the mark, particuarly at the rear.

[murcielago]

Kind of looks a bit like one big blob of metal

[twin turbo]

Hmmmm, a real missed opportunity. I was hoping for something better, seeing as the new GS300 is quite a looker (well, compared to the current Lexus line-up).

Seems "designers" really are trying too hard to come up with something different these days.

To my mind, only Aston Martin and Alfa Romeo seem to know true elegance at the moment.

Good looks are probably the last part of the Lexus puzzle. They've got build quality and reliability licked (and with that comes a great reputation) and they really could steal sales from the current crop of ugly BMWs.

May be it'll look better in the metal.

[scoobybloke]

I'm with Will. As soon as I saw it, I thought Lexus had caught Bangle disease Instead of copying BMW and Mercedes, they need to come up with some original thinking.

Chris

[sook]

Drive by wire is fine. In fact, I reckon that in the near future we'll be seeing quite a few cars fitted with it. Basically you'll have redundancy built into the system, probably triple just to be safe. And think about it, no steering column that tries to impale you in an accident!

People don't have a problem with flying in airliners, and the majority of them are fly by wire.