Imagine showing up to your local Cars & Coffee event, like you do. You’re just hanging around, talking horsepower with some fellow enthusiasts, sipping some fairly traded exotic dark roast, and all of the sudden, in walks Akio Toyoda.
Here’s a full 90-second segment of awesome V8 wail, tire smoke, and a giggling Japanese driver drifting his LFA around a racetrack. If this doesn’t make you happy, nothing will.
What happens when you have the largest advertising budget any dealership has ever seen? You hire World Champion drifter Ken Gushi, get two of the fastest Lexus models ever made, and you make the greatest promotional spot in the entire world.
To celebrate five years since the LFA first hit public roads, Lexus UK setup a photo shoot to accentuate just how different, forward thinking, and dramatically beautiful the car really is.
Shortly after Toyota started the Lexus brand in 1989, Mark Templin started his long career at Toyota. He’s now a managing officer of Toyota Motor Corporation and executive vice president of Lexus International, responsible for leading the luxury brand’s global operations. We got the chance to ask him a few questions at the preliminary press kickoff for the 2015 New York International Auto Show.