LexFather

You do bring up a good point. Infinti for instance always has more rated hp but never are faster but we all know HP does sell cars.

Will Lexus be brave and sell low weight? Now that is a huge risk.

JessePS

If they do a hybrid IS they should kill off the HS but thats just me.

LexFather

HS has its appeal. Great visibility,. high ride height, more space than the IS.

No problem and its exciting it will be in a true RWD vehicle so less weight but with the torque vectoring pluses. Should be fantastic.

LexFather

I just realized that is a pic of the old GSh...new is here

TRDFantasy

Definitely should be great . This won't be a "half-assed" approach to torque vectoring like Audi and Honda have done. Granted, torque vectoring helps in certain situations for AWD, but for TRUE performance, the way to go is torque vectoring on a RWD vehicle.

speedflex

And I so like the old look better.

marshmallo

V10 GS???? I'm very skeptical...

SLegacy99

I dunno. I don't really give much weight to any more hybrid rumors at the moment. CT will be the fifth Lexus hybrid, yet Toyota only has three on the market, two of which have obselete ICEs. Would seem smart for Toyota to offer more hybrids than Lexus, given sales and all.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

unless you are a real buyer in that segment (m5, e63, rs6), of course it won't make sense. it's just like camry owners come and say their cars are powerful enough for most use, what's the point of gs350 with 303hp.

my m3 with 400hp, that's quite a bit of power, and at times, i actually use them all.

way too big of a risk. we (enthusiasts) all know about weight, balance, and performance. i would give them a thumb up if they do so. however we also can't forget marketing. and with the market segment of luxury sedan, unfortunately, lower hp and light weight will be a very very hard point to sell.

just look at the lfa. it's in the super high performance category, people are supposed to be more knowledgeable about what performance is about when they talk about this car. and see the result, how many people jump on lexus for having only 550hp?

imagine the same thing in the m5 and e63 market where more people are there for bragging right? man...

TRDFantasy

To be fair, most of the people criticizing the LFA are on the internet, and pretty much none of them have any intention of ever buying anything in the supercar or exotic market. It's also because Lexus does not have a strong reputation with enthusiasts, yet.

I do agree for bragging rights and for the sake of competitiveness, the GS-F needs to have at least 500 HP.

(Cj)

Yeah.

As I said in another posts. Most of the competition don't even use V10s for their high performance models anymore. The M5 is moving to a forced induction V8, the E class AMG is a large displacement V8, the next gen RS6 will be a forced induction V8, and the Jaguar XFR is a supercharged V8.

If Lexus were to make a V10 GS it'd be one of the only ones left in the class. That might be a good thing, it might be a bad thing. A good thing because that would help them be differentiated compared to the class, a bad thing because the V10 likely wouldn't be as fuel efficient as the turbo competition and the V10 would be pricer for Lexus to make.

At this point Lexus should follow the competition and make a forced induction V8. Toyota has a lot of experience with supercharging and turbocharging, and a high performance GS would be a great place to show off that expertise.

(Cj)

I don't know about the hybrid IS rumors. I guess it's bound to happen since Lexus Europe wants a hybrid IS, but for us here in North America how and where would a hybrid IS fit in the lineup?

If it were to have the GS450h's powerplant it would cost too much. Who would pay $45K for a hybrid IS?

If it were to have an I4 or a small V6 it would overlap with the HS a bit, and it would be an awkward fit between the IS250 and IS350. A proverbial IS300h would costs as much or more than the IS350, and if it's tuned for performance it wouldn't have huge efficiency gains over the IS250.

An ISh overall is an awkward prospect that might only work in Europe. In Europe the IS could use the CT200h's Prius powerplant for the entry level motor, and then also have 300h (2.5L I4/V6 hybrid) and 400h (3.5L V6 hybrid) models.

MR_F1

Make it a sportcross.

The CTh's power train is on fwd architecture, you are not going to be able to easily adapt it to the rwd IS.

(Cj)

I know that, but wasn't the diesel IS220d's power train also initially only for the FWD Avensis before they added it to the IS line? All they would have to do is mount the 1.8L engine longitudinally instead of transversally in order to have an entry level IS200h.

JessePS

I would love to see a sportscross again, but I don't think that will happen because of the RX

The IS Sports Cross is the only Lexus that didn't do that well it seems.