Mind18

Don't believe this was posted here, but more Lexus LFA goodness. Reminds me of batman's lair when they first walk in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEhX7Uyc7qM

encore888

LOL is that real or staged? If they broke an embargo someone may get in trouble...but what a nice look at the car!

Tee

Agreed!!!!!!!!!!

MR_F1

Totally staged.That was at a shoot for Japanese nostalgic car.

LexFather

Crystal Lexus LF-A

Gojirra99

I am looking forward to buy my LFA 1:18 version, in white, to add to my collection, that is all

LexFather

I've seen a few on some dealer managers desks....lucky I didn't swipe one

Ice350

iTrader: (1)

You guys have probably already seen this info but it makes me believe it really is worth the 400K. Awesome!



very cool writeup here...
http://jalopnik.com/5388538/2011-lex...yline=true&s=i

(an nsxprimer has bolded the bits that he found interesting)

You've probably been bewildered by how much attention one car from a previously maligned automaker is getting on this and other enthusiast sites. But the attention we've paid pales in comparison to the attention to technical detail Toyota's displayed in the design and construction of the LFA. The car's gestation has taken nearly a decade not because the program had problems or limited resources, but because Toyota decided to design and build nearly every element of the LFA, its first ever supercar, in-house. Where most companies — Bugatti, Ferrari, Lamborghini and Porsche included — contract out things like gearboxes and the design and construction of carbon fiber components, Lexus chose to teach itself how to make those things better than anyone else, then build its own tools in order to make them.


Take the carbon fiber, for instance. To make the LFA's, Toyota created one of only two circular looms in the entire world, then used it to simultaneously weave one tube of carbon inside another. They built this system just to make the A-pillars on the car.

This all sounded like little more than corporate grandstanding to us. It's the largest car company on earth patting itself on the back for being able to use the money it got selling the automotive equivalent of beige orthopedic shoes to build some fancy tools.

That attitude lasted all the way to turn 6 at the Homestead Speedway road course. An over enthusiastic application of the sharp throttle had the 552 HP, 4.8-liter V10 spinning rapidly towards its 9,500 RPM redline and the tail sliding out towards the grass. Normally that'd have been an oh-****-I'm-going-to-break-a-$400K-car moment, especially in an unfamiliar supercar, but in the LFA it barely requires conscious correction as it just blended into rocketing down the following straight at three-figure speeds. In fact, oversteer in the LFA doesn't feel so much like oversteer as it does like the rear tires are sitting on castors and being pushed around by a couple of assistants. There's no body roll, no drama, just complete communication and smooth recovery. The reason for that? The impossibly **** approach Toyota took when building the LFA.

The LFA has an unprecedentedly low center of gravity of 17 3/4" — located directly beneath the steering wheel's rim. So far a conventional attribute executed perfectly, but how that CoG got there is way more complicated. First, the engine is located way back in the engine bay and mounts to a 6-speed rear-mounted transaxle through a carbon torque tube. The oil coolers are in the front fenders, while the radiators are at the rear to aid weight distribution, they're fed by the shoulder scoops. That creates a 48% front, 52% rear distribution for the 3263 Lb curb weight. That accounts for the CoG's position front-to-rear, but not vertically. That was achieved by using a world's first counter gear to raise the relative height of the torque tube, allowing the engine to be mounted incredibly low in the car, accounting for the CoG's height.

Of course, that's still only part of the story. The rigid drivetrain assembly (engine, torque tube, transaxle) is connected to the car by four mounts positioned at the geometric extremes of the unit. With no twist in the assembly due to torque, this arrangement eliminates the effect of power delivery on the chassis, there's no torque reaction.

You see where this is going?

Of course, the reason I was over aggressive with the throttle is that the engine revs extraordinarily quickly. From idle, it can be bouncing off the 9,500 RPM fuel cut off in just 6/10ths of a second. That's thanks to an incredibly low reciprocating mass, but achieving that wasn't simple either. They used technology developed by Toyota's F1 program to develop the block, for example, which was cast in the same foundry, using the same technique as the F1 engine. The same goes for the gearbox. The paddle-shifted hydraulically actuated 6-speed features a traditional H-pattern over the more popular dual clutch design because it was determined that the two clutch plates of the latter would negatively impact that low reciprocating mass. Shift speeds are adjustable, taking just 2/10ths of a second a their fastest, but can be slowed to "smooth" for everyday driving; at their fastest, they're anything but.


Transitioning off the incredibly powerful brakes — 15 1/3" diameter carbon metallic discs at the front with Brembo Monoblock 6-piston calipers — and onto the super sensitive throttle isn't currently as smooth as easily driving on the edge of grip requires. But these LFAs are pre-production prototypes and will be continually refined before production begins December 2010. Lexus plans to "break the molds" after just 500 LFAs and plans to build each car for a customer's own bespoke requirements. The company half-jokingly estimates that there's "30 billion" potential combinations of spec.

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rominl

iTrader: (4)

that's also what i think -- probably the closest thing to lfa that i can own

(Cj)

haha me too! I would like mine in matte black

TRDFantasy

To all those doubters and critics that feel the LFA somehow offers underwhelming performance (even though the car is not out yet ), here is a link and also a claim by Chief Engineer Tanahashi about the LFA's 'Ring potential.

So far Toyota has been very quiet about the production LFA's 'Ring times, but this gives you an indication of what it can do:

http://www.carsguide.com.au/site/new...t_drive_review

No surprise. An LFA prototype in 2007 unofficially lapped a 7:24. During the 24 Hours of Nurburgring this year, one of the near-stock LFAs in the race had a best lap of 7:13 on the North Loop part of the 'Ring.

I had a strong feeling the production car was capable of under 7:20.

Also to put an end once and for all to the GT-R comparisons, the GT-R comes nowhere close to "under 7:20" 'Ring lap times.

This is not an official lap time, but Chief Engineer Tanahashi's claim gives you an idea of what the LFA can do.

Mister Two

But what about the 7:23 "estimate" from Akira Lida, the LFA's chief test driver?
http://www.insideline.com/lexus/lf-a...and-video.html

I'm guessing the "under 7:20" claim in the CarsGuide article is regarding the race car, not the production car, since the article was talking about the "racetrack connection" before quoting Tanahashi's claim.

Still, that the LFA is able to lap faster than a bunch of hypercars of much higher power-to-weight ratios goes to show just how well tuned and balanced the LFA is. Cars that rely more on raw power than finesse don't impress me--everyone can drop a powerful engine in a lightweight car to make it go fast, but it takes true skills and dedication to build a car that sends its power properly and distributes its weight at the right places.

MR_F1

That was Akira's best lap. Pretty sure Naruse (Toyota's Master test driver) has also said, better than 7:20.

TRDFantasy

Yeah, what about it? It's an estimate. Notice that so far Toyota has only confirmed an official lap time of 7:30, even though the car is *clearly* capable of much more. Toyota is being coy, why this is a surprise to so many of you is beyond me.

Even if it was one of the race LF-As, so what? Do you not know that the race LF-As were near-stock?

Fact: the race LFAs had the SAME stock engine, the SAME suspension, and the SAME transmission as the production car.

The only major differences between the race LF-As and the production LFA:

As required by the race regulations:

- the race cars used heavier steel brake discs, compared to the carbon-ceramic discs the production LFA uses
- the steel discs put more weight on each of the LFA's 4 corners, reducing it's agility and handling
- the race cars used modified bodies compared to the production car, that did not have optimal aerodynamics that the production car has
- the race cars used a huge, fixed rear wing. It gave more downforce and performance in the corners, but it also limited the car's speed on the straight sections of the track
- Compare this to the production car, which has an active spoiler that *only* pops up when needed (above 50 mph)

Guess all you want, we shall find out the truth eventually. I'm done trying to argue with people about this.

Mister Two

Do you think the chief test driver would not have known about the time if the production LFA has indeed lapped under 7:20? If the 7:20 time is true then why would the chief test driver need to "estimate" 7:23? We've all seen the video of the race car lapping the 'Ring posted on Gazoo's official website and even with lots of blocking traffic the race car lapped the 'Ring in well under 7:20, and my guess is THAT is what the LFA chief engineer is talking about in CarsGuide.The help of the downforce provided by the race car's aero package might be much greater than you think. With such different aerodynamics they are effectively two completely different cars. You simply cannot compare the production car to the race car despite the same drivetrain.

I'm as huge an LFA fan as you are but I'm just trying to provide my speculation as to why there are such obvious conflicts between the two reports, both of which quoting seemingly reliable sources.