2021 Lexus RC F Track Edition Review // The Wrong Way To Spend $100,000

[Music] you're watching throttle house i'm thomas and i'm james [Music] and as part of our track series we wanted to test the 2021 nexus rcf track edition this car's kind of had a bit of an interesting narrative arc it was kind of like that that kid in high school that was bigger and all of his friends were football players then years went by and his friends started you know eating a little bit too much wendy's and he started working out and all of a sudden they turn around and go oh hey what the hell happened [Applause] here it is the lexus rcf track edition a rear-wheel drive 472 horsepower track machine it's encapsulated in carbon fiber and tuned to dominate a racetrack the problem is this particular platform was never that inspiring as a performance machine to begin with but with the track edition lexus has gone to great lengths to make this car handle like a track specific sports car should and at over 120 thousand dollars canadian it's more expensive than any of its direct competitors more expensive even than a porsche cayman gt4 so yeah it better be absolutely off the charts good let's find out [Music] look at that [Music] okay rewind to 2015 when the rcf first came out journalists fat shamed this car not very nice so lexus in response like all of us when we feel a bit portly went straight to the gym except they didn't they waited five years and in 2020 they actually made some significant changes they went over the whole car changing steel components to aluminium they went with a lighter air conditioning compressor they hollowed out the rear half shafts and they even made some things in carbon fiber but this is the track edition that means that these wheels and brakes are lighter to reduce unsprung mass the hood the roof and the wing are all carbon fiber there's even a carbon fiber partition behind the rear seats and the exhaust is titanium so it's lighter but what does that mean when you get behind the wheel i'm sorry mine in your way i thought i was driving first is that a classic alpha that is the sound of a naturally aspirated 5 liter v8 something we've learned to love from lexus because we experienced it in the lc500 in this we get 472 horsepower and 395 pound-feet of torque that is a naturally aspirated torque number it's lower than the horsepower number we've traded some torque for some predictability as a result switching to manual i can lift high in the revs in this car and when i put the power down it's just immediately there i'm not waiting for turbos to spool up and with that comes a sound that you don't get with turbo chargers [Music] music that said i don't think it's as perfect as the lc 500 it doesn't seem as sonorous but it is still a very pleasant sound a formula that's going to get carried over into that new is 500 f sport performance anyone else excited for that that said i am missing some torque low in the rev range comes in about 4000 rpm quite strong but it makes you want to ring it out and that's why if you were to average the speed of our driving and our naturally aspirated test cars we're probably being a bit cheekier because those cars make you rev and it's engaging perfect on a track so how does it handle well steering for one thing lexus is uh is not new and that sometimes presents itself best with the steering it's old feeling but it's nice and direct so on paper all those things i just mentioned should make for a successful formula but is that true in reality yeah i'm not so sure it also doesn't even feel as quick as its rivals but let's see what thomas makes of it okay james says this isn't as quick as the germans but this is the track edition so it gets launch control so i click that button and i click the launch button left foot on the brake and no that didn't work that time so we're going to try again it's really finicky i don't know why usually lexus just there we go and off we go it's no low down torque really so and there it is and the aim solo says 4.96 seconds that's not that good is it so it's not super quick in a straight line but the predictable power delivery and the fact that it's a track edition which stiffens the suspension components and lightens the car means that it should dominate the corners right well not really up until nine tenths this car is really really good it just doesn't seem to be able to sort itself out over any type of bump but thankfully when you really start pushing it it it gets worse drifted a lot of cars around that corner this is the hardest car i have slid around our track i don't know why combination of the suspension and the differential in the way that the steering works but you chuck it into a corner and as soon as you're in a slide you are just on it to keep the car in a straight line compared to an m car which is incredibly settled in the middle of a slide this isn't pole goes around on its suspension and it's not consistent with the way that it applies power to the rear wheels it's kind of the problem with the torsion diff but you know what does sound better than anything that the germans are doing right now [Music] so i'm gonna do a hot lap in a second i'm a bit concerned that it's just not gonna be able to handle itself well enough to let me lay down a really fast time and i mean like other cars that are similar price to this i don't know like a gt350 or the m4 c63 an m2 competition even that's cheaper than this they're really well sorted for a track like this so i don't know quite what's gonna happen but let's find out okay time for the hot lap this year we are timing using the aim solo 2dl now the rcf as we learned not for sideways hooliganism and well it's not really for this type of driving either i found the suspension really difficult to get along with sport plus was way too bouncy and the next stiffest setting wouldn't let the rear end settle so i did laps in both and the sport setting was the quickest i found the car very hard to carry any speed in and i had a difficult time putting the power down in a predictable way however the engine is great as long as you're shifting manually and i'll always choose a naturally aspirated engine like this over something turbocharged at the track let's watch the rest of the lap [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] okay that was a 113.63 which means it's slower than an a91 supra slower than an m2 competition and just a little bit quicker than a tesla model 3 performance okay how's that for a lap time wait hold on oh that doesn't that doesn't sound great listen i'll give it to them if it's because they removed some weight from the door you know they're allowed but this is not very lexacy i think weight savings is the biggest scapegoat in the car industry why is that crap oh it's resistant it's lighter yeah yeah yeah but yeah the lap time yeah not massively impressed no but i mean i guess it makes sense that makes sense it makes sense though but it looks the part i think it looks really i like the rc shape we never saw enough on the road [Laughter] sorry alexis um however we always get a lot of poop for saying that the m4 grill yeah eight years old you say you can say on youtube you don't even need to bleep um anyway so the the m4 grille is actually not objectively as big as this by measurements but i don't think this looks as bad as the m4 go because it's not the size of the grille it's the way it's applied to the front of the car i agree yeah i think socrates said that actually yes yeah yeah he was a busy man this is this is the hourglass right yeah it's a good looking front end you know like well anyway from here it is however if you look at the side it starts to look really weird i think they've gone mobus i think they've gone sporty it's got you know this is the track edition so it's got the carbon fiber carbon fiber uh bonnet carbon fiber roof carbon fiber spoiler it's got a big wang a big wing yeah big aggressive spoiler yes which i'm impressed by the germans on that brave no until you get to porsche it's also not like active right so it's lighter they just picked an amount of downforce and have stuck to it except you can only get this in black white or grey no yellows no blues no reds just i want it to be a car like this i want it to be loud i want people to see across the dist and go that's the track edition i know that because it's that special cool car you see the spoiler this looks like the color of those trees i don't have leaves on them they've tried to have fun with it in some places the engine bay oh that's right because what were we in recently they had a really boring engine bay the m4 competition oh yeah it just it just don't get me wrong this isn't enthralling no okay so there's some flair that color though that they've chosen for the intake manifold it looks like someone went and got like a classic pack of crayola markers picked the purple and went and just colored it it has the five of like a strip club in the middle of the day do we have any more analogies for this you got another one i don't have anymore nothing okay either way it's exciting it's fun they did a thing that's not just they dressed it up at least they dressed it up and they've and they've dressed up the inside that's and that's kind of the only way that the inside's not crazy but they've done some things to make it the track edition okay oh the doors don't sound good yeah it's because what lightness is lightness i don't normally pick on doors i pick on some on my own size yeah okay so i gotta point something out here yeah so for my wife i bought a 2015 lexus is 300 wow what a guy yeah yeah it was it was well i mean she bought it i just helped her pick it out it was 25 grand yes works great low kilometers and it has the exact same interior as this car but your i bet you your wife's car doesn't have what the track edition gets which is red leather and alcantara lining the doors the seats and i'm pleased to announce the carpet does match the drapes in here because oh yeah because the carpet is also red flare you don't see that very often that's actually kind of a cool touch that the carpet changes and also if you remember we were in the rs7 performance recently and i was super excited because the carbon fiber weave was lined with the blue well say hello to pokemon red because this has got this has got red light and i love that no it actually looks really good i do i do like that it's a fun touch um it matches perfectly with the red anyway the rest of this is just the new not it's not i can't say it's not wrong new is not the right word this is the old lexus this is the only is interior that i've ever known it's been around forever until like how many six years ago long time ago long time anyway they've changed the gauge cluster though that's cool i really like that that's like kind of out of the lfa this is the infotainment that is not really even worth talking about because it's annoying the same as the lc500 um climate control is no different and none of this stuff is any different however it is pretty comfortable i will say the base io seats are not that comfortable these are a lot yeah these are these are special seats as well um and and the you know as you said it's dated but the materials are very nice they are nice well it's it's it's still kind of toyota-ish but i do like it i really like the gauge cluster i got to say that again i really really like these gauge clusters uh i do have a few complaints okay so you know first of all if you get the track edition you actually give up a lot of things which for 35 000 extra it starts to not make sense like kind of the way though but yeah but it's not sporty enough okay so you lose the ventilated seats you have to you lose the heated seats you lose the mark levinson sound system like you know they could have they could have gone crazy they could have done a rear seat delete i mean these seats are not useful a two series has more comfortable reasons advocate devil's advocate yeah i respect the fact that they did whatever they could to bring the weight of this car down to probably where it should have been at its inception in engineering so things like heated seats all that stuff adds up would you not have done these are unusable seats would you not rather have had a rear seat delete and heated seats i agree yes you know what put a roll bar rear seat delete and some harnesses and make it a proper track edition they went no okay they went 99 of the way however however it's been very easy to live with yep it's very comfortable in eco mode in the right cruises great yeah that is really good so there's definitely some lexus elements in there do you know what i mean yeah uh but otherwise listen this isn't a bad car at all i think as far as the this chassis goes yeah i think they've done a fantastic job with maximizing it just you just have to ignore the fact that you can get an m2 cs and a miata for the price of this one car and the other and oh yeah and the m2cs has usable back seats yeah that's hard that's hard dark m2cs but naturally aspirated v8 yeah unfortunately for lexus the naturally aspirated part can only get you so far sometimes sports cars are more than just the sum of their parts this time it's it also steals away too many comforts from the normal rcf in the name of performance although used lucky americans do get to option the new fuji speedway track edition with the mark levinson sound system so there's that so with all its new improvements whilst this is possibly the lexus rcf that should have come out originally it is still to this day not competitive enough to undercut the germans and nor is it priced that way either the good news is if you have no plans to actually track your lexus and you still want that naturally aspirated v8 coupe the lc 500 delivers in spades for cheaper thanks for watching they changed a bunch of the steel components to aluminium they made the air compressing lighter air conditioning way to less [Laughter] time thomas [Laughter] i wish i could do it again the air conditioning lighter myth way less [Laughter] oh me that's funny i told you james to land on your feet not just fall forward

Channel: Throttle House

Views: 1,043,476

Keywords: 2021 lexus rcf, 2021 lexus rcf track edition, 2021 lexus, lexus rcf, lexus rcf track edition, track edition rcf, rcf track, rcf drag race, lexus track test, lexus drag race, lexus vs porsche, lexus track car, toyota track car, carbon fibre rcf, rcf lap times, rcf hot lap, lexus rcf review, 2021 lexus rcf review, track edition rcf review, rcf launch, lexus launch control, lexus reliability, rcf review, lexus vs amg, rcf vs c63, rcf vs m5, lexus engineering, rcf 0-60

Id: IEorsEUBcRY

Length: 17min 17sec (1037 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021