Lexus ISF Review | The V8 Magic Trick

[Music] [Music] [Music] well hello inside the lexus is-f now this particular model is a 2010 hit at 65,000 miles and it's been donated to us by a local viewer I've spent the last three or four days in this car and it's the very first time I've ever been on the lexus is-f and because of that I've been left with a couple pretty strong impressions so let's get in the positives first now the big positive of this interior is its build quality particularly when compared against some of its competitors as I mentioned before this car is about 10 years old and has 65,000 miles it's also a track car so it's live not the most blessed life and yet there are no squeaks and rattles that's really the big positive of this interior well it's not as aesthetically pleasing as an e 92 or c63 the materials hold up a lot better these seats look basically brand new all the switchgear feels brand new and it's a pretty simple interior unlike I Drive or the let's call it the AMG infotainment system it's very easy to use while it looks dated I know how to pair my phone it took me about two seconds the audio system in this car while not amazing it's fairly simple to navigate and lastly the gauge cluster in this car too it's stupid simple at the end of the day this is an affordable car particularly now they're between twenty to thirty thousand dollars for a 2010 there's only two Drive mode switches and it's very easy to turn off the traction control that's great it's a regular is on the inside but because of that it feels pretty dated mark always brings up how infotainment dates cars and that's the case here because this car came out in the mid to late 2000s it feels a lot older than it really is because of this screen the other thing is if you're a bigger buyer like myself I'm six foot tall and I struggle to get comfortable in this car my head constantly touches the ceiling and if you want to buy this as a track car good luck fitting in here with a helmet it's it's the unfortunate truth with the Lexus IS line as a whole the other sad part about this car is legroom it's great up front I can get comfortable in the leg proportions however no one's fitting behind me so this car becomes a 2-door 4-door meaning a four-door with the practicality of a two-door coupe thankfully though as a daily driver if you are shorter you can fit all their Korean barbecue you could want in the trunk it's great in that regards if you're a shorter guy like Marc who's 5 foot 1 it's a very comfortable interior he has none of the complaints I have so keep that in mind when you're shopping for one of these so with all that being said we're already in the shop let's put this thing on the lift we are under the ISF the Lexus and this is a first of its kind even though this is much older so tell me a little bit about what happened here well this car is Genesis for Lexus it's their first v8 rear wheel drive m3 competitor it was a car design largely after-hours by very small team of engineers and was a passion project you go chase on the chief engineer of this car who happens to be the chief engineer of the GS F had his hand in the RC F they he was responsible for kind of creating the what what this brand meant it had to be fun it had to be engaging an emotional connection I had to sound good which is why they focused so much on the VA people wonder well why didn't they do something else well the v8 sounds amazing and I think this was kind of the start you can see how the RC of the LC and the GS have kind of carried over a lot of what was good here and just expanded upon it yeah this car was a lot of firsts for Toyota you know their very first 8-speed direct shift automatic it's their first attempt of a real 5 liter v8 like a relatively high revving one at that yeah and as a great architecture for the most part it's double wishbone front multi-link rear it's I mean it's an impressive car given how small the team of engineers was and their relatively small budget and you have to kind of turn your brain off for just a little bit with this and understand this was a mid kind of 2000s development project that kind of extended out and this is not like an e 92 and competitor completely because the body structure isn't nearly as good they didn't have the development budget in terms of the chassis so you don't see the weight distribution that you did on the 92 it's about 54 front the cross balance isn't as good which I'll show you the chart here it weighs about well at least this one weighs about 30 770 pounds so you don't feel the balance in the car that you would in some of the competitors at that time point but the difference is this they put so much money into the engine design the transmission design that's why this car feels special and why it's still relevant today yes it's indestructible and that somebody was gonna come up a lot in this video one of the reasons why the ISF is held its value even better than the e90 or c63 is when you buy this car you don't have to stuff away three four five thousand dollars in case something or actually not in case when something catastrophic happens on your be 90 or c63 so if you're not stupid with this car and you don't go to try to modify it insanely or try to add it on a horsepower like this one it's just gonna last and the owner tracks this car and there's some things you're gonna notice about it this is prior to them using a ton of aluminum so you still see a lot of stamp steel here it does have a an aluminum cradle for the subframe but little little details like you still don't have adjustable camber on the front of this car and that's something I complain about with the RC F how do you make kind of a performance car that you can kind of take to the track and not have the ability to tune that so you can't do it here either and because of the way that they design the suspension they made the lower control arm bushings a little bit softer because the car is sprung more stiffly the dampers are stiffer so they have to kind of dial back the bushings to still give some slop there and when you drive this hard there's too much slop and as those bushings age it gets worse so he's added solid solid mount bushings and the rear lower control arms at the bottom to kind of firm all of that back up when he's driving on the track but these are just typical things that you're gonna have to do on pretty much any car when you try to dual-purpose them and this is no different but I think you know let's head to the back and then we'll talk about the transmission and then under the hood we've transported ourselves to the the back half of the car and this looks very similar to many modern Lexus's to certain extent except there's something special back here yeah it's got a limited slip diff in 2010 a Torsen yes in 2010 onwards to 14 til the end of the production line of this car they had a Torsen limited slip earlier cars were open diff which means honestly you should avoid those cars so from 2010 on is kind of the car that you want yes in 2011 they did some suspension tweaks to get the car to handle a little better to ride better and they updated some of the interior electronics but really 2010 onwards is what you want to buy when you when you purchase this vehicle something we didn't bring up on the front that's worth mentioning is the brakes on this car are phenomenal they're like Cisco developed them with Brembo and they're far superior in my opinion the least - the brakes you got on your e 90 - 392 brakes the m3 brakes were they I don't even know how they let that go out the door they were absolute garbage so the and you notice it right away and granted he's got track pads on this because he does take it out there but even with that said you feel a lot more confidence in stopping power and repeated stopping doesn't turn into like just a sloppy rag it doesn't feel like a wet rag when you get deep into the pedal like though you 92 m3 did it's great I mean it's it's genuinely impressive and as we mentioned before the career cradle in this car is not aluminum like you get in the 92 and 3 yeah and you know again chassis development right this is one Lexus was trying to create like they're trying to get into that well how do we make a performance car that's not just es 300 and all the things that they were known for just kind of the quiet comfortable couch like ride vehicles and this was that turning point for them they had to to create something more fun to rejuvenate the brand yeah they just worked with a compromise platform this car was never designed the is was never designed in the first place to be an m3 competitor so they worked with what they had yeah the last thing to bring up back here we'll touch on the trans when we get to the engine are these exhausts it comes up a lot the dual tips are fake oh go figure yeah it's a cosmetic option really it's a single tipped rear-end exhaust with a fake I mean this whole fixed your back here not real it looks cool to me it's real tough well you know that's nothing this is this is what's happening in modern cars it's no different I mean they just stacked it make it look a little bit differently but yeah they're just finishers [Music] we got to talk about the is the ISS specifically this is what this was Lexus's first attempt at creating enough car and one of the big reasons and one of the big fundamentals behind it was the emotional connection over raw performance and spec sheets it had to sound good it had to feel good and with the passage of time there's some things that have stuck around namely the engine I think that's the biggest and the biggest heart of this car at if namely as naturally aspirated v8 s have disappeared you just want a downshift you want to floor it at the end of the day I get that this is Genesis but at the same time it does show its age mark well how how do you mean the trans the trans is the big one for me I yes it's more reliable than the SMG and it does shift better than the c63 is automatic but I have the same problem with all Toyota transits passed or started below 5,000 rpm it's totally dead yeah and I can kind of understand that I mean I get what they're trying to do here and I've talked about this I beat a dead horse with this with the RC a-- of GSF and you know I know what they were getting at with the design and so this was kind of the first iteration of that it's definitely the worst but the good things are still there so the way that this transmission works is simple you have to absolutely be flat out at the higher rpm to notice its ability to lock up the target torque converter to rev match to shift quick up and down if you're not at above 5,000 rpms this transmission feels like a 1995 Toyota Camry it's just is sloppy it's slow its clunky but that's what they wanted they wanted it to be that car that when you're putting around it feels smooth there's no gear shocks but I don't particularly think that adds up with what they're trying to do with the personality of the car different specifically when you notice how rough this thing rides it's a weird car in that I feel like it's the middle ground between the c63 and the 92 and it's not quite as it's called a dynamic pseudo track car is the 92 so is this weird in between well the e92 and that's that's the issue with this car is if you're gonna compare it to the cars of that generation specifically the e92 naturally aspirated v8 that's 65 this just doesn't compare and I mean I think I think that's what you have to keep it keep it mind is this car is what it was trying to compete with at the time it just doesn't but in retrospect there's a couple things to talk about with that while people are having problems with the s65 or the v10 version of it doing rod bearings and throttle actuators and all the expensive stuff that you had to do with those cars this is still in the road very few people have transmission problems they don't have engine problems and that's why the resale value of this car is also insanely good you can buy this and not have to set aside six grand to do just basic maintenance and that's why I would purchase it over one of those cars I agree with you on that point but you don't get the manual the steering while being direct has literally no feedback and the chassis as you know I like throwing cars sideways the only way I feel this car pitching sideways is audibly in just the g-forces I feel nothing in the suspension yeah and I think that's the problem with this is again chassis tuning the transmission wasn't the bust the engine is pretty great but it didn't compare but as of a car today it feels very similar to like the RC F and GS F it's just less power and doesn't it's just not as refined but let's get this thing off the line and see how it does [Music] I think this is plenty fast I think it's faster than what you would expect it to be and I think if somebody was purchasing this today for $25,000 and you got behind the wheel you would be absolutely floored by how good this is from an engine perspective and that transmission Commission perspective when you're revving it out here's the profit I know I'm down on this car you have to get a twenty ten because you have to get the limited-slip but if you get a twenty eleven and above the car becomes thirty forty thousand dollars which it's way too much money for what you're getting then you get an RC F at that point the car is too small to really be a four-door I'm six foot tall no one is getting behind me when I'm driving this car it's really a two-door at that point I don't fit in it with a helmet so I'm left with this car that isn't meant for me well while the engine is great I love the way it sounds mechanical induction is amazing I love how simple this car is you just put it in manual mode put it in sport turn everything off and go it's just I don't quite love this car it's 85 percent as good as the c63 and he 92 it doesn't have a reliability problems but I don't form anything emotional with this vehicle I think that's a great time to just get to the final thoughts we can sum all of that up talk about the pros and cons and just move on with life [Music] final thoughts on the ISF a huge thank you to Victor who lent us his personal car to do this video so many people have asked for it so let's get into it jack really had no connection to this and one of his big issues was he didn't fit he felt kind of trapped in this car and it ruined the whole point of having a four-door sedan nobody could fit behind him I fit perfectly I had no issues with the seats comfort I could use it like a normal vehicle so this is really important when we start talking about cars it depends on who you are your frame your body type whether a car's gonna work or not but outside of that I've driven every single modern Lexus product all the F products now and I can appreciate the evolution of where these new cars were compared to the is F and the is F is about 50 60 % of like the RC F and GS F the more modern eight speeds in those newer cars are better programmed they're they're more quicker to respond and they do a better job of being dual purpose of being smooth on the street and then when you drive flat out they're quicker way quicker than the ISF trans but it's close most normal people aren't going to notice that the engine yes it doesn't make as much power but it feels every bit as good as the more modern cars and the thing is you're looking at buying this for probably a couple reasons it doesn't have the insane over-the-top styling of the new Lexus products and it's affordable and you still get a v8 and it's reliable that is why you would buy the ISF and if you could find one in the low 20s I'd say go for it but if you start getting into that $35,000 price range for a newer one I don't know I would just bring the extra cash and go with the RC F or GS F and I know the GS F is a lot more money but the RC F can be had for about 40 grand in that price range and I feel from a performance perspective you're getting a lot more you are losing some of the usability but overall I really enjoy driving this car it's it's so well built even - almost ten years removed panel fitment paint quality interior build quality everything works that's why you get this car thanks for watching see you next time [Music] you you [Music] you

Channel: savagegeese

Views: 451,153

Keywords: Lexus, negative, ISF, rod bearings, problems, M3, m2, BMW, review, cars, Corvette, Mustang, Ford, GM, Carvana, Porsche, reviews, sports cars, performance, warranty, carfax, carguru, expensive, cost, s65, s85, e92, e93, e90, blown motor, 3 series, AMG, Mercedes, C63, GSF, RCF, LC500

Id: cStFGWLv1sg

Length: 18min 16sec (1096 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 16 2019