(gentle piano music) (car engine revving) - I'm JR Smart, President and
CEO of Smart Motors Toyota. As a young child, I was enamored
of all the new vehicles. My father was a dealer,
his father was a dealer, so I'm a third generation dealer now. For me it really boils down to the people that are in this business. I have spent a lot of
time working side by side with technicians, with parts
people, with salespeople, on my way up, putting together a
fantastic team of people that have a shared passion
for the automobile industry as I do. Growing up, I accompanied
my father to the dealership on many occasions and learned
by working closely with him, working at his side, he taught me the value
of honesty, integrity, all those things really come
into play in this business, particularly because it
gets a bad rap sometimes. My grandfather started
this business in 1908. He worked out of his
grandfather's livery business, so actually we're a
little over 112 years old. Along the way, we've had
28 different franchises and 26 of those are no longer
here, they're long gone. We picked up the Toyota franchise in 1966 and coincidentally enough, I was along with my father
when he penned the deal with Toyota on that fateful day. Fast forward to today, I've been involved in
racing for over 40 years. Currently, I drive a Formula
Atlantic, Toyota-powered, and also have a Mazda-powered
Formula Atlantic, but Toyota has a strong relationship with the racing world as well. At one point, Toyota had
approached me to purchase an LFA, never dreamed that I
would purchase that car, I just kind of put it out of my mind and I'd had heard that they
had the leasing program and I was not a fan of that
so why would I do that? But then as time went
on and they relaxed that and started offering them for sale, it started to make a
little more sense to me and it built up in me, let's say that. One of their representatives, man by the name of Mr. Paul, I believe, came to my office, brought
his books and colored charts and so forth with him and we went through all
the basic configurations, there were about 20 items
that I could choose, color of the carpet, color
of the steering wheel, color of the car, the wheels, little fins on the car,
whole host of items. So we walked all through that then it came down to
time for the body color and I looked at the choices and I fell immediately in
love with a matte black, I've never had a matte black car before. Once I took delivery of the
LFA, the gifts kept coming. First they sent me a book
about the build process, next up we have a
certificate of authenticity on a little scale of 118th inch model, the wheels move, the steering wheel moves, the hood has the prop rod to hold it up, the doors open and close,
the back lift comes up, the wing comes up, it's an exact replica of
the car that I purchased save for the color of the interior. I was issued my keys in
this lovely little box that has my serial number located on it and specific compartment
for each one of the fobs. Beyond that I got one more surprise that I was not expecting at all, sort of to me luggage carbon fiber that was designed for the LFA. (gentle music) - The interior of the LFA. This was a new direction for the brand and they wanted to represent the change in quality and craftsmanship and when you look at this,
with all the years removed, you can tell how they've
carried over bits and pieces and added them to cars
like the RC, the GSF, and of course the LC 500
is mostly representative of what they've done in
terms of leathers, fabrics, build quality, handles,
alloys, it's all here, with the exception there is
far more carbon fiber in here and that is the big differentiator
in the build of this. The entire tub, the driver
occupant cell is all CFRP. Now, the details, you have
carbon fiber on the sills, most of the door material
has this glossy carbon fiber, and of course, if you
were optioning this out, there were 13 different
ways you can do Alcantara, you could do leather color
stitching and all the buttons. Everything in here feels
like it's precision designed and that's really what this car was about. In terms of using this, you see the traditional Lexus
moving motorized gauge cluster that has been carried in
all the F products so far, you have a carbon fiber key,
yes, you have to turn a key, we place this in. To start the car, you
have the parking brake which is electronic, you
have two paddles here. To go into neutral, you pull them both towards you and then you can start the
car with the start button on the steering wheel, (car engine revving) but we'll talk about driving it later. When you grab the steering wheel, it's got a really decent amount of grip because the leather area is
where you're supposed to grab, it's got alloy pedals in it, one of my biggest complaints about this, and Ferrari does the same thing, the pedals are attached to
the column, not the wheel. So if you're getting to
the point of crossed over, or if you're starting
to lose control of it and you wanna upshift to
kind of stabilize the car, you have to take your hands off the wheel and it's one of the most
frustrating parts about this. The other negative part
about this interior space is the infotainment, and this is the last
generation infotainment that you would have
found like 10 years ago, and I would say out of
anything in this cabin, it's the one thing that dates it and Jack and I talk about
this all the time on new cars, they may have a timeless
design like this does yet the older this gets the worse this screen and usability is so I just turned it off
if I'm looking at it. But you have alloy pedals,
these are machined, they are machined in a way
that you've never seen before on a street car. It is precisely made to
give you a great pedal feel. The accelerator pedal is floor mounted, and I'm gonna put some diagrams up here and the whole point is to give
you great throttle control. The throttle sensitivity
on this car is insane. And that is the overall
aesthetic of the LFA. (adventurous music) - So we've been transported
to Arlington Lexus, because if you have an LFA this is where you're
gonna have to service it here in the Midwest. This is Randy Romans, one of the owners of the Roman
Group's personal automobile and it only has like 75 miles on it. - Yeah, and even JR who's
matte black LFA we had, he would have to take
it to a Lexus dealership and part of the experience
of owning a Lexus is coming to like a
flagship store like this, when you see it from the outside, when you come flying
in on your private jet, it looks like a palace, the showroom is ridiculous, the theater, all the little amenities
that they pack in here, this is what they're trying to
do is make you feel special. - These two dealers are best in breed, they are the best examples of
a Lexus and Toyota dealership, and this is the experience
you should expect. - And if I had an LFA, this
is exactly what I'd want. But just briefly to talk about this; if you're gonna do
things like oil changes, you could bring it to
a dealership like this who is very competent to do it. But if you need any serious work, it's going to be
transported to California, or if you're in Europe, it's going to GAZOO Racing in
Cologne to do all that work. This is a highly specialized car and when you look at it front to back, you're gonna start to understand why as we bore you for the next 72 hours talking about every single detail you've probably never heard before and hopefully, if you
know a lot about this, you'll learn something. - So let's start with the
development story of this car, and like any good story,
it started in a bar. - Oh, you're kidding. - No, it's very true, and instead of getting fired, his boss asked him you want, so Tanahashi, what do you want in a car? What is your dream? And I wanna to build a sports car. And after a year of
research and development and product planning, they came up with this thing. - So Haruhiko Tanahashi, he was kind of in product planner future planning for these types of cars, and it was in the back
of his mind for a while. And when he pitched this idea. - [Jack] He didn't wanna
build another minivan? - No, he didn't wanna build something, I'm sure obviously if you're an engineer, you wanna do something out of the box. So after this they
started this whole plan. And over the course of
the year it went through what do we wanna do? He had a diary of the entire process and one of the things they decided right away early on is
it wasn't just gonna be some like four cylinder
eco pile piece of sh**, it was gonna be a real
sports car high end, they did not want a baby like
Corolla turned sports car, this was gonna be a bespoke machine. So by the end of the year, they kind of had an idea
of what they wanted to do. Toyota was in Formula One, this was phasing out the
V10 days into the V8s, that was what they were going for and they planned on doing a V10. Now, as time went on, he was promoted to chief
engineer of this project, he oversaw the LFA works, which you're gonna get into, but the main thing that
he wanted to instill was he didn't wanna make this
all about the engine first, he wanted to make it
chassis and suspension first because he had patents in
twin tube damper technology and some chassis components so his roots were in making a solid car. - This car was suspension first. We all think of the V10, but at its core this
car is meant to handle, his philosophy behind that
was the hand of Buddha, he wanted a car that
communicated with you, that coddled you, and then just didn't just spit you out when he made a mistake, he wanted you to become one with the car. So let's talk about the
manufacturing process. - [Mark] This car was built
in the Motomachi plant which builds a whole wide variety of cars, but they carved out a subsection
of it for the LFA works, kind of in the back is like hey, just go
build your car over here. So they kind of got it up to speed for what they were trying to do, aluminum frame or aluminum
chassis, everything was bespoke, everything was gonna
be mostly made in house as much as they could. - [Jack] And this was
maximizing the philosophy of Takumi craftsmanship, but what that means is Toyota
picked their best workers, their best craftsmen-- - [Mark] All across the company, they picked what handpicks-- - 175 odd employees to work on this car in a small group that was
only meant to be together for like a year or two. And guess who they got to manage it? - No, who? - Their baseball team manager. - Because their belief
was he did such a good job bringing people together
from different parts of life, from different experiences and having them come together as a team, and his philosophy with his employees was you're like a great athlete and every single time you build
this car or you do a task, it's like when you make
a play on a sports team. - [Mark] And it makes
sense in a small group because they're gonna be tied together, they're gonna work together and they're also gonna
figure out problems together. When you have a clean
sheet design like this, you don't have a playbook of like, okay, we built this car this
way so we build it this way, this is completely different so you want it to have specialized people that could handle this type of work, and obviously the engineering,
lets not even play around. This was an engineering task. This was a complete experiment to see how much they could get and how much they could put together. - [Jack] This is Lexus
spending over a billion dollars over a decade to basically
make a statement to the world; this is what we can
do, we're here to play, and this is gonna be
us in the 21st century. - And part of it was they
had the biggest budget in Formula One at the time,
they outspend everybody. - [Jack] And they didn't win. - They didn't win, but there was so much
engineering and design that went into the Formula One series, and they had nothing to
show for it as a product. Toyota and Lexus at that period of time, there was a snoozefest, let's be honest, they had no sports cars, they had nothing as a halo product and all these other brands in Formula One, like, oh, Ferrari, oh,
Red Bull didn't ever (Jack laughs) They had--
- A Mercedes. And so this car set the groundwork for things like your LC 500. - [Mark] Correct. - [Jack] The GSF and the RCF. - After about five years, they were pretty deep into the development and one of the controllers had
brought them into the office, and they kind of kicked around the idea of doing the body and carbon fiber, which they didn't wanna do because they didn't possess
the knowledge to do it. They didn't have the team, they didn't have the
foundry, they have the works, the autoclaving, they
didn't have any of it. So Tanahashi's San, he's like, yeah, let's stick with aluminum. The controller brought him
in and said, guess what? We're switching to CFRP and he is like, what was happening? We're almost done with this car. - If you think about it, Mark, most cars only have a five or
six year development period. Can you imagine you're almost done and your boss is like you
gotta throw it all out, we're starting over? That's what they did effectively. - That's what they did. And so he went and talked
to Fuji Heavy or Subaru, and was like we gotta
switch this car to CFRP, what do you think? What do you think the
development cycle is gonna be? And they're like that's
probably not a good idea 'cause it's gonna take at least 10 years, 10 year plan to get this developed and he's like, well,
we don't have 10 years, we have like a year. So they worked on this and
they figured out how to do it, bring in autoclaves and mind you, none of the
craftsmen that they had there ever worked with carbon
fiber to this level before. They had Formula One and autoclaves and all the equipment to make race cars, but making a race car is far different than making carbon fiber
for a production car. So this is what they worked on, they figured it out, they figured out how to do
the robotics to cut the carbon and then to do the molding
process, to handle it, take a little hair dryers
to make sure it was perfect, a lot of trial and error, but obviously as you see
this even the under trays are all carbon fiber. - [Jack] 65% of this car is carbon fiber and 35% of it is aluminum. In fact, the entire spaceframe, Santa Monica coordinate Tanahashi this is a space frame is carbon fiber. - [Mark] So you have three
different types of carbon fiber: the prepreg, you have the RTM, which is the less labor intensive version, and then you have CSMCs which
is the sheet molded composites with carbon fiber infused in it. So between these, like
you said 65% of the body, but they still used an
aluminum sub frame carrier in the front and the back, and one of the reason
Tanahashi's San wanted to do an aluminum subframe and the
front was for crashworthiness. It was going to be far
less difficult to repair and less costly, - [Jack] Okay. - [Mark] Which almost
comical when we know how much all these individual parts cost now, Jack. - So, Mark, you lost your F badge on the side of your Fender, how
much is that gonna cost you? - [Mark] I don't know. - [Jack] $5600. Oh, you cracked your bumper, Mark, guess how much that's gonna cost you? - [Mark] How much? - [Jack] $20,000. Oh, you cracked the Fender? $20,000. - Oh, my God, it's that much? Oh, so we'll talk about the gearbox and the long block costs
when we get under the hood. But yeah, so everything
on here is a bespoke piece that if you're in the US they store the parts in a
warehouse in California, and from there if they don't stock it, it has to be custom made
back in Japan, one off made, and shipped back here. - [Jack] Now this is not a regular Lexus. - [Mark] This is not
a regular Lexus at all in any typical way. So, what else do we have on the front to talk about, Jack? - [Jack] So let's talk about
the suspension architecture. So you have an aluminum subframe and all of the suspension
components are aluminum, both the control arms
and knuckles, everything. - And the knuckles are forged and you have hollow arbs or
hollow sway bars to save weight. You have an aluminum steering rack, Jack. - You do. And this is an EPS unit, Mark. This is a column mounted
electric steering rack. - They all argued that they wanted a
hydraulic steering rack, however, you have to run hydraulic lines, you have to have a pump that creates some type of pumping losses, and when you look at how
tight this is in here, having this allowed them to lower this and you can see the shaft, the steering shaft is almost
touching the subframe. I mean, there's like
a millimeter in there. - [Jack] You're not working
on this car in your garage. - [Mark] No, you're not. And if you do I wanna see
that and I wanna talk to you. So the rack almost looks
like a manual steering rack, is super slim, super small, and then the power assist
unit is in the column itself. And because this car doesn't
need a lot of assistance, except when you're getting-- - [Jack] It's almost a manual rack. - Correct. It essentially turns itself off. We're not gonna get much more into that, let's talk about the dampers. - Okay, they are KYB dampers
and they are $9,500 a corner. - [Mark] Oh, that's it? - [Jack] Yes, real affordable. - [Mark] So the dampers
were co-developed with KYB on the LFA race car. So these look like race shocks, they have a remote or piggyback canister, this maintains pressure and it helps to reduce the
packaging of the shock. If you didn't have the remote canister, your shock body would be much longer. And since this is a smaller, more compact, double wishbone suspension, it gives them a lot more flexibility so the compression stroke can be, that oil and gas can be
offloaded to this canister, but the other benefit is heat management. You wouldn't think it shocks
can heat soak but they do. - [Jack] Because of the proper
use of thermal management, it allowed this car to have a linear feel. The harder you push in, the
longer you push it as well. - [Mark] And the damper tech allows that consistency
and compression and rebound to stay constant even though
you're putting a ton of heat into these things, and that was all developed
during the race stint and 24 hour racing, that's why these shocks cost so much. - [Jack] In fact, all of
the suspension development was done on the ring. - That's correct. These dampers also have
threaded shock body so you can change to the right height if you need to corner balance or specific tracks are going to, but they are not adjustable,
they are fixed rate, there's no external adjustments for them. The last thing with the
shocks is they were trying to, you'll notice throughout this car, they're trying to reduce friction in all these different parts. The shock absorbers, the internal piston has
a diamond like coating so it creates less heat
from the piston travel, there's less seal stiction. So it's a lot of race mentality that went into this from all the testing. The other thing to talk
about in the front, Jack, is the cooling, you have two sea trap oil
coolers that are air cooled, you see all the lines that run here, and you have this belly
pan with the brace over it. So to do an oil change right now, currently we have the
carbon under panel off and aluminum under panel off. Surprisingly, this is
only a five minute job to take this off. It's like every other car, now modern car, but it does have five drain plugs. Two here, two on the back, you have to take this little panel off, and one for the-- - [Jack] Dry sump. - [Mark] The dry sump. - The remote reservoir.
- The remote reservoir. So you take all those five out the car, has to be up to temperature, takes about an hour to drain all of it. Then you fill it back up with clean oil, get it back up to temperature again, and then you drain it out a second time for it to get all the residual oil. And when people talk oh, this
a three, four hour oil change, I thought it was because
you had to disassemble a whole bunch of stuff, it's just the waiting
time to get the oil out and there's two oil
filters in the engine bay. So, really, that's not too crazy, but the rest of anything
to talk about here is - [Jack] The brakes. - [Mark] Are brakes, correct. Carbon ceramic. - [Jack] Built by Brembo. - [Mark] This was a first for them, and the difference with
these carbon ceramics is the pistons. - [Jack] So there are six piston in front, four piston rear, and they hollowed out
the pistons, correct? - [Mark] Well, they put
holes in the pistons to reduce the temperature
in the brake fluid, but they are monoblock calibers, Now, these are not exotic anymore. We see this all the
time even on like SUVs. - [Jack] This was the first
time Lexus ever did this but it was still attached
to an electric pedal, this is a brake by wire system. - [Mark] It is. Most Lexus and hybrid
Toyotas are now brake by wire but it does have a redundant
backup hydraulic system so you don't have to worry about your foot going to the floor
and crashing into a wall, there there is a failsafe for it. The last thing to talk
about with the brakes, Jack, the race cars use steel discs and the streetcars got the
carbon ceramics because of cost. And speaking of cost, the discs on here weren't as much as I thought. - [Jack] I think they're like-- - [Mark] 38, they're
30 in the box per rotor which some cars are over 5000. - [Jack] It's actually less than what you'd pay for a Cayenne. - [Mark] Oh, yeah, what a deal. So that's one of the costs
that are on the lower end. And we could keep geeking out over so many different things here, Jack, but I think we need to move
towards the back of the car. - Let's do it. - All right, Jack, in the
rear my favorite place to be. Let's start with cooling,
there's a lot to talk about. First, let's talk about what's back here. You have a transmission
cooler and you see the lines. The side panel has an
airflow duct that comes in, cools this, and then runs to the gearbox. The second piece of cooling that we see are the two rear bumper mounted radiators, all the coolant goes there and they have a low engine
mounted centrifugal pump that flows the coolant back here. And one of the reasons that
they put these radiators in the back instead of the front, - [Jack] Is you have limited surface area to work with in the front to actually get all the air in you need so much like in say a C7 Corvette or a lot of the race cars, you have to ducts on the
top of the rear fenders that feed air directly
into these heat exchangers. - [Mark] And the other
part was weight balance, moving more weight to the back, and why would they want to do that? - [Jack] So this car they were targeting a 48, 52 weight distribution. They wanted this to be rear weight biased because many professional drivers believe that is the ideal
balance to get a car to be. - [Mark] Instead of 50, 50. - [Jack] Yeah. - [Mark] So the next
thing, back to the cooling is this whole center tunnel here. This was used as a heat path
from the front to the back, there is an aluminum cover we have sitting on the floor there and we'll show you the footage, there are up kicks in this cooler that connect the two little pipes that move air up through this to move air over the exhaust manifold and then all the heat. There's also two of these
pipes under the hood, which you do not wanna fill up with water, but those blow air downward and all of the heat goes all
the way to the center tunnel and flows through the underbody
cover out the exhaust vents by the taillights. So I mean, I don't wanna
say it's over engineered, but it's so ridiculous what
they had to come up with and then also, because they wanted to make
this kind of a driver centric. - This is my favorite example
of absurdity right here, they wanted to bring the passenger and driver closer together
like in a McLaren F1. - [Mark] Yeah, without
having a center seat. - [Jack] So they had to stack the exhaust on top of the torque tube, and this exhaust is titanium which cost as much as a Toyota Corolla, I mean is astronomically expensive. - So there's a ton of
engineering challenges here because we talked about this in the front. When you really strip everything away, I think when this car came out, there was not the cool
factor to it on the outside, the spec sheet's like
oh, it's very Japanese, and people didn't really
understand what that meant. But when you really dig into this. - Yeah, Toyota does a horrible
job and marketing this car and explaining to people
why this is special. - Exactly. So, what else do we have back here? - So we have a transaxle. So much like the coolers, they
wanted to stuff the gearbox, all the other fun bits in the back of this to aid in weight distribution. So, obviously, you have
this massive torque tube which adds rigidity to the drive train, then you have the six speed, automated single plate dry clutch automatic transmission back here with a Taurus sine
limited slip differential. - [Mark] The single plate clutch is hydraulically controlled. And when you look at the gearbox, it looks like a manual transmission and I think that's what
they were trying to go for, - [Jack] It's really what it is. There's like basically
an electric Japanese man who lives behind you and
shifts the car for you. - [Mark] Yeah, and when you're driving, you hear the little clunk behind you which we'll obviously talk
about during the drive. But when you start up the car, you hear that pump that kicks on to get the hydraulic fluid pressurized so you can get into gear. Connected to that, when we
talked about the torque tube, the torque tube has inside for the shaft, has two rubber isolators
that are built into it to reduce vibration and to
quiet down the drive train. So as much as there's a lot
of thought to performance, there's also a thought to some refinement, they didn't want this to be completely unlivable on the street. - [Jack] Yeah. So the last thing to talk
about back here, Mark, is the suspension architecture. Like in the front, it's
an aluminum subframe but this is a multilink rear
end versus a double wishbone. - [Mark] That's correct. In the back you have forged knuckles, you have forged control arms
and the same KYB dampers with hollow arbs or anti-roll bars. The last thing is the titanium exhaust, there is a vacuum valve
that clips this exhaust open at 3000 rpms and there's a big reason why it does that, which we're going to blow
your mind with under the hood when we start talking
about the sound engineering behind this car. - All right, Mark, let's get there. So this is the meat and
potatoes of the LFA, this is what people remember this car for and this is the V10. However, before we talk about this engine, let's talk about the hood and some of the carbon fiber body panels, like this hood here is $18,500. And the reason they went to
carbon throughout this car is obviously, as we talked about earlier, it's more rigid, but it also helped them
save 220 pounds of weight throughout the body of this car. - One of the big reasons besides weight is when they were doing their testing and they were building a race car with LFA is they couldn't get the
performance they wanted, the chassis wasn't right,
and the speed wasn't right, the lap times weren't
what they were expecting for the amount of work they put in. So they figured the 220
pounds would help them in terms of damping chassis setup, you'd have a more rigid chassis as well and then it would help out. - [Jack] I mean, it paid off. This was the fastest
production car around the ring when it did come out for
a short period of time. - Which means nothing, and I think the last thing we'll
talk about during the drive is really how it feels and that's what they
talked about development. It was about how the car
connected with you more than anything else and that is, - This V10. So everyone knows it's a V10 but here's some interesting
tidbits about it. This V10 is the size of a
V8 and the weight of a V6 and the way they accomplish that is a clever use of materials. So this has an aluminum block. The aluminum block was manufactured in Toyota's then defunct
Formula One factory. - Yeah, by the time they got around to making the engine, they had already been out of Formula One due to the economy mostly and the fact that they were
having some difficulties internally with it. So they had this high
tech, high end facility that they could do all their milling, all the engine manufacture process that they couldn't do
anywhere else in the company so it was a blessing in disguise. So they preassembled basically the bottom end of this motor there, but when they were building this engine and the rest of the car in fact, they catalog every single bolt
and nut associated with it so they can match it later to it. They send this pre-assembled
engine to Yamaha where they did the rest of the work where one man or woman
over a day and a half hand assembled the entire motor and then they broke it
in on an engine dyno. - Okay, and then it was
shipped in Motomachi. - [Jack] Yes. - To be installed into the car. What makes this engine special, Jack? What is it besides the weight, I mean, you're-- - The way it revs and the way it sounds, this thing will go from zero to 9000 rpm in point six of a second. - And one of the things that the engineers decided on early on besides the chassis was how to design a motor like this. They were infatuated with
the sounds of Formula One, and if you're a modern Formula One fan, you're not gonna know what that means because they sound like ass compared to the way that they used to. And they took recordings,
high resolution recordings, from the cars at the tracks, V8s and V10s, and they played them
back and listen to them and how could they get
this V10 sound similar? Of course, this doesn't rev out to like 18,000 or 19,000 rpms like the engines in the race series. - [Jack] They wanted to give
their owners a taste of that. - So part of that was the
design of this surge tank. The surge tank and the
secondary combustion tuning of the engine. So it starts with the tuning of the motor. So that secondary
combustion was what triggers that kind of that really
good harmonic tone that comes from the
mechanical part of it revving. And then you take that sound and you create the surge tank so tell me a little bit about that. - So they had to deal with 10 ITBs, and that was the first
beginning of their troubles when it came to tuning this engine. So they had to work with the fact that it's incredibly difficult
to work with ITBs to get that streetable, and they had to go to an engineer who had worked on IndyCar, correct? - [Mark] Yeah, he worked
in multiple race series on race engines. So they knew they wanted to do 10 ITBs electronically controlled
with two throttle actuators, one on each bank to give
you that throttle response 'cause that's what this
whole engine was about. I mean, there was no
point of putting a V10 in if you couldn't get this
thing to rev quickly, that's part of the experience. The throttle bodies do that, most naturally aspirated race engines use independent throttle
bodies for that very reason, throttle response, but tuning it, and it's
not just readability, its regulations and fuel economy standards which they had to deal
with even for this car, that was the bigger problem
to get it to pass that. - And then all of that induction noise came through what they
call the surge tank, which is basically an intake manifold and may be turned to Yamaha. And as you know Yamaha
has two parts of it, you can buy a piano or
a guitar from Yamaha so they have a legendary music department, and obviously they have their motor sports or engine department
from their motorcycles. And they went to them to
design this surge tank and it's ribbed for your audible pleasure. So much like in a cello or a violin there is little ribs
throughout this intake manifold that give you the correct resonance and they're looking for 400 hertz. - If they knew they wanted a 400 hertz tone of vibration
through this surge tank, that 400 hertz tone is kind
of like this magical, warm, just really rich sounding tone and to get that vibration through this box and to maintain it
throughout the rev range was very difficult because they kept changing things like the tuning of motor
mounts, the chassis tuning, the engine tuning and even tuning-- - Every single time they
had to make a change, they had to change the surge tank. - Correct. So the whole concept of it
was to blend the chords, the exhaust tone and the
intake charge or the surge tank had to have this balance tonal quality like chords playing in a progression. The only time that they
would change that third chord was at the higher RPM range to
give it a little bit of bite. So between 8000 and 9000
rpms that tonal quality would slightly change to
give it this screaming sound. And to balance that together
with the exhaust, the intake, they want it to be more
of an exhaust, warm tone or a bass tone below 3000 rpms and then be all induction tone after that, that's all great when it's under the hood and the exhaust but you
can't hear it on the inside. So when they got Yamaha involved, they couldn't figure out how
to get it inside of the car. That's where Yamaha is like
put a hole in the bulkhead, drill a hole through the
firewall, route it in, so they worked on the
tubing and how to do it. So there's a main lot or a main tube that goes from the surge
tank to the dashboard, that's the main induction. - [Jack] And that's for
the higher frequencies, and then they have two
ports by your footwell for the lower bass harmonics to create almost this 3D
effect inside the cabin. - And I know this is a huge discussion but that's what all of the work that just went into creating the sound, it's not just a muzzle. - And that's just one element of it 'cause the other part of it
is getting this to be reliable and rev out to 9000 rpm, make your 552 horsepower at
700 rpm day in and day out, this long block at a
dealer's cost is $88,000. So it was essential that
you could beat on this car if you paid the $375,000 and
that would survive the abuse 'cause that's what Toyota is known for, that's what Lexus is
know for, reliability. So do you wanna talk
about the oiling system? - Yes, so there's seven scavenger pumps and those scavenger pumps are essentially feeding oil
everywhere where it needs to go, and I could go way more into detail on it because it's another like
three hour conversation. But those scavenging pumps are
part of the dry sump system. This is a dry sump because
they wanted to maintain two Gs of lateral load on the engine, not only keeping that oil flowing, but keeping that oil cool. So they only used the oil
through certain feed lines, they were maximizing, they didn't wanna send all
the oil through the cooler. - [Jack] This is a lot of oil. This is over 15 courts
- 15 courts. - So the point was not to send all the oil through the coolers because
it creates pressure drops and it creates more pumping losses so they only cool the hot oil. The other thing is they put an upper limit on oil temperature, this
uses 5W50 mobile one, and they use 550 heavy weight oil 'cause it's exposed to
more extreme temperatures. At 284 Fahrenheit, the
computer will let you know, look, you need to back off of this car, that oil is gonna thin off,
pressure is gonna drop. So they do have the baked in protections. Like you said, the long
block is so expensive the transmission is what? Like 60 grand or something. - It's something outrageous. I know the bellhousing alone is $8,000. And the way they tested the reliability in this car was through racing. Yes, they did a 24 hour
Nurburgring endurance race, they did so much testing on this to figure out all the strange problems that they're gonna have and one of 'em was in the
titanium connecting rods. So during their testing, they
found deformation in titanium. Titanium is really strong and
light but it's deformable, and they found that under
extreme temperature and heat, there was deformation
in those connecting rods which meant it was creating
cylinder bore wear, there was a whole bunch of things that it was starting to do. So they went back and figured out well, how do we change this? We can't change the construction of them. So what they did is they
redesigned the connecting rods to have a like an opposite effect almost like deforming the connecting rods so when it heated up, it would no longer deform the direction that was causing the engine problems, but it's an elastic effect. Once it deformed, it did go
back to its normal position when it cooled off. So again, all these individual
engineering challenges are really mind blowing and I've had so much difficulty wrapping my head around
all these individual things that they've done. - We drive a lot of cars
doing this job, a lot of cars, and there are certain vehicles like the 405 that we just did, had a tremendous engine, great story, and then obviously, the body
construction wasn't there. You drive other cars that
are lacking in certain areas because there were budgets
and there're time constraints. This is what happens when you have a manufacturer like Lexus who gives their engineers a long leash and tells them to chase some form of their version of perfection. - And in the case of this car, that's why it no longer exists. Because they spent 10 years,
over a billion dollars, to make a car for one year and kill it off and never do it again, that's what makes it special and it's also what kind
of is disappointing about seeing something like
this go away permanently. But let's get this out on
track to see how it drives and see the culmination
of all this engineering translates into a driving experience. (car engine revving) (gentle music) - [Jack] This car is amazing. - It is. You see videos, you see the information that's available out there in the internet and some of its good, some of its bad, but one thing I can tell you is what I expected this car to be, it's not at all like I expected. - [Jack] How so? - I think what I didn't really know is that Lexus focus more
about the chassis development and the handling, so the side effect is
this is more sports car. I thought it was gonna
be a GT car and it's not, this feels like a sports car
- Sports car. - Yeah, super car, and that of course (Jack laughs) then they could develop the
engine for all that handling. And the thing that I
noticed getting in this with the stock tires, this
car moves around a lot. They wanted it to be a bit more edgy and more of a drivers car, it's not supposed to be like a slide fest, it's not like the Jag F-type or a Hellcat where you can--
- It's edgy. - It's very edgy. - You have to correct for it but when it does step
out, you have to catch it, it's not a Chris Harris drift
machine like the F-type is. - It's more of a precision tool and the suspension stiffer
than I expect it to. It's definitely one of
those, you wanna catch it, or if you don't catch it it's going wrong, it's going sideways. And the next thing that I didn't realize and yes, we know this has a single clutch and the single clutch
feels very rudimentary compared to the new
systems, 10 years removed. But what it gives you is
the sense of mechanical feel and you hear the gearbox in the back when you shift gears, when it upshifts, there's like this shotgun
cocking in the back. It's like this guy's like,
oh, there's a little robot and they're changing the gears and it sounds like a manual transmission, it feels like you're shifting
a manual transmission. - There is an unbelievable
amount of theatrics when you drive this automobile from the way the gauge clusters, from the way it looks, to the interior, the to the sound which is just (car engine roaring) yeah, I need a cup of
coffee and a cigarette now, Mark, that's about as good as you
can possibly get close to hell. - This car wants to turn in so quickly. I mean, you can nail the brakes, the car starts to get in the turn and then as soon as you just
breathe on the throttle, it rotates its way through. It's a car that allows you to grow with it and I know this is probably not the car that you're gonna buy
to learn how to drive, but if you're coming-- - No, you're not gonna give
your 16 year son a $500,000 car. - Yeah, this is not the
"My Little Pony" car that you get your kids, you definitely have to
have some driving aptitude to be able to get the most out of this, it's definitely a challenging car to drive and I can tell that right away, and that's one of the things
that I really like about it. I think a lot of people, at least from all the videos I watched going into this and reading some reviews, they called it digital, right? They said it's like driving
a video game around. Like if you watch the
original Richard Hammond Top Gear reviews ago, it's all about maths and sciences, this thing at least by 2020 standards feels super analog. - It feels feels very analog to me and I know there's a
lot of technology here, but I think the core
fundamental, the chassis, the way that they've done the transmission and the suspension design, this feels very 2000 zero to me with a crazy naturally aspirated engine. Everybody knows about it's
one of the best sounding naturally aspirated engines ever made. (car engine roaring) - If you can afford this car, if you somehow have $500,000
burning a hole in your pocket, go out and buy one. - This is one of the best
cars I've ever driven, there's no doubt about it, and it has that special
feeling that is lacking in a lot of the super
cars that are out there and you're gonna pay for this. Now, the negatives are
it's not the fastest thing around the track, if you're looking to be-- - [Jack] If you're the type of personality who just cares about how
fast a car gets to 100, how fast it goes around the
ring, this car isn't for you. - No, it's not. You get a 720s or something else that you can impress your friends in, this is more of an engineering wet dream and I think that is the big
thing that I've gotten used to just being around this car and
I have appreciated the most. - [Jack] But some of its core fundamentals of what made this car so
great when this came out has trickled down to the LC 500. - Correct. It's trickled down to
a lot of Lexus products that shaped the future of Lexus, and while maybe the direct
technology's not there, a lot of the manufacturing processes is, the interior design, a lot of the core design they've moved into other Lexus products and that's the thing, since they haven't really
reutilized the drive train here that makes this car
field even more special. Negatives, obviously, interior space, it's dated, the infotainment,
the center stack. - No one cares, Mark, just get on the engine
and show people, come on. - All right, sorry, I didn't mean to. (car engine roaring) Final thoughts on the LFA, this is one of the most difficult and longer videos I've ever produced, there were so many moving parts. So huge thing JR Smart
for allowing us to use his own personal car and tell
his story and the vehicle's, and of course the other people involved. But here it is. If this car was being developed
maybe a year or two later, it would have never existed. In fact, I'm shocked just
knowing the entire story that it was ever made. In fact, something we didn't talk about is on all their pre-production
planning meetings, executives and engineers were
not on board with this car. It was too expensive for what it was, it didn't have a ton of
value to the company, most people couldn't afford to buy it, and over time it became
more and more costly. But you had the right people. Akio Toyoda was coming up in the ranks, he believed in racing, he believed in what
they were trying to do, and some of the core people
involved in it at that time pushed it through to make
it better than it ever was. But let's not joke around, the entire LFA is an
engineering exhibition. If you're not someone that values all the things
we talked about in the shop or the story, there are better cars out there for you, there are faster cars, there are those with higher performance. But one of the things that
Lexus and Toyota understood when they were designing the LFA was it wasn't just about a motor
and transmission and chassis, it was about how a car
can connect with you and give you some of that thrill of the Formula One of yesteryear, the feel and excitement of a
car that is extremely connected with most modern amenities. And yes, are there cars
that have seven, 800, 900 horsepower? Yes. Could you make a Civic that
might be faster than the LFA? Yes. But there are very few cars in existence that I have ever seen that had
so much attention to detail, thought, engineering
and quality put into it from every single corner
from panel gaps, to paint, to manufacturing machining,
to quality, to carbon fiber. This is such a special
car that at $500,000 now on the used or kind of newish market seems like a value today. And in another 10 years, you might be looking at a million dollars because that's what the
Nurburgring editions are listed for right now. So if you're a collector, you should buy one and stuff it away. If you're someone that loves to drive and you have this money,
add it to your garage. If you're someone that
lusts after this experience, try to live through it in
this video like I have. It's one of the most special
experiences of my life so far on the car world and that's exactly why I
wanted to make this video. And hopefully, if you
can never get into LFA, take a look at some of the
other Lexus products like the LC that have some of that
spirit that's baked into it. And with that said, thanks
for watching this long video. I look forward to seeing you
in all the future videos. (gentle piano music)
V12 Ferraris scream, V12 Lamborghinis howl, and American V8s bellow, but the LFA freaking sings, man. One of my top goals in life as a car enthusiast is to hear one of these in person. Such an amazing car.
He's the reason I'm looking at LC500s
Haven't seen the video yet, just wanted to say I'm so glad Geese got to do this, probably a dream for him. Well deserved!
About to make me a cup of hot cocoa and enjoy.
I remember seeing a thread on here a while ago and there was a discussion about something along the lines of, "why do shops charge so much more to work on exotics?". There were all kinds of responses given with confidence, as if each commenter knew with firsthand experience of what was involved. Some of those answers made me scratch my head and laugh.
To those people: watch this video. Watch the clip when the tech's are taking the underbody pieces off this car. Gloves. Delicate precision. Actually giving a f**k about not scratching wheels (hell, that guy is using more care taking off those lug nuts than I do on my own car, and he doesn't even own the thing!). A facility so clean you could eat off the floor with any random tool you pull out of any random drawer in the room. Listen to the process for how these cars get shipped to to specific dealerships for more invasive work; and we haven't even started talking about the cost for those shops to get certified, etc. to even be allowed to such these kinds of cars! That. That's why.
One of the highest honors of my professional life was when I got a call to detail one.
If you want to see some close-ups and intimate looks you might not otherwise, take a look - https://imgur.com/gallery/7Cw5S
My hopes were sky high and I have not been disappointed.
I would be so afraid to drive that thing. Even the hood cost more than I paid for my car.
Awesome video. Glad I got to experience the LFA vicariously through Savagegeese.
Just finished the review. The in-depth analysis and discussion is incredible. I feel like a broken record but Mark and Jack are the best auto journalists/reviewers on YT.
Having Thanksgiving leftovers while watching this video on a day off has been the best part of this month for me. /u/Savagegeese, you know how to treat your viewers with those amazing exhaust clips. Thanks for another great video, glad you survived the editing process!