Review | 2018 Lexus LC500 | Finally Something Original

you [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] if you're someone who has gone to an Auto Show chances are you've seen one of the various different concept cars that manufacturer show off they say this is the future of our design it looks so great and then you kind of get excited and then after a while you realize when they finally unveiled the real thing years later it looks like the dollar store made it and it's always a big disappointment with the LC 500 Lexus decided they were gonna try to turn their concept car into reality now this design is not going to be for everyone I've talked to plenty of people are just like it's kind of weird and awkward you can't tell if it's futuristic or retro and I talked to my buddy Tom I've talked to other people and the best way I can describe it is this looks like a supercar that Toyota wanted to build in the 80s or 90s it's like it's got this kind of simplistic old-school design namely from the side with this futuristic edge to it the side of the LC is where that concept comes to life it has this long sweeping line from the back to the front you have the rear fender arches that come out and just slope all the way down to the front and that front fender design with the crease in it it is just so liquid looking this paint is unbelievably good the clear coat is solid there's not a lot of orange peel yes this is got its khana micro scratches and swirls marks on it it's going to be a difficult paint to take care of but in the right light it is unbelievable how good it looks and I think it brings out the design and the lines of this extremely well along the side there's more to talk about like the carbon reinforced roof and that's because this thing's fully optioned out with the Performance Package but as you notice the roof it goes from Chrome to body color to glass - piano gloss black plastic and at first gel like this is a really striking look it gives you that feeling that the roofline is lower and then it connects all the flowing lines of course across the whole car but you know the piano gloss black plastics all scratched I wish they would have used glass all the way back but probably from a production standpoint it'd be difficult to do a one-piece glass like that you have air curtains in the back because the air flows along the side of the car - these kind of elongated or wider fenders so you needed to move air there and around the back wheels kind of like you do on the front and it just smoothes out air flow in general now the front part of the car this is where the marketing and PR kick in they talk about the Tri LED projectors in this headlamp enclosure that's one of the smallest on the market you have air curtains which most car have air currents for aerodynamics as well that flow from the sides of the bumpers out along the sides of the wheels there's not too much going on here there's a lot for airflow you don't need all the cooling because this is on a track car there's not 20 heat exchangers on this thing but the big question mark has been this grill and on here it's fully realized it integrates with the rest of the body structure it has this flowing design but to me just looking at it up close it's way too busy from far it kind of blends in with everything it just depends on the type of person you are if this is gonna be offensive now every car has to have some type of gimmicks the LC is no different like these electronically released door handles when you unlock it or lock it they go in and out and there's a little access badge it's completely unnecessary it's not totally usable like a regular handle but it gives it the Flair and it you know makes the the side of the car look flatter and smoother the next item that is constantly talked about are these taillights and they are one of the coolest looking taillights that you will find they have a mirror in them to give you that infinity looking LED light bar that just keeps going on and that's great until you get to the top of these headlights and look at this tinfoil ish straight up generic plastic looking top that kind of drags down the whole design namely when you see it up close it's like a kid's toy or something it's weird overall the rear is one of this cars best assets it's the bumper design it's the the trunk lid the overall taillight design it looks like an exotic car to me but the only thing I would change is these fake exhaust finishers I think they could figure out a way to do it where you could show off quad tip exhaust while still making everything flow together the trunklid has an automatic raising that's an electronically actuated spoiler that comes up and down at speed and you can manually turn it on inside by hitting a button and lowering it of course now the trunk getting away from gimmicks well just look at this it just pops and releases it goes up and down through struts and when you close it it doesn't automatically close it doesn't automatically latch itself the doors don't automatically latch itself so there's elements here in terms of engineering and design that's more simple they haven't overcomplicated everything so a lot of the things that make kind of the mid-level luxury cars good not over complicating it is here now trunk space of course is compromised you don't have a lot of height the load floor is higher the depth well the back seats are pretty close so you don't have a lot of storage space but the best part is there's a lot of width I can fit my slider I can fit my camera bag and pretty much all my own gear I think you could probably fit to larger carry-on bags you know the rolling type in the back and some extra stuff or like travel so it is usable but you know there it is compromise of course that's what this car is about getting into the LC 500 is something that I'm gonna tell you you're probably not gonna experience too often and a lot of it is because the attention to detail in here is unbelievably good for a car in this price range and it's one of the most spectacular parts about it now yes this is option I'll give the Alcantara seats if some of the more fluffy features like the full Alcantara headliner but I'm telling you even though this color is kind of strange it wouldn't be my first choice I spent so much time in here marveling at it and I don't typically do that with cars anymore because you know you see one you see them all but this is something extremely special so what do I mean by that it's the way that the dashboard is leather wrapped all the edges the contours the stitching the little subtle designs in the gauge hood in terms of the Alcantara there the metal trim along the speaker's the grille work the vent work the HVAC controls they all feel like something that is bespoke for this car and when I say that people say that a lot but it is a one-off this 90 percent of this is not shared with any other Lexus there are some carryover somebody asked me in a livestream well what's the parts been items the turn signal stocks feel you know straight up lifted out of a Toyota some of the buttons on the steering wheel or a little bit too generic and they stand out a bit too much the magnesium paddle shifters all there they're the perfect shape feel good look good they still feel like plastic even though they're magnesium there's little things like that you're gonna pick up on but to complain about it from a craftsmanship perspective is like criminal I feel bad even nitpicking this car the detail doesn't end with the - it's the door panels the shell of the door is carbon reinforced plastic you can see that the way the door design is totally unique you look at it like wow that's different the door panel has this long sweeping line that curves it's very fluid much like the design of the car and they have this kind of hidden handle into the material and that's where I say this feels and looks more like an exotic or an ultra expensive car while it is expensive it's not bleeding expensive you know when you look at a vehicle like the Acura NSX another kind of expensive Japanese car that interior is straight-up Kmart it's like something out of a you know thirty thousand dollar record this feels like legitimately $200,000 in here now of course there's other aspects the interior like nighttime illumination or ambient lighting it is so simple and elegant looking they also light up this grid panel in the center stack or Center - area that gives it kind of like that textured look at night when you close the door everything surrounds you it feels like a tailored interior and that's what I'm talking about it's one of the intangibles about car design how does it make you feel does it give you an emotional reaction and this car feels special to me it has a presence to it on the inside and out it has a WOW factor and that's something that is really hard to do in modern cars there's so much I could go on about from the carpeting design to the quality of all the touch points it's one of those vehicles you just have to get into really appreciate if you can get to a Lexus dealership just to sit in one even if you can't afford it I guaranteed you're gonna be impressed but now it's time to talk about the reality of it the negatives let's get into it the shifter Lexus made this claim that they were able to free up so much space reduced complication of having a digi shifter in here now this digi shifter is like what the ZF transmissions been doing what the American car companies like Chrysler did and now revert it back to a shift or what detents this electronic shifter has an ECU just for shifting and an electronic actuator to move the cable to shift it into Park and gear and all that it's needlessly complicated and what it does is it also is a usability problem I constantly am putting in a neutral an accent I don't know when I'm going in a manual mode because manual modes straight down but you have to push it to the left to go in a drive they're trying to address something that was never broken to begin with all for the sake of saving space the next problem is kind of usability there's not a lot of storage space in this car there's a lot less than you think there would be the glove box is tiny and it's kind of got a little electronic release it is very fluid it's very light well-designed but there's not a lot of space in there you have a single cup holder here which you know of course is going to obstruct your HVAC control so the door pockets are small it's basically there's no room for anything but your phone you can't fit a bottle in there and there's a side pocket over here for the passenger so space is extremely limited they did not think about usability they thought about moral style and design and if you're okay with that you're gonna love this now I spent a lot of time digging around in here because it's one of these few vehicles that I truly would consider owning I'd figure out a way to own this car it's so good in so many ways but there are some things that make me question it it's just little things that are super annoying like when I turn off traction stability control this gauge cluster you can't dismiss it it's constantly alerting you there's an alert menu that tells you that and then there's a constant pop-up you dismiss it comes back there's just a little electronic noises in here like that that you can tell it's some type of legal thing that I understand you accept it accept it twice but to keep popping up the reverse chime when you're going into reverse it beeps and beeps why does it have to be to let you know it's in Reverse I can tell you why it's because you have a dizzy shifter you don't know what gear you're in you have to look so it's beeping to say that I mean there's little things like that that really drag this car down in terms of seating design this is always a pro or a con when you get to these kind of more sporty seats you're gonna hurt those people that are bigger and if you're a smaller person like me I love them I think they are amazing there's not a ton of adjustment in the seats which is fine for me but it's going to probably tack somebody that just can't get comfortable there's not a lot of up-and-down motion there's not a ton of headroom it just depends on the body type and you have to check that out the next thing to talk about is the gauge cluster and this is ripped straight out of the F Sport model so if you get an RC F sport or a is F sport it's the same electro-mechanical gauge cluster it moves the bezel to the right so you can access additional menus in this car I think it's just kind of unnecessary the menus don't really tell you that much and just overall it looks cool but I don't know if it's up to you the next thing they do which is a pro is they put a bezel around the center display so it doesn't look like a giant screen it gives it that three dimensional value that we're losing with putting screens on everything it's really nice and I wish more manufacturers would do that last few things to talk about the backseat don't get back there I wouldn't it's totally unusable and pointless the only person you put in the back is somebody who hate the infotainment this is the upgraded Lexus infotainment setup and it's very much like all the other Lexus's with the widescreen it's just a little bit quicker they made some tweaks through the menu structure you use the touchpad or mousepad here to kind of scroll it's got half thick feedback and pinch-to-zoom now when you go over the menus it gives you kind of a sub menu it shows you when your mouse you know kind of highlight over it says like under settings display pops up right above it so I can go and turn the screen off there's not like a one touch screen off and for the most part it works better than the other Lexus set ups but it's very cumbersome to get around like I'm saying when I have to go in here and turn the heat seat heaters on and off it's just I don't want to have to deal with it it's just too clumsy it's too hard to do on the fly and it's not intuitive enough for me to really say oh I could deal with this it's one of the worst parts about Lexus cars still now the only other thing they have is this analog clock which looks totally out of place in here and you know for the most part everything works but my biggest problem is the tech and that's it for the interior portion let's go into the shop and talk to turbo Suki about the underbody of the LC Scott this is the LC 500 it's fresh off the boats literally from Japan I think I personally have been waiting for this car since then is it like you're all happy about it that's true and that's where I first think that still looks like it came right off the Auto Show where you can't touch then look inside because it's a fake car but you know it's the real thing yes that's true that's what makes this so compelling but let's talk about the nuts and bolts since I rambled on about the exterior for about 10 hours this is Toyota's new GA - L or gal Erica toggle and LLC ladies choice ladies car is that what I'll see Santa that's what I think it stands for what ladies choice or ladies car it's not a ladies car I guess a lady could own it as well but this is pretty manly in some ways alright the GA - L is Toyota's new global architecture luxury now this is designed to be front-engine rear-wheel-drive without being a Frankenstein kind of like the RC F or the RC was a Frankenstein between three cars so they wanted a dedicated architecture that they can build off for a multitude of different cars now with this this is the first iteration of it a first example and this car was built in the same plant as the LFA so some of the same people were working on that car we're working on this it's a very specialized facility and some of their when they were in Formula 1 and got dominated some of that the carbon-fiber works and all that is still in that plant so this has that attention to detail and you can tell that it's more specialized now this does borrow the RC F and G s FS engine it's slightly different but mostly the same so the front half of the car looks identical except you don't have oil coolers and transmission coolers on the LC so that front is blocked off the second thing you don't have here you don't have the brake ducts that run from the front bumper to the sides there's no surprising yeah I don't I don't know I don't think it needs it and it's not that type of car but what it does have is you have forged lower aluminum control arm and forged upper a arms which is a split design and this two arm lower design and two arm upper design for a multi-link like this it's designed to improve steering feel and when you have a single arm on a ball-joint up top and you have a single arm at the bottom with just one ball joint the top ball drink doesn't really necessarily follow the bottom ball joint so when you have two up top two ball joints up top two on the bottom your top follows the bottom so you get more direct steering feel less camber change less strangeness in suspension angle change in general and it gives you much more direct solid feeling up front well it looks like they took the lower ball joints that won at least the lower lower ball joint out of a freaking f-350 super duty or something like god that thing's huge it is it is it's generally big the entire knuckle assembly which is massive is all aluminum pretty much the entire subframe and lower portion of this car is aluminum and this is designed again for weight savings you have a six piston monoblock caliper and I when I did the driving bit years you're gonna see you know you look at this yeah it doesn't have brake ducts you know it doesn't look all that fancy but because of the way the front suspension is set up the way that they've built the rigidity in and the way that they've designed these strut towers of shock towers it gives you this amazing sense of braking capability without having to go out the deep end with a brake setup they do have two piece rotors that I don't believe you can separate it it's a two-piece design but you buy them in a single piece from Lexus and they have directional veins inside cooling veins but there's no slots they're not cross drilled so you know there's that but it should be cheaper to replace hopefully the next part and probably the last part with the front suspension is you have variable adjustable dampers by KYB it's all electronically controlled and they are completely adaptive so the car decides based on your driving or your drive modes how to change the vel on the fly and it's in its multi it's not like three modes whites I thought it was this car they're like 650 way adjustable or something yeah and I think the math when you do the math they probably took one two three and four and made up how many different times but yeah it's it's got a ton of adjustability by not using like a magnetic damper so we'll talk I'll talk more about the ride quality when I'm driving this the last part about the front suspension is they spent according to Lexus six months engineering those upper a arms and the way that they mount to the upper shock tower pretty interesting is very interesting and the reason that they mounted it on the sides of the strut tower was they were trying to get the hood line as low as possible in order to get the hood line lower they had to drop those upper a arms and traditionally you see upper a arms am already kinda the middle upper and you can see these are really split so I took a lot of engineering to kind of get that down I like the little brackets where the attaches to cuz usually have to drop the strut out and then when it comes time those bolts don't come apart and it becomes a freaking disaster so at least this one three bold you're done yeah four really but for next is the new 10 speed automatic Scott and the 10 speed automatic is smaller and lighter than the eight speed in the RC F and GS F now the behavior of this the way that they've designed it is it's got four planetary gear sets they've beefed up the torque converter so it can go in lock mode much more aggressively in gears one through four and this is furthering the eight speed to the ten speed and the gears are closer together all the way so one two three four and five they're smushed together so the point is to give you more of an exhilarating feel of switching gear square it's like bam bam bam bam the longest gear is the first gear it stretches out the longest but from second third fourth you're like holy crap this is like just instant amusement Road yeah it is and that's exactly what they were trying to do here the only part of it is you start to get in these upper gears and I think you said it it's like you're already at a hundred miles an hour and fourth gear like you still have six more gears why ever bother yeah it's like a bicycle do you know it's ten speed bikes I don't know what those last gears are for other than fuel economy and I guess technically at any given speed it can be on the lowest possible gear for fuel efficiency so there's that the transmission does change operation mode based on your drive modes in the rear in the rump what do you think it's pretty tough yeah it is tough and it's tough because uh what do we got here blow molded arrows things I'm more intrigued by the blow molded arrow things yeah these are not just a piece of plastic it's it's like hollow inside and it follows the asphalt arrow panels to you know to continue the airflow but Lexus is doing weird stuff here to try to reduce road noise and vibration from the tires and wheels into the body of the car so this is likely one of those things that they're doing if you get to 20-inch wheel option on this car which this doesn't have it has 21 inch forged wheels with run-flats which kind of negate all the things they're working on we get the 20 inch wheels the outer rim is hollow and it's hollow to help reduce and Trant it stops the transmission of a lot of the worms it absorbs it now you have lower your your lower and upper control arms are all aluminum your knuckles aluminum there's attempts at weight savings here and what do we have here Scott torsion limited-slip yep what's the gear ratio 2.9 for my god that's tall we got 10 speeds you got to be able to use it yeah sure are they want to be able you to use the 10 speed I guess you should say yeah the next thing we're gonna notice is it has an Asian rear-wheel steering module and combined with the Torsen this is supposed to give you an extremely controlled extremely controlled ride and just handling overall and I you know I talked about this with Lexus the RC F uses a torque vectoring differential and no rear-wheel steering but the RC F sport uses rear-wheel steering and no TVD there's a little this weird lack of consistent seeing what Toyota's doing here but it's based on engineering decision what does the car need and this doesn't need a TVD based on my experience well the lf-lc f will have it yes they probably this is my opinion they probably put the rear-wheel steering to give you a false sense of the handling sure while the what the hell is that the RC F you're gonna drive they would assume you're gonna drive it harder and they don't need to give it that false sense of yeah the grip because it's always transferring the power right will and it's it yeah it's probably a way to keep the cost down you know not to say that they built this to a price point but you know that's gonna add more cost to it and I like the mechanical I like when things are more simple so having a regular Torsen that's not electronically controlled you know it's something that you can buy this long-term and not have to worry about something like this to replace it now before we look under the hood it's time to talk about weight reduction in structural rigidity because that was a huge focus of building this architecture now alexis has done a lot but first off let's get it on the wheel scales and take a look at what the true weight and corner balance is all right it's been weighed forty four hundred and ten pounds that's to put that in perspective that's almost it's over three hundred pounds heavier than the RC F which isn't much this car seems looks a lot bigger it does look a lot bigger even though the interior dimensions don't don't reflect that but exterior wise yes now here's what they've done there's about three times the amount of structural adhesives used in this entire body structure than there is on the is car well I thought I heard it's the most structurally sound car they've ever made yes Elif a stronger than olive I thought I thought I read somewhere okay I think I think you're right and that's because they've they're starting to master the use of laser screw welding a different type of technique to bond steel to aluminum there's there's a whole bunch of different things that they're doing to or increase the rigidity of this car reduce vibration or the other thing they're doing is using more composite materials like the trunk lid being carbon reinforced plastic that door panels are carbon reinforced plastic the roof which is optional is carbon fiber so you have those elements along with the use of aluminum hood aluminum door skins I mean they've really tried to kind of use as much you know alloy and composites as possible for this car but that's enough of that let's take a look under the hood Scott you are looking at the two you are GSC five liter v8 with direct and port injection this makes somewhere around 471 horsepower and 390 something pounds of torque and somebody's gonna ask is it fast I've already had people ask me as it fast and my straight answer is no it's not fast it's not fast like you would expect the Durango SRT have just got out of the zl1 Camaro those cars felt fast because they have this immense amount of torque that throws you back in your seat this doesn't give you the same impression but on paper it's pretty fast at around four and a half seconds to zero to 60 and for street driving I would take this and I'm just gonna say I would take this over some high torque high horsepower motor that's totally unusable at for street driving this sounds amazing it feels amazing and it rubs out so smooth as this beautiful like mechanical sound to it and a lot of that is engine tuning exhaust tuning and now you have a dual intake system with two air box of two effective now it looks tough that it is tough and the gt86 and BRZ owners are going to be slathering their underwear with stool when they find out that this has a sound tube or a sound generator it is a mechanical pipe that runs from the intake to the interior of the car to generate diff frequencies at different engine rpm so Lexus finally decided to do away with the act of sound design or the fake engine noise through the speakers and make it a mechanical induction tone and the amount of work that they they did to tune the resonator and these pipes have Yamaha do it no they didn't have Yamaha do it but they learn from its it's very similar to the LFA so this pipe runs all the way down through the center part here into the firewall and they're trying to create like a stereo soundtrack with just air and resonance and these are all tuned tubes like they said it's like an instrument set down to the middle of preview I know it's crazy but it sounds great it literally does and you're gonna hear a lot of that when we're doing some driving stuff now the second thing to talk about under the hood these alloy shock towers they are an aluminum piece they're incredibly rigid and it connects I think about five different sub or braces connecting braces from here to the back to the firewall on both sides to kind of tie it all together so again this is part of the rigidity and this is unique to this car you don't see it on any other Lexus products and it is massive but part of this rigidity in these these towers is to lower the the hood line and that's why the upper a arms are lower down and that's part of all this is to design it so the suspension works properly but the last thing that it has you know what these are also I know I was gonna ask you what the hell that is pedestrian crash impact oh my god mitigation no this car throw it in the garbage already just for that they had to do it because the hood was so low that was the only way they could get the hood line low enough to pass regulations so these modules will did you know once there's an impact it can sense a pedestrian impact it will literally pop the hood up to prevent the panel right it has to have so much clearance between the engine and so it's a cushion yeah so it D it basically decouples the hood and pops it up so that is also tied in to airbag sensor so knows hey if there's a pedestrian impact it's not gonna trigger the airbags when a pop star just lost all credit for that no well it's sad that they have to worry about pedestrian safety I agree you everything is compromising on modern cars you know as much as they've tried to you know I learned that two years old look both ways before you cross the road and if you're in the street there's a high possibility there might be a car coming why would somebody teach you that you should just get a computer to do all that stuff for you you just get hit and then realize oh [ __ ] I shouldn't done that no no we got to build everything we got to build technology to avoid human stupidity Scott he can't be responsible [Music] setting off in the magnificent LC 500 now we can talk all day about the specs about the looks and a lot of the times none of that matters this is what matters what it's like to drive the car unless you're a hard Parker of course now there are high levels of expectations about what this car drives like let's get to the most fundamental thing first fuel economy and I know most people are going to care about this but this this vehicle has a split personality and when you're driving in Eco mode and you leave it in automatic I had a hundred mile round-trip highway driving of over 30 miles to the gallon it's really effective and that's because this vehicle can do advanced the valve overlap cam phasing it has direct import injection and then the 10 speed automatic it makes it just allows it all the mechanical attributes to get that type of fuel economy but here's the thing when I'm in manual mode and I'm in Sport+ and you start to put put the pedal to the metal you're looking at 13 to 14 miles to the gallon at best the next thing is ride control you look at this this is like that luxury touring car it had better ride well and when you get it over broken and choppy pavement I got to tell you this is where this vehicles let me down namely when you hear how much time they spent helping the chassis all the time they spent on the suspension design the dual ball joint set up in the upper a-arm the the lower hub or the lower knuckle it's just it's a choppy ride over broken pavement and I think 90% of that is because they have 21 inch wheels on this thing and when you have 21 inch wheels when you get to these bigger wheel tire combos you have no sidewall so there's not a lot of give to it and I think instead of softening up the suspension they've just chose to leave it as is and then you use this as an option I would almost not I would definitely not get these wheels and tires for this car because of it now the dampers are variable they can constantly adjust the valving based on your drive modes how you're driving it the ECU is constantly looking at y'all rates g-force all the driver inputs to kind of set the car up where it needs to be to kind of dampen the car appropriately and as much as this is trying to be that grand tourer it's more of a sports car grand tourer and I say that because the engine and transmission performance when you're in Sport Plus manual mode traction stability control off is absolutely amazing and the steering input despite it having a variable gear ratio it's constantly adjusting itself this is more trying to feel connected to the driver and that's one of the things I really like about the overall driving experience now I don't think it's the level of a sports car but they're not trying to do that here they're trying to to give you the luxury the the feeling that it is something very unique while allowing you to have a little bit of fun and that's what we're going to talk about now is the performance [Music] okay so here's the thing people are gonna talk about this being kind of like well why not just get a Jia Jia for an RC F okay there's a couple reasons why this is totally different the first thing is the immediacy and the response of the chassis when you hit the brakes there's no role there's no transition it just stops there's a ridge of the sense of rigidity in the car that you always feel that you feel like it's always going to respond that's all you're doing and I think that's one of the best parts about this car is its responsive to all your inputs throttle response is razor sharp there's no delay there's no lag steering feels like it's always on tap the brakes as soon as you get into them the car responds and stops and this is in a Grand Touring machine of course now we're talking about street driving right this isn't you know designed to be a track car and you could take it there but I don't think it'd be a lot of fun but this is far superior dynamically than the GS F and the RC F in every single way the other thing to talk about is the stability control system like on most Lexuses it's not fully defeatable there's just this element where it it comes back on at certain just certain times and it's usually lateral g-force if you get the car to sideways it kicks back in if you are in first gear in manual mode it will auto up shift so I'm kind of on this turn and I'm gonna peg it you can see that it auto up shifted for me into second gear to avoid the car from totally getting out of sorts and I think my point with this is yes it kind of dumps down the experience you can't fully get this car sideways it always keeps the leash on you a little bit but the thing is for most street driving you can get it just enough sideways to put a smile on your face and it really is totally controllable I think they've designed this for somebody that knows hey they're not gonna drive like a total idiot all the time and they want that safety net this is still an extremely confidence-inspiring car for somebody that doesn't have a lot of seat time that's not really that you know great at driving a rear-wheel drive car you just don't get the sense that it's out of control some of that is because of the rear-wheel steering you know that rear-wheel steering module definitely helps to get the car to turn and the other part is the Torsen limited slip it's again it's not totally out of control I don't think this car needs a torque vectoring differential I don't think it's necessary at all until they maybe make like an F version of this car some hardcore track version of it but as it stands it's extremely controllable and fun to operate now the biggest difference in the the biggest pro of the LC 500 is this 10 speed automatic and we talk about this a lot with the RC F and the GS F they have this 8 speed and people complain well it's not responsive enough it doesn't downshift like a dual clutch the thing is they've programmed it to be kind of this dual purpose transmission smooth when you're just cruising around and then when you're driving flat out this transmission is at its best when you have traction stability control off and you're in full manual mode the transmission response is so good you can see why so many companies are starting to ditch dual clutches my favorite thing is the sound this is what sells me on the car [Applause] [Music] [Music] now you might be wondering there's got to be some type of negatives with it I think some people are not going to be that impressed with the riot quality if you're looking for a pure luxury car a pure like cruiser that is soft on every surface I don't think that you're gonna like this car especially with the 21 inch wheels you know steering is a contention of argument on every modern car I think it's super direct without being totally synthetic but there's not a lot of feel to it it's a little bit too isolated you know and again this car is not about performance it's about giving you the feeling that it's a sports car while still being a luxury car which is you know nice that's what most people want anyway let's take a look at the final thoughts and I'll give you the rundown of everything [Music] final thoughts on the Lexus LC 500 now it's been about two weeks since I drove this last I just finished the edit my goal was sustained neutral objective and non-emotional throughout it so here it goes this is one of the best modern cars I've ever driven and the primary reason is simple when you get inside and out of so many new cars what you start to see is copycatting the designers the product planners are stealing from this guy copying that hopefully to sell as many cars as possible that's not what the LC 500 is about you can tell they've just wanted to build a car that they wanted to build it wasn't trying to be an Audi a Mercedes a BMW or anybody else and that is why it feels special to drive and to be inside and to look at now it may not be for everybody at $100,000 this becomes kind of an aspirational vehicle it's not totally outside the realm of possibility but it's just getting there on the used market people are gonna be clamoring for this car and I think it's gonna be totally reliable the next thing that Lexus did was they tried to focus on mechanical simplicity they didn't over complicate the car they wanted to focus on driving dynamics so this architecture if there's any sign that they're going to reutilize this platform on future sports cars like the Supra people are gonna be really happy with this steering engine performance transmission performance are all at high level and speaking of the engine that's one of the best parts this naturally aspirated 5 liter is amazing in this car partly because of the induction tone no fake engine noise you finally have a real exhaust on Alexis it's that 360 experience you get driving this thing and we all know it's going away 4 turbocharged v8 Saur v6 is in you know inline force that's what everybody's doing so this is so refreshing to drive this now the the negatives are still negative you know the tech that's there the infotainment is still just I hate it the Digi stick for the shifter the constant alerts in the - the beeping all the way that you have to men you jump in the - I don't know I feel like they could even fur they're simplify this in a car like that but that aside I mean you can live with the little things like that because it is so fun and so nice to pilot lastly you don't have to be a professional racecar to drive this the amount of horsepower and torque that this car has is still usable for the street yes it's pushing 500 horsepower but the way that it delivers power is not totally wasted I was on summer tires in freezing temperature and I could still drive this car really hard as you saw in the video I think so many people are going to appreciate that element of the LC 500 so I hope you appreciated that video thanks for all your time and I look forward to bringing you more in-depth coverage on different cars and products throughout the world [Music] you

Channel: savagegeese

Views: 822,935

Rating: 4.8963075 out of 5

Keywords: Cars, trucks, lexus, bmw, mercedes, audi, luxury, tech, android, reviews, diy, help, best car of 2017, best, worst, pro, con, v8, exotic, affordable, reliable luxury, Ford, Chevy, Mazda, Toyota, STI, WRX, Type R, new supra

Id: BdG4qyUAaYM

Length: 44min 35sec (2675 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 29 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

After a 12 hour shift.. a 45 minute savagegeese video is exactly what I need right now.

[u/bennyboy9201]

I LOVE this guy's reviews... they really are absolutely unique in the way that they break down every single component of each vehicle from (what I feel is) an unbiased motorists point of view. I definitely used his review of the IS350 as motivation to ultimately help pick that vehicle up.

[u/Willscoso]

Final thoughts were great, had to watch it twice. This video is really amazing. I don't think this is the most beautiful car currently in production, but I love the way it looks simply because it looks like nothing else, and that alone makes this car hugely desirable to me.

[u/FFTactics]

Turbowski is my favorite part of these videos. He really doesn't GAF and isn't impressed by anything. LC = "lady's car" lol.

[u/200LBSAMMICH]

u/SavageGeese I love your videos. Your editing and sweeping shots of the car are amazing

[u/BigAngryBananas]

u/SavageGeese, fantastic video as usual. That was a very fast 44 minutes.

You mentioned that the car should be pretty reliable based on its construction, design, engineering, etc. Was there anything at all that might give you pause from a long term perspective that wasn't already mentioned in the video? This is definitely a car I would strongly consider in a few years on the CPO market. Your mention of the improved chassis, throttle response, steering input, overall dynamics combined with its aesthetics have me lusting for it over the RC F.

[u/StaniX]

Jeez this V8 gets better fuel economy than my 1.4 liter 4-popper. Technology does go fast doesnt it?

[u/IntoTheMirror]

Gotta wait for my partner to go to bed, but this is exactly what I want to get wet and wild to later.

[u/[deleted]]

absolutely love this car. i think it looks amazing and with a big NA v8 up front? oof