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Man Maths: Lexus LFA

1 week ago

Writer:

Dan Prosser | Ti co-founder

Date:

8 March 2025

The Lexus LFA is Japan’s Porsche Carrera GT. It arrived in 2010, several years after the Big Bad Boxster, and there are some obvious differences between them, like the location of their engines and the type of gearbox they employ. But there are important similarities too – carbon fibre construction, howling V10 motors, limited supply and so on.

Yet what unites them most is this: they are their nation’s most vaunted supercars. In Japan, nothing comes close to the LFA. Perhaps the 918 Spyder is Germany’s greater technical achievement, but I don’t think that car is idolised among enthusiasts quite like the Carrera GT. Both it and the LFA are rare, but there are levels. Lexus built 500 examples of the LFA; Porsche 1270 Carrera GTs. That means you’re two and a half times more likely to spot the Porsche out in the wild.

Despite that, a Carrera GT is more valuable. You won’t see one changing hands for less than £1m – probably more – while an LFA was listed for sale in the UK recently for less than £800,000. Consider their production numbers and that difference is actually quite large. It tells us that among the very well resourced, the Carrera GT is the far more desirable car.

I can see why. The Porsche is better looking, sweeter to drive, far lighter, it has a manual transmission rather than a slightly dim-witted robotised gearbox and, well, it’s a Porsche not a Lexus. But I still adore the LFA. It could look like a Moskvitch and handle like one too, but I’d love it all the same as long as it still made that sound. Its Yamaha engine wails like a high-revving V10 should, but there’s a hollow, ghostly quality to it at full song that goes right through you.

It looks amazing, if not classically pretty, and it definitely doesn’t handle like a Soviet snotbox. It also feels beautifully screwed together inside. I spent a very happy day in one on the south coast three years back for one of my I Have Never stories. It’s one of those cars that you step out of a different person to the one who got inside – it changes you, like only really special supercars can. Andrew Frankel adores the LFA. We both know someone who owned one and sold it. Andrew has never knowingly passed up an opportunity to tease him about that…

One of just a handful of UK-registered LFAs

The LFA's scintillating 9000rpm Yamaha-built V10

There is a new LFA coming this year, rumoured to be called LFR. But it might yet carry Toyota not Lexus badging and, inevitably, the LFA’s naturally aspirated V10 will be a distant memory. The new car, essentially the production version of the 2022 Toyota GR GT3 concept and built to homologate a new GT3 racing car, will be powered by a hybridised and probably turbocharged V8.

Whether or not it ever displaces the LFA as Japan’s greatest supercar we shall have to wait and see.

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