Lexus LFA Production Ends With Promise Lessons Learned Will Be Applied to Future Cars
A car ten years in the making, after two years of production Lexus has completed building its final LFA supercar, marking an important end of the brand, as well as a new beginning.
On Friday, December 14th Lexus completed LFA number 500, a white Nurburgring Package model produced in even more limited quantities. While just 500 LFAs have been built, only 50 of them were Nurburgring editions. Lexus says the final car will undergo evaluation and testing before it is delivered to its owner.
The supercar’s role for Lexus is far from over, however, with Lexus promising that the LFA will inspire future models both in spirit, and in the technical skills gained while building it.
In a release, Lexus states that future vehicles, “will reflect the technological skills gained during the development and production of the LFA—in particular manufacturing know-how for carbon fiber reinforced plastic parts—as well as a philosophy of car design for delivering exhilarating and stimulating driving performance.”
For years luxury rivals such as BMW have been incorporating carbon fiber into their vehicles in a bid to save weight. Now it appears as though the effort Lexus went through to develop the carbon fiber chassis for the LFA will be shared across future vehicles, perhaps as early as the brand’s new flagship performance machine, the LF-LC concept.
The first ever true exotic sports car from Lexus, the LFA is powered by a high-revving 4.8-liter V10 engine that producers 553 hp. With a chassis made of carbon fiber, rather than of metal, the LFA was priced at $375,000.
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With AutoGuide from its launch, Colum previously acted as Editor-in-Chief of Modified Luxury & Exotics magazine where he became a certifiable car snob driving supercars like the Koenigsegg CCX and racing down the autobahn in anything over 500 hp. He has won numerous automotive journalism awards including the Best Video Journalism Award in 2014 and 2015 from the Automotive Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). Colum founded Geared Content Studios, VerticalScope's in-house branded content division and works to find ways to integrate brands organically into content.
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