#KenGushi

The Scion FR-S will return to this year’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb.

Known for comfortable luxury, we take a look at the Lexus brand’s emerging focus on performance.

With improvements made to the race car using feedback from driver Ken Gushi, the Lexus IS-F CCS-R set out to conquer this year’s Pikes Peak in hopes of joining the nine-minute club.

Lexus has just posted a video of its IS-F CCS-R screaming up Pikes Peak during last weekend’s hill climb, placing second in its class. 

Lexus and driver Ken Gushi are preparing to take on the Pikes Peak Hill Climb this year in a IS F CCS-R packing 416-hp and 371 lb-ft of torque.

Muscle probably isn’t the first thought that comes to mind when you see a Lexus badge, but that doesn’t mean the brand can’t pack a serious punch — something drift king Ken Gushi  and the IS F CCS-R he will be driving up Pike’s Peak will undoubtedly prove.

We recently reported that Scion shot a new commercial for their upcoming FR-S sports car with Ken Gushi behind the wheel. What we didn’t know at the time was that Gushi had a hair raising experience with a deer while on the shoot.

And of course the cameras were rolling as he drove through some winding mountain roads in Northern California, and Scion has decided to share the video with the rest of the world. It’s crazy just how close of a call Gushi had with the deer while filming. Luckily Gushi, the deer and the FR-S were unharmed while making the commercial…at least as far as we know!

Watch the video clip after the break and try your best not to gasp.

Read AutoGuide.com’s review of the Scion FR-S here.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock that’s inside a cave the last couple of months, you might have heard of the Toyota GT 86 which will be coming to America as the Scion FR-S. But in case you haven’t heard of the FR-S (you can read our review here), Scion went out and shot a commercial recently with drifter Ken Gushi behind the wheel.

Scion Racing has made its 2013 FR-S Drift Car official at the 2012 Detroit Auto Show. Less than a week ago, we spotted photos of the same car testing, and our assumptions proved correct: This is the Formula Drift race car for Ken Gushi and the 2012 drift season.

We’ve been thoroughly excited about the upcoming release of the Scion FR-S – read our review here – but with any other sports car we hope that it’ll get a version with more power. A turbocharged Scion FR-S was recently spied testing out at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, but we shouldn’t get too excited yet.

We have reason to believe that the turbocharged Scion FR-S seen drifting is actually the drift car being built by GReddy for Scion drifter Ken Gushi. Gushi has been campaigning a rear-wheel-drive converted tC for the past few years in Formula Drift and it’s publicly known that he’ll be climbing into the cockpit of an FR-S for the upcoming season.

Previously, Gushi had teamed up with RS*R for the development of his race cars, but with RS*R taking a back seat this year, GReddy was called upon to execute a custom turbocharged powerplant and to get Scion’s new sports car ready to roll sideways.

We still have no doubts that Toyota will come out with a more powerful version of their new sports coupe, but we still believe it’ll come in the ways of a supercharger from TRD, rather than a turbocharged setup. For now, we can enjoy the sound of a turbocharged FR-S going sideways.

Check out the video after the break.

[Source: Motor Trend]