2019 Lexus LC 500 review & road test
Owning a car like the Lexus LC 500 is partly about bragging rights. For the roughly $200k you’ll spend, you can get a Mercedes C63 S or BMW M4 CS … so how does it compare with the Germans?
Lexus V the competition
Personally I think the German competitors are a little more polished than the LC, and they’re usually turbocharged, with smaller engines and come standard with a thick layer of smugness.
But they don’t sound as good, they certainly won’t stand out and nor do they come with the exclusivity you want in a high-po sports coupe.
Haven’t you noticed the roads are awash with three-pointed stars, toy-boys in RS Audis and Beemer-loving business lads proud of their daddy’s legacy?
If you want a fire-breathing dragon but don’t want to look like you have no friends, the LC500 is a car attracting stares from dudes and the dudettes out on the street.
Parking in a typical Aussie street, a lot of people bail you up asking to the effect of: ‘What the hell is that?’ People - and not just car people - just want to know more about it.
It’s preposterous, wildly excessive, unaffordable, somewhat overt, impractical, and those strut towers are works of art; hand carved by Lexus’ Takumi ninjas from unobtainium alloy - probably.
Acknowledging the elephant in the room (always dangerous) Lexus’s core proposition is: Luxury Toyota. We all know this, but it’s not like that’s a bad thing; it’s a very good thing if you want luxury, reliability and, most importantly, world-class customer support.
The trade-off is you don’t get that epistemic German cachet. But happily, you don’t get thrown to the wolves if you have a problem. So there’s that.
Lexus LC500 is a design descendent of the manic LFA hypercar of yesteryear.
V8 engine
There’s also this question about the engine - a big atmo V8 that is certainly swimming against the downsizing turbocharged tide. Does Lexus have the runs on the board, with an engine like that?
Before going much further, if you don’t think Lexus has those runs and a V8 is certainly not up your alley, there’s now an LC500 hybrid, a drivetrain Lexus can engineer in its sleep. Click here for more on LC500h
So, how does a five-litre LC500 compare with the somewhat more financially accessible atmo rear-drive V8s from the Detroit Big Three? Thankfully there’s an objective engineering hack for sorting that out.
Hold onto your hats, we’re going in.
Lexus LC500 V8 will smash 0-100km/h in 4.7 seconds onward to 270km/h.
Power and performance
If you want to assess whose engineering department is doing the better job of turning X-amount of fuel into usable work at the crankshaft, known as thermal efficiency, there’s a charming little benchmark engineers use called “Brake Mean Effective Pressure”.
Essentially it’s a crucible for revealing which brands are simply spinning the engine faster to create a nominal power increase to boast about in the mid-life vehicle’s update brochure, and who’s spending on R&D to improve thermal efficiency.
The LC500 has 351kW @ 7100rpm, using 4.969 litres of capacity, which equals 183.3 Watts per kg. This gives you a BMEP of 9.95kW, per 1000rpm, per litre.
Compared this to Ford Mustang’s 339kW @ 7000rpm (BMEP: 9.61), Chevy Camaro’s 339kW @ 6000rpm (BMEP: 9.17) and the Chrysler 300C’s 350kW @ 6150pm (BMEP: 8.87), the Lexus trumps the Detroit heroes.
Lexus LC500 5.0-litre V8 offers peak power of 351kW @ 7100rpm and peak torque of 540Nm @ 4800rpm.
Test drive
If you decide to test drive the LC - and you should for the sake of thoroughly evaluating whether it suits your needs - head for a tunnel, crank down the windows and give it a real squirt. It’s just brilliant.
On your test drive, you’ll immediately notice this car feels rock-solid - and I’m quietly confident it’s going to feel that way in 100,000 kays, too.
Squeaks and rattles would be such a big ‘no-no’ at strut-tower carving ninja head office back in Motomachi.
This is how a Mustang or a Camaro might feel if Ford and GM allowed its engineers to build them properly.
I know it’s heresy using the word ‘Lexus’ in the same breath as ‘Mustang’ or ‘Camaro’. The Lexus badge doesn’t have the tyre-shredding, Angus Young devil-fingers pedigree, but there’s no arguing the LC500 is built better.
But, let us not forget the LC500 is twice the price of the Aussie-converted right-hand drive Camaro 2SS, and three times the price of a Mustang GT - so there’s that to consider. Sure, they are emphatically not direct financial competitors, but they are all members of a shamefully threatened species - the rear-drive atmo-V8 club.
There are three drive modes: ‘comfort’ (counterintuitively) ‘Sport’ and ‘Sport+’. The primary driving ergonomics are terrific for a performance car and in that context it’s a luxury 2+2.
But it’s not luxurious like an LS: it’s harsh on the luxury spectrum, and in Sport+ it’s ever so slightly ‘yes, drill sergeant’.
You’ve got great lateral restraint, so you don’t have to expend all that much effort keeping your delicate three-axis accelerometer oriented upright during heavy cornering - and that’s always nice.
But don’t be fooled, this car is built on Lexus’ GA-L platform which stands for ‘Global Architecture - Luxury’. Lexus says it has the highest torsional stiffness of any Lexus ever made.
It certainly feels that way, too. Unlike a muscle car, this thing wants to turn - it’s gagging for it. And it’s glued to the road. Near perfect weight distribution. That’s something of an achievement for a front-engine car with a V8.
You might notice a low polar moment of inertia too, although you’ll only occasionally feel it driving through the urban jungle. It really wants to change direction. Admittedly this car has the $15,000 handling enhancement package with the carbon roof, four-wheel steering and variable ratio steering.
The 10-speed auto - also brilliant. Perfectly integrated with the engine. Knows exactly when to shift, using what Lexus says is kooky AI logic which is not really the same thing as ‘paperclip maximiser’ AI, thankfully (look it up). But it’s pretty good at picking what gear to be in, and the spacing between every gear and those adjacent is equal - which you hardly ever see.
Lexus LC500’s a $15,000 Dynamic Handling pack includes four-wheel steering and variable gear ratio steering.
Performance potential
The paradox of cars like this is if you own such a car, the chances are you can never even get close to the limit. Unless of course you crash, and it’s safe to assume you’re pretty close to the limit if you manage that.
Two reasons for the paradox: One - (obviously) its limits are insanely high, meaning insanely higher than the driving ability of most people who’ll ever own an LC500. You might be driving fast for you, but the car’s thinking ‘yawn - six out of 10, again’.
And, reason two - driving near the limit of a car like this on a public road is unsafe, antisocial and a great way to put your licence in the shredder. And this is a pretty expensive (albeit enjoyable and aurally exciting) way to shred one’s licence.
All things considered, it’s refreshing to see what Lexus can do when it has a few too many double espressos in R&D. It channels a bit of Sir Richard Branson and says ‘screw it; let’s do it’.
LC500 steering wheel offers the “ideal grip” of 365mm diameter, the smallest in the Lexus range.
Conclusion
The LC500 is not ‘Luxury Toyota’. It’s a glorious driver’s car. Glorious. And I don’t say that very often. It’s pretty friggin’ ninja to throw at a series of bends. You’ve gotta be good - because it certainly is.
If you have $200k to drop on such a car, and there are going to be times where 197 litres of boot space won’t suit picking up big, bulky stuff from Bunnings, or you may have a third passenger in row two, it’s all going to be a bit too ‘Gitmo’ in the LC.
It’s such a niche product - it’s super hard even to define the niche. Who, exactly, is in this niche?
It’s the rich CEO dude, leaving work well after the kids are in bed, thrashing the shit out of the car in his multi-level carpark, because getting arrested for blowing the cobwebs out on a public road is bad for the share price.
LC500 is a nice place to sit; Lexus invested in 50 test cycles over two years to provide ultimate posterior performance.
If you are that dude, you probably do still have friends, so there’s plenty to brag about in the LC500, Therefore, I approve your proposal to buy one.
You’re either going to be an ace driver in tune with a device that’s precision-engineered, or just an average, affluent driver, allergic to dog hair and happy remaining blithely unaware the car is sneering back derisively at you, as you drive home in the dark.
