The LFA Was a Glorious Accident, So Forget About a True Successor
But when the V10 supercar completed its two-year production run in 2012, it left no clear heir. And according to Executive Vice President of Lexus International Mark Templin, there isn’t one coming—at least anytime soon. In comments to Automotive News, he said: “We don’t have a plan for an LFA successor right now,” and outlined some of the reasons why the company hasn’t exactly been scrambling to replace it:
“When we started the LFA project, it wasn’t as expensive a car as it turned out to be,” Templin said. “It was a coupe for our people to move up in the family. We started developing it, and it got better and better. We switched from steel to aluminum to carbon fiber. Everything kept changing. It became this real supercar.”
“It’s a billion dollar project car, a happy accident of automotive history. A mistake from a buttoned-down company that doesn’t often make mistakes. A wailing mic drop.”
Of course, the long story of the LFA isn’t unfamiliar to any of the ClubLexus faithful, and this latest statement isn’t exactly some giant shift in message. Back in August, speaking to Bloomberg, Templin said this:
“Akio [Toyoda] believes that every generation deserves to have a car like an LFA, so we’re building an LFA for the generation we have today. At some point, there may be another special car for another generation.”
So the LFA could be a once-a-generation kind of design exercise, which isn’t going to sit well with fans waiting for another wailing V10 supercar that revs to the stratosphere and is priced accordingly. But as a testbed for next-gen carbon fiber weaving or harmonic engine tuning? It’s perfect.
Also if the Lexus brass is to be believed—and car’s glacial development time and spiraling costs suggests they should be—the LFA was never supposed to exist. There’s no way in Hell this baby would have been green-lit if the suits and ties had a clue what it would entail. It’s a billion dollar project car, a happy accident of automotive history. A mistake from a buttoned-down company that doesn’t often make mistakes. A wailing mic drop.
A gift to the gearheads of the world.
The SC is coming, and it will cost less than a house and be available to a lot more than 500 people. And the GS F and RC F are already here. So we should stop reading the tea leaves about the potential successor to the LFA. It’s just not going to happen.
And that’s OK—for now.
