KickinA

In the Feb 28 Business Week article, "Sexy Enough to seduce Europe", they quote: "Lexus says the V6 in the the new IS 350 will have well over 300 hp.."

Here is a link, but its not the full article:

http://images.businessweek.com/ss/05/02/lexus/1.htm

flipside909

Great find. The IS350 is going to be a powerhouse.

mmarshall

If this is true then the IS will have the most powerful production V6 in the American market...eclipsing the Acura RL's 300 HP V6.

dolesun

giving the STi and Evo a run for the money?

spwolf

i hardly doubt that you can compare junior luxury performance sedan with glorified Corolla's :-)

dolesun

Which one is the Corolla?

mmarshall

You're comparing apples and oranges. These two cars are not in the same class with either the present or the next IS. The IS is a luxury-sport sedan like the BMW 3-series. The STi and Evo are essentially street-bred rally cars with turbo fours, rock-hard suspensions, bare interiors, and little attention to comfort.

biker

I wonder if this is another one of those misleading statements. Lots of car rags claimed that the RL will be priced "well under" 50K and the final number ended up barely under.
So does "well over" mean 305 or 315 or 330?
Marketing guys must working overtime.

XeroK00L

LOL...I was gonna say the same RL marketing thing too and you beated me to it.

I don't trust those prepositions and adverbs in human languages anymore!

As for the horsepower of the IS350 I think the it'll end up being 310hp, which is the most talked about magic number and is just good enough to beat the Honda V6. We'll soon see.

rominl

iTrader: (4)

umm, well over 300hp? umm... interesting.... just not sure how lexus is going to position this, coz' the engine will be in the gs3 next yr, and the gs4 will get 400hp?

Gojirra99

A V6 can have over 300hp, but the V8 will get significantly higher low end torque . . .

mmarshall

Not necessarily. A number of factors in engine design affect rated torque, including bore, stroke, crankshaft weights, piston weight, flywheel size and weight, how efficiently the fuel is burned, mixture, effectiveness of the engine lubricant, how well the engine is broken in, valve timing, and many other things. A V8 may or may not make more torque than a given V6....especially a small V8 like the old 4.0L or 3.5 liter Land Rover V8's

Gojirra99

Yes I know what you're saying but you didn't get what I was really saying to Henry, maybe I should elaborate : My answer to Henry is that they will differentiate the GS350 from the future GS460 not necessarily by significantly higher hp like up to 400 hp, but by much higher torque at lower rpm.

Like the current RL V6 has 300 hp but only 260 lb/ft tq., but the LS430 has "only" 290 hp but ~320 lb/ft tq. The LS is capable of high 5's 0-60 but RL only get high 6's . . .

rominl

iTrader: (4)

yeah i know what you were talking about andrew, pushing hp numbers is no problem for the v6, and the lack of tq is still going to be the problem compared to the v8. however though, you can't deny the fact hat in the industry, people pay more attention to hp number than tq?

Gojirra99

So how does something like a 360 hp/375 lb/ft GS460 vs. a 315 hp/285 /b/ft GS350 sound to you ?