Thanks
Then there are the little things
The best cars and coffee events around Chicago are from Fuel Fed
These folks don't seem to want members who don't have some Euro car (my Volvo 850R wagon has been gone a long time, oops now a cult car)
When I would show up to one of their so called Open events, even though the website says all are welcome and $20 to participate for non members I have been turned away in the LC 500
One time they begrudgingly let me put the Gen 2 NSX over in the corner of the lot
Once inside the regular members are amazing

 

Because they like to tease for YEARS and then cancel the damn car.
LFA was like a 20 year project.
LC-F they wasted over 5yrs of testing and then cancelled a ready production car at last minute…

This LFR will be released in next 2-3yrs probably if it does happen.

 

My local Cars&Coffee is mostly Porsches and exotics.
But also has lots of various M cars and some Euro classics.
Almost no JDM save for a GTR or NSX here and there.
Also not many American cars - some new C8s and some Mustangs.

There are specific Cars&Coffee that focus on American cars that i been to and have zero Euros 😀 Mostly older folks there but so many amazing 60s muscle cars and all the new stuff.

 

that snobbery / insecurity is weak.

 

I would point more toward the folks staffing the check in were given little info and don't want to get groused at for doing something considered wrong
The folks at Fuel Fed events are generally the most all in, non judgmental car junkies I have come across out here

 

This person tried to dissect the cameo and come up with this, although it is in Japanese.

 

Sigh.....can't wait to see how they mess this up. My bet is it will underperform vs an AMG GT

 

I think the standard for raw performance #s is so crazy these days.
Look at the ZR1, new Ferraris etc.

What these automakers don’t emphasize enough is the feel, sound and engagement. Those are things that a GT3 does well and so does the LC500. I hope this LFR, if it ever gets released is not too digital like most new sports cars, where you need to go over 100mph to feel anything.

 

Why not both? Make it both engaging and fast, it's possible to have both so a company the size of Toyota should be able to do that

 

Because to make it the ”fastest” you need turbos, hybrid assistance, more computers doing the work etc.

My GT3RS is not slow but not ZR1 fast but you will feel like you’re going way faster in my car bec you can hear it, feel it and NA car just has different feel.

The turbos, hybrid crap also adds so much weight.

 

Yeah.....and?

Faster is faster and you can get the engagement like Lambo did with an NA V12 or Zonda with a manual trans but Toyota won't do anything that crazy. That or strip sound dreading out and make the car punishing/"sporty" with no correlation to speed, that's cheap and anyone can do that. Slap a special edition label or "track ready" on that and charge more for the privilege of the factory stripping the interior for you.

In some people's opinion GT3 doesn't sound that good unless you are sending it and a few seconds of that is 100+ so that defeats your statement of avoiding 100+ speeds to feel something. It's stuff and harsh at low speeds sure but that's just annoying to live with vs a Turbo S that also happens to outperform it while being a better car day to day.

Full on race cars or track only stuff is way different than any street car

EDIT: Honestly just put a manual in it, that's the answer to engagement for near every car.

 

I don't think it's a tinfoil hat theory at all. Akio has made it clear that he despises how the American public originally perceived the Toyota name (and thus his family name and heritage) as "not being good enough" for them before Lexus was created. He's now trying to overcompensate for that by diminishing Lexus as a brand globally and giving more credence to Crown and Century. Even within the Lexus brand, he is trying to inject his own name and involvement into it, like the LBX Morizo RR - Morizo is Akio's racing nickname and RR is a GR sub-brand, which runs under Toyota. Someone who actually cares about the brand and didn't want to inflate their own ego would have just simply called it the LBX F. We're now seeing the same thing happen with this new vehicle, which Akio desperately wants to be tied to the GR brand and his family name. The warning signs came years ago when the 5th generation GS was cancelled and repurposed into the Toyota Mirai, and then later the Crown sedan.

And as petty as this all sounds, it's actually a very sensible move on Toyota's part to shift the focus away from Lexus and into GR and Crown and Century. I've been saying this for years (and it appears Toyota agrees with me based on its current actions), but Lexus's biggest flaw is that it started out as a brand targeting specifically the American market, and thus had difficult penetrating other global markets and even failed to be recognized as its own brand in its own home country in Japan, where Crown and Century have been storied nameplates for decades before Lexus even existed. Now that the American market has become less relevant on the global stage, it makes sense that Toyota would divert its energy into the brands that are already successful in Japan, and most importantly China, where Crown and Century are also more established than Lexus. We're also seeing Toyota slowly rebranding the Lexus brand into something more China-centric, as we just saw with the new ES - but this takes a lot of time and it would just be easier for them to divert more resources to their sub-brands that are already more successful and established in China. Current affairs in the US making it more isolationist will only further accelerate this plan to minimize Lexus in favor of Crown and Century.

The one thorn on Toyota's side is the incredibly powerful Lexus US dealership lobby, who has been pushing for the brand's halo cars and ultimately the Lexus brand's relevance. They rebadged the LFR as a Lexus in a private presentation to their members, and pushed for the IS500 and TX to be made in the first place. If not for them, I feel like Akio would have tried to cripple the Lexus brand in the US to an even higher degree.

 

Hyundai could only dream of making a two door sports car that sexy!

 

Just swap the badge for the US, nothing more required. However a Toyota dealer is way worse than an Lexus one so they would still need to maintain a upscale place for those who aren't buying rav4s/camrys/trucks

 

Ohhh I think Toyota is developing a new V8 for this. Like I said, CAFE is gutted like a fish... We will probably get some good engines back, less hybrid crap. If they were in development of a new V8 and canceled it a couple years back or whatever, surely they can continue where they left off and finish it.

Surely to GOD they wouldn't only offer this V8 in only ONE car (assuming LC gets axed).

I feel like we already went through this maybe?