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I have been pondering what my next car is, and if it were a little cheaper on the used market, the GS F would be my hands-down winner. It just does everything - goes fast, has four doors and a decent amount of space, looks sporty but not shouty, and will be reliable. Sure, you could argue that other options, like the Kia Stinger, would do these things, too, but the GS F is more rare and has more prestige, along with having a V8 and Lexus's reliability record. I totally think it's "special".
AsI love the RCF and like the ISF, I can't adapt to the line of the GSF. Something is throwing me off in this design.
Yes, they all could become collectors. But so will become water and potatoes.
i absolutely see the GS-F as a future collector car. right now we are at the peak, and and the end of what i consider the "golden age" of high power cars. last of the NA engines without a stupid turbo crammed down its throat. the GS-F is an absolute blast to drive, and if i had that kind of money, id buy one over an E63 or an M5 (driven all 3), if i was in the market for a mid size luxury sports sedan. the GS-F is unique in so many ways and isnt generic looking like the other two. i see them being drooled all over at classic car shows, and selling at auctions for stupid money 50 years from now.
the biggest problem is yes, its rarity. good example are the oh-so-valuable muscle cars of the late 60s. they are from the last "golden age' of horsepower, when engine design had reached its peak and alot of performance cars today still dont have some of the horsepower they had, and those came out when the general public was actually interested in the mechanical aspects of a car, (engine C.U.) etc, vs today where the general public is more interested in gizmos like BT and backup cameras then how fast it can go.
thing is, the GS-f is rare now. decades from now it will be unobtainium. why? again, look at the 60s muscle cars. parents didnt drive those as family cars to put around in and middle age businessmen didnt drive them to the office. people bought those cars to drive like hell, and abuse, henceforth why so few are left today, even though they were high volume cars. they got ragged and clapped decades ago. the GS-F? its the same crowd, just a new generation. people dont buy GS-Fs/IS-Fs/RC-Fs to put around in. most will die an early death wrapped around a tree, or just have the crap kicked out of them and thrown away after ten years.
2 things that are HUGE enemies of the GS-F,
1 being the people that get ahold of them now, and even more so as they age and trickle down to the BHPH lots where tuner kids that dont have alot of money can get ahold of them, so they have to survive that. a great example already is the early IS-Fs that just celebrated their 10th birthday. try to find an early one with low miles that hasnt had the utter crap kicked out of it. you wont!
2 is all the technology and electronics inside of them. the muscle cars of the 60s were pure mechanical. not much electrical action going on aside from the radio, lights, and power windows if you were lucky. the GS-F is fully electronic, with dozens of computers, sensors, microprocessors, miles of wiring, electric parking brakes, electric power steering, electronic drive/shift/brake by wire systems. yes, Lexus electronics are pretty reliable for the first 20ish years, but after that, some of them start to get serious bugs. interesting factiod, 90% of Lexus cars that end up in junkyards are due to electrical gremlins that cant be fixed. as the GS-F ages out, i see an absolute pandoras box of electrical nightmares in them 20-25+ years in the future.
thing is, these F model cars do hold their value pretty damn well. its still almost impossible to touch an early IS-F under 20 grand, even for the worst most beat up ones, and theres 4x as many of them as the GS-F. it will probably be another 10 years till they fully depreciate down to $2500 craigslist cars. by the time the GS-F is there, it will be lets say, 2045, about a quarter century from now, the GS-Fs that are still hanging on, with dings, dents, sunscorch paint and cracked seats, will be in very very few numbers. 40 or 50 years from now? they could be only a handful left, if not totally extinct.
so the GS-F may have a happy future. resale value may keep them out of the hands of tuner kids or broke fast food workers forever, simply due to rarity,
or they will become dated ugly and horrendously unreliable cars that nobody wants, that broke kids buy to look cool in, only for it to brake down and sit in the driveway till it gets red tagged by code enforcement and hauled off, or left to rot under an oak tree somewhere for years...
The sound and feel of a great v8 is wonderful, but the performance has already been completely overshadowed by electric cars. A tesla 3 performance will blow away a gs-f.
the electronics in all cars will seem pathetic in 5-10 years, if they still work. Replacement parts for all current and recent cars will become scarcer and scarcer and more expensive.
further down the road, ha, only really rich people will be able to drive themselves at all. For everyone else, they won’t be able to get insurance to be allowed on roads with fleets of self-driving vehicles.
The sound and feel of a great v8 is wonderful, but the performance has already been completely overshadowed by electric cars. A tesla 3 performance will blow away a gs-f.
the electronics in all cars will seem pathetic in 5-10 years, if they still work. Replacement parts for all current and recent cars will become scarcer and scarcer and more expensive.
further down the road, ha, only really rich people will be able to drive themselves at all. For everyone else, they won’t be able to get insurance to be allowed on roads with fleets of self-driving vehicles.
It almost sounds like you are cheering this awful prediction on, I don't think it will be like that, not for a long time. Electrics have far too many compromises over IC engines to just write of internal combustion engines. A top line optioned out Tesla that is around or over 100K may blow a GS-F away in 2 or 3 0-60 runs and then its performance falls dramatically, a GS-F or any high performance IC car would destroy a Tesla at a track/endurance race where electrics are next to useless.
I'm agreeing with you on your analysis. But this could only happen when the world did't evolve. In 30 years, climatic catastrophies and the crazy weather will be a factor to recon with. So a good part of the peoples that could by those car willl not be struggling to survive. What would they do with a stinky car that you can't eat. Collecting and giving value to old things is something we can do because we live in "the old system" and a wealthy society living on loans.
Even if somebody would be climate denyier. Robotisation will continue to grow and lots of those who could have been interested to possess those cars will be unemployed and on foodstamps in the best case scenario. In the worst case scenario, a civil war or world war, would have occured that destroyed a good part of the potential buyers.
And the class gap is continuing to grow. Todays middle class will exist no more in 30 years, unless there is a war for protecting us. In the case there is not, there will be only poor peoples around and a few billionnaires. That will probably have they garages packed with Ferrari, Lamborghini and other Bugatti. A GSF looks hard to sell against such concurrents.
I'm agreeing with you on your analysis. But this could only happen when the world did't evolve. In 30 years, climatic catastrophies and the crazy weather will be a factor to recon with. So a good part of the peoples that could by those car willl not be struggling to survive. What would they do with a stinky car that you can't eat. Collecting and giving value to old things is something we can do because we live in "the old system" and a wealthy society living on loans.
Even if somebody would be climate denyier. Robotisation will continue to grow and lots of those who could have been interested to possess those cars will be unemployed and on foodstamps in the best case scenario. In the worst case scenario, a civil war or world war, would have occured that destroyed a good part of the potential buyers.
And the class gap is continuing to grow. Todays middle class will exist no more in 30 years, unless there is a war for protecting us. In the case there is not, there will be only poor peoples around and a few billionnaires. That will probably have they garages packed with Ferrari, Lamborghini and other Bugatti. A GSF looks hard to sell against such concurrents.
The only people who would be interested in the GS F, or at least targeting it in their search for a vehicle, will more than likely mostly be enthusiasts. Enthusiasts will probably care more about the fact that it has a V8 and should be reliable than about the ecological implications of driving it.
I really don't picture the world being an Adventure Time-like wasteland in 30 years, but if it was, the GS F would be pretty useless. Not sure if that's the point you were trying to make?
The GS F is special as the thread title says, but is it special enough? That's the question. Anybody who is a performance sedan enthusiast should grab one of these because this car's only been around for three years and there's no way of knowing how much longer it might be here. It will hold value but it won't necessarily jump in collector value either.
Does the GS F stand out enough to be called special and a future collectible? The competition went to turbo V8s while this car stayed naturally aspirated. The styling and its lines also don't stand out either. Very bulbous, portly styling and that's a shame because what's under that annonymous styling is brilliant in terms of mechanical perfection.
What would have made the GS line and the GS F really high on enthusiasts lists would have been a base V6 that the regular GS has, a midlevel V8 option and real GS F with turbo V8 putting out at least 500 - 600 hp and a snappy dual clutch transmission.
Collectibility generally favors two doors and convertibles. Think Acura NSX, or Corvettes, Camaros and Mustangs etc. Cars that define eras and hit a sweet spot for a generation of car people.
What kind of value could a GS-F possibly have down the road? It’s a high priced car that starts at a high MSRP. The value will plummet like any other car at the price point, the Lexus brand named will make it hold a bit better.
There is almost nothing special about the GS-F. It’s just a car.
If one cannot get the regular GS to sell, it's not going to get the fancy GS to sell. The two are still based on the same DNA and not separated. The standard GS is very likable, but very forgettable in presence. The body styling is it's biggest drawback. Same problem carries over to the F. Doesn't matter how great the motor is. The core is off-mark with the public.
(*Let it be known I love the GS due to it's conservative and traditional shape)
The GSF, like all the F models before it are about Lexus stretching its performance muscles but in a balanced nature. Each model has not been the king of the pack in any which way, except being the only performance model in the club that you can live with daily and depend on not to be a service bay queen. The MSRP was something the market never liked, the depreciation was like a rock and it only starting shining, when all the competitors became rolling out of warranty repair basket cases.
These vehicles will have a special place on the forum, and marketplace as they age, (ie compare a same year ISF to an M3 sedan) and thats about it. They will have a following but limited to the forums and special bunch of like-minded enthusiasts like they currently are.
03-29-19, 07:47 PM
How Come the World Isn't Talking About How Special the GS F Is?
Not sure if that's the point you were trying to make?
