lexus v8 imho is a bargain compared to what you need to pay for mb or bmw equivalent

 

MB and BMW only offer turbo V8's, which are a completely different animal from the NA Lexus V8's.

 

i'll take my measly 471hp, 0-60 in about four and a half seconds and less complexity with no turbos.

 

what is F-sport really? Is it performance? Is it more than a badge? I keep seeing and hearing F-sport this and F-sport that. 29 years ago thes IS, GS, SC, and LS im sure were at the top of its kind in comfort and performance. Sure it may not be fuel economical or the fastest, but it makes for 1 hell of a drive.

 

F-Sport is mainly an appearance package. There are F-Sport intakes and exhaust you can purchase but those parts don’t come with the car. In the case of the LS460, you got massive brakes on the F-Sport version.

The actual F cars all had V8’s and were the high performance versions of the IS, GS, and RC.

 

turbo or not lexus v8 has always been bargain compared to v8 from those two brands. lack of turbo is on lexus, it's actually a ding on lexus but still i think they are good value

 

Originally, F-Sport was the next evolution of L-Tuned with TRD taking the helm at turning regular Lexus IS and GS models into track-capable vehicles via a catalog of TRD-USA tuned components.

 

Not anymore starting from the 2021 Lexus IS onwards. Now F-Sports can only be had with the higher power engines. Thus the only IS F-Sport is the IS350 F-Sport, and from the looks of things, the speculated IS500 F-Sport.

 

IMO the entire Lexus lineup should be moving towards electrification/hybridization, with a handful of Dedicated F variants with ICE like an ISF, RCF, LCF. They should undercut the competition by 10-15% (e.g a $60k ISF/RCF and a $115-120k LCF).

Consider an RXF or another F SUV variant to compete with X3M and X5M.

In regard to Toyota, bring over that GR Yaris and stick a manual in the Supra.

People are falling into two camps now, performance enthusiasts that want dedicated sports cars or people who just want to get from point A to B and ideally want everything to be autonomous and want to be as detached from driving as possible.

I don’t want Lexus to lose the performance enthusiast market it has built up with the ISF, GSF, RCF in the last few years, but if they half *** a car that’s not quite M3/M4 competitor but also not a tech filled electric/hybrid Tesla-esque competitor, they’re just going to fall by the wayside.

I’m just having a hard time understanding this new FSport car unless it’s going to be an actual performance model or if it’ll keep walking this middle line/no mans land that Lexus likes to oftentimes meander in.

 

That's true on the IS, but not across the board. For example, you can still get a UX200 F Sport, whereas the UX250h is the more powerful version, and you can still get the RC300 in the F Sport, which is of course less powerful than the RC350. You can also get the RX350 in an F Sport, which has slightly less power than the RX450h. So they may be heading in a direction where they tie the F Sport package to the larger/more powerful engine option, but they've a way to go.

 

I'm curious to what this new tease is about, hoping it's the TTV6 from the LS500 into another chassis.

 

The F-Sport itself doesn't add any power either even on the IS350. You can get a base IS350 without the F-sport for the exact same horsepower so its still mostly a suspension/appearance package. I don't understand the strategy here as the F-sport package was a big seller for all trim levels due to the appearance. Why not make it on every model to drive sales as its really no different from the S-line, M package, and AMG appearance packages. I think how Lexus handled the F-sport was actually pretty smart and its just the full F cars that they screwed up on.

 

The point was that the only way to get an F Sport package on the IS is to get the 350. It's no longer available on the IS300. The IS350 is only available with the F Sport package. There isn't a base IS350 without an F Sport package anymore.

 

My bad...i thought there was a luxury package version. I guess they went the M340 route as there isn't a base of the 340 anymore. I still think the F-sport should be offered on all the lower trims. You can still get the M package and S-trim on the lower level forms of the 3 series and A4 so its weird that they took away the option for the IS as it was a popular and lucrative option for Lexus.

 

There was a huge price difference between the F Sport and F cars, that is why there is such a huge difference in sales, F Sport was around 6K or less over the base IS, GS, RC. F's were what 30-40K more over base or F sport models in some cases. Once you get into that kind of premium and class buyers expect much more and the F's did not deliver. I think the failure of the F cars boils more down to Lexus does not have the same image as BMW or Mercedes when it comes to high performance and they priced them too high for what you got. I was okay with not offering as much power/performance as most competitors especially if you get a nice NA V8 but it was the too high pricing/premium that was the issue with me and likely most buyers. Since the 4th gen GS did not have a regular V8 option they should have priced the GS-F lower, closer to where someone who really wanted a V8 could get one for not too big of a premium over a 6 cylinder or maybe make a less radical less expensive F model version later without the huge brakes, carbon fiber bits, etc more for buyers who mainly want a V8 in their GS.