When it comes to how the car drives, the difference is less obvious. You might expect the AWD would change the handling characteristics, but it isn’t noticeable. The steering is no heavier and no less communicative, and there’s no hint of torque steer. An advantage of the full-time all-wheel drive system is you’ll never feel the front axle connecting and disconnecting, which means it won’t upset the handling. A disadvantage is a small penalty in fuel economy, which is already slightly low for the class. Understeer is still the default when you test the limits.

Before we get into the numbers, I’ll explain what the F Sport package is and isn’t. This is not the new IS F. It’s got the same 306-hp V-6 as the standard IS 350, making the same 277 lb-ft of torque. As this one is rear-wheel drive, it’s paired with an eight-speed automatic rather than the all-wheel-drive car’s six-speed auto. What the F Sport package does, performance-wise, is add a Sport S+ mode to the drive mode selector (in addition to regular old Sport), adaptive damping, and exclusive 18-inch wheels on Bridgestone Turanza summer touring tires. Cosmetically, the F Sport package does a lot more, adding a new front bumper, LED headlights, leather steering wheel, leather shift ****, heated leather seats, aluminum pedals, black headliner, and a very cool reconfigurable digital instrument cluster lifted from the LFA supercar. Not listed on the window sticker is a valve in the air intake that lets a nice growl of induction noise into the cabin when you’re hard on the gas.

That’s what F Sport is. Here’s what it does: Our long-term F Sport needed 5.6 seconds to hit 60 mph and 14.0 seconds flat to run the quarter-mile, trapping at 99.8 mph. You’ll note, though, that this is slower than the IS 350 AWD it replaced in the long-term fleet. That car, with its all-wheel-drive grip, got a much better launch and hit 60 mph in 5.3 seconds on the way to a 13.9-second quarter mile at 99.4 mph. The rear-wheel-drive F Sport had some trouble putting the power down, something I think better tires would’ve helped, perhaps Potenzas instead of Turanzas.