2021 Lexus RC F Track Edition Review // The Wrong Way To Spend $100,000

you're watching throttle house i'm thomas and i'm james and as part of our

track

series we wanted to try out the

2021

nexus rcf

track

edition

, this car had a bit of an interesting narrative arc, it was pretty much like that kid in high school who was older and all his friends were soccer players, then years went by and his friends started eating too much Wendy's and he started working out and all of a sudden they turn around and say oh hey. What the hell happened here? It's the Lexus RCF Track Edition, a 472-horsepower, rear-drive track machine, encapsulated in carbon fiber and tuned to dominate a race track.

The problem is, this particular platform was never all that inspiring as a high-performance machine to begin with, but with the Track Edition, Lexus has gone to great lengths to make this car handle like a road-specific sports car should. track and, at more than 120 thousand Canadian dollars, it is more expensive than any of its direct competitors, more expensive even than a Porsche Cayman GT4, so yes, it is better. be absolutely out of the ordinary, well let's find out, look at that rewind to 2015 when the rcf first came out, journalists put this car to shame, it's not very nice, so Lexus responded like all of us, when we felt a little burly, we went straight to the gym, except they didn't, they waited five years and in 2020 they made some significant changes.

They overhauled the entire car, changing steel components for aluminum. They opted for a lighter air conditioning compressor. They hollowed out the rear axle shafts and even did a few things. Carbon fiber, but this is the track

edition

, which means these wheels and brakes are lighter to reduce unsprung mass. The hood, roof and spoiler are all carbon fiber. There's even a carbon fiber partition behind the rear seats and the exhaust is titanium, so it's lighter. But what does that mean when you get behind the wheel? Sorry, mine in your way, I thought I was driving first, it's a classic alfa, that's the sound of a naturally aspirated 5 liter v8, something we've learned to love from Lexus. because we experienced it in the lc500, in this one we get 472 horsepower and 395 pound-feet of torque, which is a naturally aspirated torque number, it is lower than the horsepower number, we have swapped something of torque for some predictability, as a result, when shifting to manual I can crank up the high revs in this car and when I put the power down it's immediately there, I'm not waiting for the turbos to kick in and with that comes a sound that doesn't is heard with the turbocharger music that says "I don't do it." I don't think it's as perfect as the lc 500, it doesn't seem as loud, but it's still a very nice sound, a formula that will carry over to the new 500 f sport performance, someone else is excited about it, said I'm missing out. some torque low in the rev range comes in at around 4000rpm pretty strong, but it makes you want to rev it and that's why if you averaged the speed of our driving and our naturally aspirated test cars, we'd probably be being a little more shameless. because those cars make you accelerate and it's perfect on a track, so how do you handle the steering well?

One thing is that Lexus isn't new and that sometimes shows up better with the steering. It's an old-fashioned feel, but it's nice and direct, so on paper. Those things I just mentioned should be a successful formula, but is that actually true? Yeah, I'm not so sure he even feels as fast as his rivals, but let's see what Thomas does with him. Well, James says this is so. It's as fast as the Germans but this is the track edition so it has launch control so I click that button and I click the launch button with my left foot on the brake and no that didn't work that time, so let's try it again. it's really touchy, i don't know why normally

lexus

just there we go and go, there's really no low torque so there it is and the target only says 4.96 seconds, that's not that good so it's not super fast in a straight line, but the predictable power delivery and the fact that it is a track edition that stiffens the suspension components and lightens the car means it should handle the corners well, not up to nine tenths, this car is actually very Well, it just doesn't.

It seems to be able to get over any kind of bump, but luckily when you start pushing it, it gets worse. Many cars swerved on that curve. This is the hardest car I have ever skated on our track. I do not know why. combination of the suspension and the differential in the way the steering works, but you throw it in a corner and as soon as you slide, you're on it to keep the car in a straight line compared to an m car that's incredibly sitting on middle of a slide, this is not a post, it spins in its suspension and is not consistent with the way it applies power to the rear wheels, it's some kind of problem with the torque differential, but you know what sounds better . than whatever the Germans are doing now, so I'm going to do a hot lap in a second.

I'm a little worried that it won't handle well enough to allow me to set a really fast time and I mean, like other cars that are priced similarly to this, I don't know, like a gt350 or the m4 c63 and a competition m2 , even that is cheaper than this one, they are very well rated for a track like this, so I don't really know what is going to happen. It happens but let's figure out what the right time is for the fast lap this year, we are timing using the target only 2dl now the rcf as we learned it's not for lateral hooliganism and well it's not really for this type of driving either.

I found the suspension very difficult to achieve. Paired with Sport Plus it was too springy and the next stiffest setting didn't let the rear end settle, so I ran laps on both and the Sport setting was the fastest. I found the car very difficult to maintain at any speed and had a difficult time putting the power down in a predictable manner, however the engine is excellent as long as you shift manually and I will always choose a naturally aspirated engine as this one instead of a turbocharged one on the track, let's watch the rest of the lap, so that's okay.

It was a 113.63, which means it's slower than an a91 supra, slower than a competition m2, and only slightly faster than a tesla model 3. Okay, how's that for a lap time? Wait, oh, not that, that doesn't sound very good, listen. I'll give it to you if it's because they took some weight off the door. You know they are allowed, but this is not very lexato. I think weight savings is the biggest scapegoat in the automotive industry. Why that shit? Oh, it's sturdy, it's lighter. yeah, yeah, but yeah, the lap time, yeah, I'm not very impressed, no, but I mean, I guess it makes sense, it makes sense, although it makes sense, but it looks good, I think it looks really.

I like the shape of the rc which we never saw enough on the road. sorry alexis um though we always get a lot of shit for saying the m4 grill, yeah its eight years old you say you can say on youtube that you don't even need to beep um anyway so the m4 grill actually It's not objectively as big as this by measurements, but I don't think it looks as bad as the M4 because it's not the size of the grill, but the way it's applied to the front of the car. I agree, yes, I think Socrates said actually yes, yes, yes. a busy man, this is the hourglass, right, yes, it is an attractive front end, you know, anyway, from here it is, however, if you look to the side, it starts to look very strange, I think they've gone mobus, I think I've gone sporty, you know this is the track edition, so it has carbon fiber, carbon fiber, hood, carbon fiber roof, carbon fiber spoiler, it has a big wang , a big wing, yes, a big aggressive spoiler, yes, which I am impressed by the Germans.

That brave one, no, until you get to Porsche, it's not active either, so it's lighter, they just picked an amount of downforce and stuck with it, except you can only get this in black, white or grey, no yellows , neither blue nor red, I just want it. to be a car like this I want it to be loud I want people to see across the district and wow that's the track edition I know because it's that special car and cool you see the spoiler this one looks like the color of those trees that don't No No They have leaves, they've tried to have fun with it in some places, the engine bay, oh that's right, because what were we up to recently?

They had a really boring engine bay, the m4 competition, oh yeah, you just don't get my point.

wrong

, this is not fascinating, no, okay, so there is some style in that color, although they chose for the intake manifold. It looks like someone went and got like a classic pack of Crayola markers, picked the purple one, and just colored it. It's like a strip club in the middle of the day. Do we have any more analogies for this? Do you have another one? I don't have anything. It's okay either way. It's exciting. It's fun. they did and they did it on the inside, that's the only way the interior isn't crazy, but they've done some things to make it the track edition, okay, oh, not the doors.

It sounds good, yes, it's because what is lightness is lightness. I don't normally choose doors, I choose some of my own size, yes ok so I have to point something out here, yes for my wife I bought a 2015 Lexus that costs 300, wow what a guy. Yeah, yeah, it was good, I mean, she bought it. I just helped her choose it. She cost 25 thousand dollars. Yes, it runs great on low miles and has the exact same interior as this car, but I bet your wife's car doesn't have it. what the track edition has, which is red leather and alcantara lining the doors and seats, and I'm happy to announce that the carpet matches the curtains here because, oh yeah, because the carpet is red too, you can't see that very often.

It's actually a cool touch that the carpet changes and also, if you remember, we were at the RS7 reveal recently and I was really excited because the carbon fiber fabric was lined with the blue, say hello to Pokémon red because this has this has light red and I love that no, it actually looks really good, I like it, it's a fun touch, um, it goes perfectly with the red anyway, the rest of this is just new, no it's not, I can't say not bad, new. not the right word this is the old

lexus

this is the only interior i've ever known it's been around forever until what six years ago a long time ago anyway they changed the gauge cluster tho that's cool that's really it that's it something like outside of lfa this is the infotainment that's really not even worth talking about because it's annoying just like the climate control lc500 um it's no different and none of this is different however it's pretty comfortable I'll say the basic io seats they're not that comfortable, there's a lot of them, yeah, these are special seats too, um and you know, like you said, it's dated, but the materials are very good, they're nice, well, still nice.

Toyota-ish, but I like, really like the gauge cluster. I have to say it again, I really like these indicator groups. Uh, I have some complaints. Well first of all if you get the track edition you really give up a lot of things that for 35k extra start to make no sense but yeah but it's not sporty enough ok so you lose the ventilated seats you have to lose heated seats, you lose Mark Levinson. sound system like you know they could have done it, they could have gone crazy, they could have removed the back seat, I mean these seats are not useful, a series of two has more comfortable reasons, plead for devil's advocate, yes, respect the fact that they did everything they could to get the weight of this car down to probably where it should have been in its early engineering days, so things like heated seats, that all adds up, if I hadn't done that, these They are unusable seats, wouldn't you have preferred the back seat to be removed and heated? seats, I agree, yeah you know what they put in a roll bar to eliminate the back seat and some harnesses and make it a proper track edition.

It wasn't good, they were 99% of the way there, however it has been very easy to live with, yes it is very comfortable in eco mode. on the right cruisers, cool, yeah, that's really cool, so there's definitely some Lexus elements in there, you know what I mean? Yeah, but otherwise listen, this is not a bad car at all, I think as far as this chassis goes, yeah, I think. They've done a fantastic job maximizing it, you just have to ignore the fact that you can get an M2 CS and a Miata for the price of this car and that car and oh yeah, and the M2CS has usable rear seats, yeah that's it. hard, that's hard, dark m2cs, but v8 naturally aspirated, yeah,unfortunately for Lexus the naturally aspirated part can only get you so far, sometimes sports cars are more than the sum of their parts, this time it also takes away too many creature comforts from the regular RCF in the name of performance, lucky Americans though They have the option of the new Fuji Speedway Track edition with the Mark Levinson sound system, so with all its new improvements, although this is arguably the Lexus RCF that should have originally come out, it is still to this day not competitive enough to to undercut the germans and it's not priced that way either, the good news is that if you have no plans to track your lexus and still want that naturally aspirated v8 coupe, the lc 500 offers by far a cheaper price, thanks for Seeing as they changed a bunch of steel components to aluminum, made the air compression lighter, the air conditioning took less time, thomas, I wish I could do it again, the air conditioning igniter myth is a lot less, oh me.Funny, I told you, James, to land on your feet, not fall forward.