Lexus LFA Driven - V10 Sound at 9400 RPM | The Octane Collection

A couple nights ago I was at home and Adam from SCD called me and said Hi Charles, do you want to come drive a car for us to watch a video? I said Adam, I'm a bit busy to be honest, he said it's an ifa, I thought where do you want me to be? and he said: well, lucas at

octane

collection

has one and he says: we want to come and drive it, make a movie before we sell it. It took me more than 10 seconds to figure it out. what I had to do for work on Thursday and then it was yeah Adam I'll be there send me the address and here we are black ifa for a day drive looking out the window now is pretty nice it's been absolutely torrential for the last minute, but this morning we flew in some pretty nice, bright weather and we took the car out, drove it for about four or five hours I think, and now I have great impressions of the car, if I can share them with you, I don't know anything about the

lexus

lfa, i mean when do you see a

lexus

lfa on the road?

I've seen one at a track day, which is one of Adam's installments last year from the previous year and other than that, I don't think so. I've seen one, so I don't know anything about them. I mean, what do you know about Alexis Elephant? I can tell you about Porsche. I can tell you about Ferraris. I can talk about classic cars. New cars. I can't talk to you about Alexis. If I can tell you this is number 411 because it has a plate on it, but I'm not sure how many they made, I think it's 500. Last night I had to look up what engine she is on.

It's a naturally aspirated 4.8-liter V10. 552 horsepower, I guess that's not 400 pounds of torque, but what I liked reading was that apparently it hit

9400

rpm on a day like 2021, you'll go and buy the fastest Ferrari I guess, and what's that rev2 ? Don't know. I know it may not even reach eight

9400

rpm. You'll have to listen to the audio we have as we drive today. It's absolutely amazing, so this morning when we got here to the

octane

collection

, I walked in here and saw our black Ifa that we are here to drive today. Looking around his warehouse, this is a new place they have.

I hadn't been here before. I have currently owned or

driven

all of these cars. we have gt3 rss of different ages we have a 993 gt2 here we have the Carrera gt that I drove here last year we have what a challenge, stradales in the background there is a whole line of them so I thought well I know what all of these look like. This is new for me. It's quite unusual for me to find a sports car or supercar that I haven't

driven

yet. The first thing I noticed is that it looks Japanese. You know, you can tell just by looking at what it is. part to the side of Carrera gt now both fronts can see that this is like the shape of the german porsche and this is definitely japanese, isn't it?

It has a lot more angles, flatter sides, sharper edges, Porsches are all more rounded, those are more the type of car I'm used to so this is something new for me so I took a good look at the car. I love the wheels. I was very careful not to stop them. They look expensive, we had to play with them. the rear wing the rear wing is up right now there's a button inside you can raise it or lower it we left it up for the pictures but I loved driving it because it does um I think it's 85k it goes up and down again at about 50k so We're watching that go up and down in the rearview mirror sitting in the car.

I went around this yard as a Muslim, 20 laps of the yard this morning just trying to get used to the controls, the seats are very comfortable. I have heated seats which was nice this morning, everything you touch in the car feels excellent quality, there's nothing weird about it, it actually feels like a nicer car to sit in and better built than the Carrera GT and Porsche. They built a good car but this Lexus feels like it's on another level when it comes to build quality, even the little details like the indicator lever and wiper lever, I'm not sure what they're made of I think than titanium with a rubber inlay, whatever material it's made of. it feels so good on either side of the instrument cluster, there are two little rotor dials here, one turns on the lights and the other changes from wet mode to normal mode, sport mode or push the end for auto, but again the dial feels really nice.

So the first thing you do when I get in the car is turn the dial to Sport and then turn the little dial underneath that does the gear change to the fastest speed on the gear chain, so those first two points of contact For me they feel. They are really nice, expensive, well-designed pieces of equipment that immediately make you feel like you're in a special car. It is very well built. I don't know why that surprises me and it's probably not necessary. tell you its a lexus at the end of the day they told me to get used to the gearbox first but to be honest the gearbox feels very similar to a strad and i had a strad for several years and also similar to the CSL and I've probably put 50,000 miles on a CSL, it's a single clutch automated manual which means it's pretty clunky, we have flappy paddles on this one, which again I think are probably titanium or magnesium, they're expensive.

The feel paddles are not plastic like in some cars, so you pull both paddles into neutral and pull into first gear with the right paddle. To go from first, if you go forward and reverse, you're doing a three-point turn, so first you press both paddles to put you in neutral and then the reverse is on a little switch that you have to reach around here somewhere and tickle it to find the reverse gear. One of the things I like about doing these shots in these videos is that the cameramen say okay, go up the road and come back and then do it again and then do it again and then do it again so we can do the same stretch. road over and over again, which means I can get to know that little stretch of road even though it's 300 miles from my house, which means we can increase speed, increase confidence, I can learn where the potholes are and the bumps, where the cambers are, which direction the car will be moving, which means that over a period of time on that stretch of road we can start to push reasonably hard to bring the car to life and get a feel for what which you are actually doing instead of just driving it around a yard from my point of view as a driver, the most notable feature of the lfa.

It is without a doubt its engine and how fantastic it is, it is one of the best engines I have ever driven. I'm still not sure if I prefer it or not to the Carrera GT engine, but this one in the Lexus. It's a very, very special engine, it's revving at 9400 rpm, the revs go up very quickly and it doesn't matter what gear you're in, the revs go up very, very quickly. I was pushing the rev limiter much earlier and I finally learned to pull my gear shift paddle at about 8800 rpm and by the time the brain has told my hand to pull the paddle and the paddles change gears it's at 9400 rpm and what a noise it makes, I have never changed gears on a highway.

The car used to be at nine thousand five hundred rpm and I suppose many of you don't have either, but it's an incredible feeling, but it also runs very well since 2000, you can put fifth gear at 2000 rpm, floor it. rev it to 2000 rpm in fifth and it will pull it, there's no hesitation, no jerks, no rough spots or flats, it just pulls creamy and smooth all the way through, building and building and building and building up to nine thousand five hundred rpm. and your eardrums are exploding and the whole car is screaming at you, it's just incredible, it shifts into another gear and does it all again, upshifting, the upshifts are a little clunky in this car, like they're on a street or in a csl if you have driven by any of them they get better with the higher revs believe it or not the faster and harder you go the harsher the upshifts and downshifts are however they are amazing thats right wow, on downshifts they really open up quickly from the outside.

That should

sound

epic, it will

sound

like an F1 car going into storage or somewhere. Wow, wow, that's actually really good. The gear shifting isn't that great, but when you brake hard, they have ceramic brakes, once they warm up. cool uh there is no shortage of braking power so it's hard on the brakes when downshifting again it feels mega the chassis is very stiff the actual bodywork feels very very stiff and the suspension is also Pretty stiff, so there's not much sway. There's not a lot of movement in the car, it doesn't dive much on the brakes or squat when powering out of corners.

It stays flat as far as I've been able to try today. It feels fairly neutral when cornering. I have tested it with traction control disabled. We are at Michelin P4. I think the tires are excellent today, even with the traction control off and 552 horsepower. We haven't had any great moments and I haven't been shy with the accelerator. Does everything. really exciting, I mean you can't escape the fact that 550 horsepower in a light car is going to be fast and the car should be exciting, it should be a little nervous, you should be a little careful about how you drive it. but I've actually been quite impressed that it feels quite benign, it moves a bit on these smaller country roads around here in Surrey, we get bumps and bends and the road veers into ditches and particularly low power where the rear ends. is looking for traction, you can feel the car move a little.

I had to be a little careful if there was a truck or tractor coming in the opposite direction. I don't want the car to suddenly slam back and point at me. towards a bus coming in the opposite direction and you also brake, when you brake very hard and the rest of the road is flat, you are braking, going down very, very sharply and it just squirms a little and I think that's just the chassis picking up pretty poor roads Around here on the smoother roads all that jitter stops and you can use all the power without worrying about the rear end squirming and you can accelerate harder into corners and you can start charging a little harder.

We accelerated through some of the corners, found a couple of lovely corners with a bit of a gradient going in and out of them and feeling the chassis start to load up there was quite a pleasure and the car felt great, it really does. I feel good. I would like to try a nice, fast, open track at Silverstone in the UK, for example, and be able to properly load the cars. Where do I think the car ranks in the entire sports car echelon? I don't think it's as focused as a car like the Carrera GT, which, to be honest, I think I probably enjoyed the Carrera GT a little more than the LFA and that's mainly due to the fact that in a Carrera GT you're shifting.

Gearing up and going heels and toes in a Carrera GT was something very special for me. I think the LFA is a car that won't necessarily be what you call a track day car, maybe it won't be what you call a b-road blaster car, but I think it was the kind of guy who drove long distances. frequently. This would be a great car to do those things. I would love it on a long road trip on some unrestricted roads or roads that are otherwise quiet and where you can play. I can imagine that engine going up and down through the gearbox at full speed through the gears using the high speed also fourth fifth sixth and for that type of trip I think this would be an epic car, well this is it another really weird car.

Off the list for me, I've driven a lot and never even sat in an LFA and today we did very well. I am very grateful to Adam from SCD and Lucas from Octane Collection for giving me this opportunity to come and drive that car I really enjoyed it, good luck to whoever ends up buying it.