The 2021 Lexus LC500 Convertible Is the Coolest Car Nobody Will Buy

This is a

2021

Lexus LC 500

convertible

and it's great, it looks good on the outside, it looks good on the inside, and it has a naturally aspirated V8 with 470 horsepower. This car has only one fatal flaw. Nobody is going to buy it today. I'm going to check it out. the LC

convertible

and explain what I mean before we get started be sure to check out the cars and bids which is my new online enthusiast car auction site aimed at modern enthusiast cars if you are looking to sell a cool car from the 1990s 80 and 90 onwards. listings on cars and deals we have great stock and you

will

get the most money for your car if you are looking to buy something cool from that era check out cars and deals we have cool car live auctions happening every day all day time and it's a lot of fun to look at cars and deals on carsandbids.com first a little overview now Lexus has dabbled in two door cars pretty much since it first existed, there was the SC 300 and 400 which had some success, then there was the SC430 which found some success among older people, then there were a few others and then there was the LC, which came out for the 2018 model year with the intention of being Lexus' new flagship with a focus on sharp design and excitement, this one was going to be the car he would show to the world. that Lexus wasn't just for old people anymore, the problem is that the LC Coupe has a starting price of around 94,000 and I have to tell you that a big two-door luxury coupe with a sticker price of a hundred grand isn't exactly going to be the first choice of young families or career twenty-somethings, so the LC has also been a car for older people and, frankly, not even many of them because older people are also increasingly choosing SUVs, like all In addition, to facilitate entry and exit and to give a better perception of safety and capacity, all of today's large two-door luxury cars are sales failures, the Mercedes S-Class coupe, the BMW 8 series, and frankly, that segment is so dead that, in fact, Lexus reportedly canceled a high-performance F version of the LC there's just no demand, but before this segment dies completely, Lexus is giving it one last try.

Pricing for the convertible has yet to be announced, but I expect it to start around a hundred thousand dollars. It has the same naturally aspirated V8 as the coupe. with 470 horsepower and looks absolutely amazing inside and out and today I

will

review it first. I'll take you on a tour of the LC 500 convertible and show you all of its cool quirks and features, then I'll take it out on the road and drive it and then give it a Doug rating. Good. I'm going to start with the quirks and features of the LC 500 convertible upon entry and that means I have to start with the key, which is oddly shaped.

We're really trying to make it look different and interesting, but it looks different and interesting and I actually like it, so I guess they've nailed it now. To get in when you approach the car, you might be a little confused because the door handle is flush with the body, so what exactly are you doing right if the key is in your pocket? You press the front of the door handle and then You can see it unlocks the door, the door handle comes out and then you can just pull it open and get into the car pretty simply or you can walk up to the car, press the unlock button on the key and on the door.

The handle will pop out automatically, so you can grab it and open the door either way. I really like the fact that when the door handle comes off, it exposes this top that has a little hidden Lexis logo that you can't see. until the door is unlocked, that's a cool Quirk, a nice little hidden easter egg and by the way, when you get out of the car to close the doors, just press the back of the door handle, it locks the doors. doors and then the door handle moves. go back to the door and you can drive away or of course you can just press the lock button on the key fob like basically any other car and then you get in the LC and the first thing you notice when you walk in here is this.

It's a beautiful interior, you look around and well, there's a lot of beige here. This is not necessarily the color I would choose for my LC, but the materials are fantastic, the design is fantastic, there is no stupid cheap plastic in the wrong places. A truly beautiful and magnificent automotive interior, one of the best I have been in at this price. It's a great place to highlight some highlights worth noting. I love these design lines on the door panel, instead of the typical rectangles, they are perfectly designed. flowing lines, they look like they are placed there almost randomly but they are beautiful, it makes the door panel look like art, it's really cool and I love the door handle on the inside, too beautiful material and it looks like it's floating there in place again. a beautiful appearance that complements this interior.

I also love the lines basically everywhere in this interior, this aluminum one on the door panel, there are all kinds of bold character lines sculpted throughout this interior and they look beautiful, another thing I like. Here is the aluminum trim everywhere, you can especially see it on the dashboard and center control console. It's not a sheet of plastic and somehow looks even sleeker than regular aluminum, maybe because of the tint or finish they chose, but it really is a beautiful look, it complements everything else in this interior. I even love the dashboard design of this car, this kind of weird looking one on the passenger side with the step pattern and the clock on the side again, it kind of brings a bit of art into this interior, everything looks wonderful and A little bold here and I really like it, but beyond the quality and design of the interior, there are quite a few interesting quirks here.

I'm going to start with the drive mode selector, it's not a little dial in the middle like basically every other car, instead it's on the side of the gauge cluster, you can see you push it up for the sport mode, you push it down for comfort and eco mode, a strange position, but that's what they've done. Something interesting happens in this car now when you go through the driving modes in this car, you pay attention to the gauge cluster, you go into normal and the cluster looks normal, but you push it up to sport and you can see it gets more red and more sporty. push it up a second time for Sport Plus and it gets even sportier with this white face that looks like a real performance car and I like that configurability, now talking about that drive mode dial on the other side of the area of the gauge cluster, it has another dial.

You pull it down to enter snow mode or push it in to disengage traction control, so there are some driving controls in that unorthodox spot, but easily the best thing in this area of ​​the gauge cluster is the indicator group itself, are you okay? Looking at it, the tachometer is right in the middle, pretty standard, but you press this little button on the steering wheel and watch, the tachometer moves to the side to make room for a new display to appear, you press the button again and the tachometer goes back. and this isn't a digital gauge that's just moving, this is a physical tachometer that's moving in place, which is the

coolest

look I can imagine.

I love it and it's a really cool party trick. Imagine trying to impress your passenger. Look what my gauge cluster can work haha ​​and the next interesting control in this car is on the center console which would be the volume dial, this big silver button in the middle, you press it to turn the radio on or off, but The volume control is the dial around. and it feels tremendously heavy. This is probably the heaviest volume control I've ever felt, but it gives it that high-quality feel, like you're adjusting the volume on a wildly expensive home theater system, which I guess is the point. a cool volume dial, which is something I never thought I'd say and speaking of the center console area, another interesting quirk here is the center console storage lid, to open it you push this little latch on the front and then pull of it back and reveals a small storage area, there is nothing unusual about that, the interesting thing is that when you close it, you press the latch and then it closes automatically and smoothly, which is a nice luxurious look that I find quite quirky and talking about storage lids.

Here, even the glove box opener is beautiful, it's a small, unlabeled aluminum button on the passenger side, you press it and it opens upwards. There's no ugly plastic glove box latch in the Lexus LC and then another peculiar element in this car is the gear shift lever. which is quite disconcerting the first time you use it it's obviously in the middle to put this car in gear you move it left and then down and then you're in reverse it's left and up and neutral is just to the left and hold it there and that's the gear lever, if you want to go into manual mode, put it down when you're driving and then you can shift using the pedals and to park, just press the big p. in the center and then you're in the parking lot, it's actually quite intuitive once you get the hang of it, but it's different from most other car shifters and next we have to show a major party trick of this car and that would be the convertible top now to raise the top open this little panel on the center console and you can see two switches here the top is on the left you push it up and the top goes up as you can see it's a very nice process , easy and relatively simple, and when finished right, the top is simply in place as you would expect from a convertible.

If you want to lower the top, do the same, open this panel, press the top switch down and then You can see the convertible top lowers back down exactly as you would expect. It's a very nice, quick and easy process, obviously without manual closing or anything like that. Here you wouldn't expect that at this price now also notable is the There is another switch in this little control area of ​​the convertible top that looks like a power window switch and it is, except it controls all the windows at once. If you want to lower them all, simply press this switch down and all the windows will go down. the windows go back up obviously its the opposite process just pull the switch the other way and all the windows go back up so you can be in a closed cabin.

I love cars that have a button to raise or lower the windows and this car has it and BTW another notable feature on top, as you go up or down a little progress bar appears in the gauge cluster to let you know how far the top is in your top process, I guess so it doesn't accidentally stop halfway. Through it, you can monitor the progress and see how it is going. Next, all the buttons, switches and controls that I've shown you so far have been extravagant, but ultimately they're good until you want to turn on the heated seat because the process is.

Absolutely numbing, okay, in your car, you just press a little button and your heated seat is on. It's pretty simple in this car, it's on the screen so you have to go to the menu and then navigate to climate and then go to the seat address and then highlight the seat you want to turn on and then raise or lower the seat temperature It takes you three minutes to turn on your heated seat, absolutely. Ridiculous, a button is always better, please, Lexus. That said, I will forgive a small part of the big inconvenience of turning on the heated seats because this car has a cooled seat climate function and that would be a heating system for the headrest, go to the headrest on the screen, you can turn it on and then it comes out warm air through this hole towards your neck so you can drive with the top down on a cool night and not be too cold because it's hot.

The air blows directly towards the back of your neck, which is a fantastic feeling that all convertibles should have. I'm delighted to see the LC do it because of the way Lexus would respond to my criticism about the difficulty turning on the heated seats by reminding me that this car has a feature called climate concierge, press the concierge button on the climate controls and You can simply set a temperature and then the car will use all available measures to maintain that temperature, so it will automatically turn on the heated or cooled seats. will automatically turn on the climate control and even turn onAutomatically warms the headrest with warm air so you don't have to do any of that yourself.

Lexus would say who needs a heated seat button, the car will take care of all that. you, but anyway, speaking of this center display situation, I'm disappointed to report that this car uses Lexus' Remote Touch Interface system, which is a mess and a half. I've reviewed this system negatively on other Lexus models, the gist of it is that it uses this little pad in the center to scroll through the screen, but it's very inaccurate, you're constantly overstepping what you're going to do and a touchscreen would be about 78 times better that this, frankly, a dial in the middle would be better than this, frankly, 4000 cryptically labeled buttons throughout the interior, like the cockpit of a Boeing 747, would be better than this.

It's by far the worst infotainment system in the car industry today and I think it's the low point of the LC 500. It's a shame such a nice car is loaded. With such a disappointing infotainment system, that said, I'm happy to report that aside from seat heating and cooling and headrest heating, the rest of the climate controls are separate from the infotainment system, these little buttons on the console central control knobs that feel wonderful to play. Press these are some of the nicest climate controls you'll see and adjusting them requires no intervention on the infotainment screen. In any case, which is a good thing and next, speaking of screens in this car, let's go back to the cluster screen of moving gauges and let's move it to the side so we can see the screen on the left, now this is not the vehicle information screen. shows the g forces and various other things of the vehicle.

It also has a feature called sway warning that monitors your level of drowsiness when driving. If you start to sway within your lane, a warning message will appear telling you, "it may be time." to think about taking a break and then speaking of the gauge cluster screen there is a very interesting graph that plays when you start the car look a lot of cars now have little movies that play when you start them and I think this is one of my favorites, very appropriate for the Pomp and Circumstance of the LC 500 and next we must get into the back seat of the LC 500.

Now accessing the back seat is quite easy, there is a small latch on the side of the front seat. you just pull it, push the front seat forward and it automatically moves forward and lets you in and by the way, check out this cool Lexus logo on the back of the front seats. I guess this is a nice little feature to make sure everyone knows about this car. It's a Lexus when you park it with the top down in Palm Beach anyway, like I said, getting into the back seat is pretty easy, but actually getting back in here is a little different conversation with the top down, it's not that hard to get in, but putting it in place is a completely different thing, you can see that the seat doesn't even lock let alone go back to where it belongs and if you look inside you can see that there is no room for the back seat in this car, these are some of the Smaller The back seats I've seen in any new car really aren't even useful for kids unless you have two adults willing to push up their front seats, so everyone is crammed in here.

This is effectively a two-seater with some storage space. Back, that point is an especially driven home when you look around and see the complete lack of something. There are no climate vents back here. There are no heated seats back here. There are no power windows back here. Nothing, you just have some seats, some seat belts for those few. moments when you're actually going to use the back seats in this car, that said there are a few notable elements back here, one is a speaker between the back seats, a strange place to see it, but that's where it's pretty big for an Experience Improved sound: Another unusual thing back here, the seat belts come out of the middle of the back seat, not the side like basically every other car, which is a bit of an odd experience if you're trying to buckle up and not back . that you will be and finally in the rear seat area you have a wind blocker behind the rear seats usually these are larger and removable but this one is fixed in place and is quite small but apparently functional enough to keep the wind out flowing over the car and make sure it doesn't mess up the hair of the people sitting inside too much and then I want to get out of the LC and start talking about your style, which I love.

I really love the way this car looks that I've had since then. It first came out as a coupe a few years ago. I think it's fantastic, these sharp lines and creases on the outside; A lot of automakers screw it up and overdo the styling, but in this case I think Lexus has done a fantastic job of making this look distinctive. and modern, sharp and cool, and I love the look of this car and I think it looks better as a convertible than a coupe. I think this is the most beautiful LC, especially with the top down like it is now.

I think it's a beautiful, beautiful car, one of the best-looking Japanese cars in years, and by the way, I also think it looks good with the top up. I think the contrasting color of the hood looks nice and I think overall it looks fantastic. It's a shame that Nobody buys this car because it's beautiful and, frankly, I love seeing them on the street, but I almost never do, and next I want to highlight a couple of particularly interesting exterior design pieces that specifically light up at the front. I really like the look of the The running lights are very distinctive, very Lexis, but I especially like how the running light housing starts in the normal headlight housing and then extends out of it and towards the grille.

It has a very unusual and very attractive appearance. I also like the front turn signal here. which is upright, that's not something you see very often or rarely, it's a very distinctive look for this car, but while the front turn signals are cool, the rear turn signals are especially cool. Take a look at them, they are also vertical, but they look even more similar. aggressive, bold and distinctive, and I love the way they look, what a sleek design back here. I also love the look of the brake lights, they are clear when they are off, you can see it.

You could hardly notice it there. They are brake lights, but then they come on and are red. It looks very different from basically any other car. Adds distinction to the LC. The other interesting thing about the rear lighting is what the lights look like when you just have the headlights on and the tail. the lights turn on like at night, you can see there is a 3D Hall of Mirrors like effect when you look at the taillights, very very cool look, very special, not many cars have this and I would love to see it here. I don't like, in terms of lighting, this stuff on top of the brake lights, this little chrome plastic looking stuff, it's so cheap and so tacky.

I can't believe someone decided to glue this stuff on this, otherwise it's so beautiful. materialized car, it's really a low point of the exterior when you realize it and next, since I'm behind, let's talk about the trunk in the LC, you open it by pressing a little button on the key fob to take it there and then you open it. the rest of the way and you can see that it's incredibly small, this is a very, very small trunk, you may have trouble fitting even a set of golf clubs in here, but that's the price you pay for the luxury hood-up style. down in the LC convertible. and finally we move under the hood where you have the naturally aspirated 5 liter V8 engine, one of the last V8s to power a sports car and I suspect this engine won't last much longer in the days of turbo charging and fuel economy. regulations and a lack of demand for the vehicles this engine has been in, frankly, as I mentioned, this engine makes 470 horsepower, which is a pretty healthy number, and about 400 pound-feet of torque, which is also pretty Well, it sends the car from 0 to 60 and top range in 4 seconds, which is decent, but the best thing this engine produces is a tremendous exhaust note, listen now, and those are the quirks and features of the Lexus LC 500 convertible

2021

, now is the time to take it out. on the road and see how well the LC 500 drives.

My first impression of this car when I get in is that it is a beautiful car, it is beautiful when you get close to it, it attracts a huge amount of attention, especially for Alexis. It is beautiful when you are sitting inside it. This interior is magnificent. Fantastic materials. A great design. Your next impression when you drive it is that it doesn't drive as well as it looks now. That doesn't mean it doesn't drive well. because it's fast and it's fun and exciting but it's not that fast 470 horsepower isn't that impressive um 0 to 60 in about five seconds is good but by a hundred grand I mean it's par for the course and it's not se It handles incredibly well, ultimately it handles reasonably well, but not too well, so in terms of performance, you're not going to get a 911, you're not going to get an F-Type, so you think, you know how it works.

Cruise, isn't that it? because it's a Lexus, well yes, but it's a Lexus that sounds, you know it's obviously not necessarily intended to be a cruiser and you can tell when you drive it it drives well, it's comfortable but not as comfortable as an S Class coupe or even a Mercedes SL in my opinion, I think this car plays this weird middle ground between the 911 and the SL and doesn't make either one that good, that being said I think there's actually room there for a car. There is someone who wants a cool, fast and fun car like a 911 but doesn't want it to be as rough or wants something that is relaxing and comfortable like an SL but wants it to be more exciting which the SL isn't and This is it and I think that This would do a great job of filling that gap if the market was already demanding cars in this segment, but ultimately, no one cares.

I really love sitting in this car. I love how it looks here. I love how it looks. sounds I love the feel of the whole look, I mean it's a really nice card. I think this car's failure is through no fault of its own, it's a great product and Lexus clearly took the time to set it apart from everything else. The problem is that the segment is a bit dead, so who is buying this car? The answer is simply that there aren't that many people, but I wonder what this car will feel like in five, six, ten years.

Will it really be a good used car deal? I suspect the answer is yes, demand is not strong in the New Market, there are pretty big discounts on these, they will be even less strong as they start to drop in value. I suspect they're really going to get picked up I just wish the infotainment system was the normal Toyota Entune system with a touch screen which is easy instead of Lexus' stupid remote touch because the remote touch seems bad now but within 10 to 15 years, when this is actually a used car, it will look ridiculously bad. and that will be a real demerit for this car in the future, so that is the 2021 Lexus LC convertible.

I really like this car. I love how it looks from the outside. I love how it looks inside. I enjoy the driving experience and the V8. It's great, in fact everything about this car is great unless you try to turn on the heated seats or sit in the back, but the problem is that it's just not going to sell. The big two-door luxury car is dead, but at least we have a beautiful swan song in the Lexus LC and LC convertible and these cars will probably be used cars. Bargains in a few years anyway, now it's time to give the LC convertible a Doug Score starting with the weekend categories and the LC's styling. magnificent truly magnificent not the most beautiful car the design a little fussy but it is fantastic and gets an 8 out of 10. acceleration is 0-60 in 4.4 seconds and gets a 7 out of 10. handling is good not great , but good for a car like this it gets a 6 out of 10.

The fun factor is high, this car has a great sound, great acceleration and the top down enjoyment only makes things better, it gets a six out of 10. The cool factor is also high as these attract attention. mainly because sales have been so slow that they are actually rare and it gets a 6 out of 10 for a total weekend score of 33 out of 50. Next up are the daily categories and features, this car is well equipped, although it doesn't have so many features. Packed like some of the newer luxury cars and gets an 8 out of 10. Comfort is good but the ride is a little harsh and gets a 6 out of 10.

Quality is tremendous, this is one of the nicest interiors on the sector and we all know the reliability of the Lexis, it gets a10 out of 10. Practicality is only okay, yes it has four seats, but only technically and ultimately it gets a three out of ten value and okay, it is expensive for what it is, but it will also be. reliable and resale has been decent, scoring a six out of 10 for an overall daily score of 33 out of 50. Added up, Doug's score is 66 out of 100, which is identical to the LC 500 Coupe and just one point behind the New Porsche 911 The 911 has a higher weekend score, of course, but the LC has a higher daily score and the LC is simply more balanced overall.

It's a great Cruiser that's also beautiful inside and out and fun to drive. It's a shame no one buys it.