Years ago, wild concepts were a dime a dozen at auto shows—real concepts, that is, not next year’s dreary production model dressed in a retina-searing color and sparkly wheels. But in recent years, the trend has started to die out, and gussied-up previews have become the norm. Lexus certainly has been doing its part in recent times to keep this proud tradition of dedicated show-cars alive. Over the past decade we’ve seen a series of concepts appear under the “LF” nomenclature, and in Sydney, Lexus unveiled its latest effort—the LF-LC Blue, the second iteration of the show car first seen at the Detroit show earlier this year.
Outwardly, the Blue (the color is inspired by opals found in the Australian outback, Lexus says) may look like the ruby-red Detroit show car, but this is more than merely a paint job—it’s a brand-new car, hiding significant technical advances under the skin. The most important of these lie in the powertrain, where the car differs in a couple of key respects to the initial LF-LC. Although both cars share a similar 500-horsepower gas-electric hybrid drivetrain featuring an Atkinson-cycle combustion engine, the new car’s output is distributed to all four wheels, unlike the rear-drive concept seen in Detroit. An even bigger change is to be found in the battery pack, which has been upgraded to a very high-density, lightweight job, packing five times the energy density of a current production battery. Probed for details, Lexus Australia’s corporate manager for marketing, Peter Evans, offered up the following: “It [the battery] was announced at a technological seminar in [Toyota theme park] Mega Web in Tokyo a couple of weeks ago. They didn’t confirm lithium-ion, but if you look at what they talked about, then you could speculate that it’s in that kind of area of technology.”
Lexus also has unveiled a few more details about the car’s construction. It’s built primarily from carbon fiber, bonded and with aluminum substructures. It’s a practice Lexus is considering for future products outside its LF-badged models. Measuring in at 182.3 inches long and 76.8 inches wide, but only 50.0 inches high, the two-plus-two LF-LC certainly is an imposing and impressive car in the flesh. Particularly striking are the taillights, which Lexus says were inspired by the afterburners of jet fighters.
The Blue also features a redone interior compared to the original LF-LC, colored in white and brown. Leather, suede, brushed metal, and wood are among the materials to make an appearance, along with two 12.3-inch LCD screens—one for the instrument cluster, the other for navigation—which boast the ability to stream info to each other.
Officially, the LF-LC is described as “still three to four years away from production,” with a fast-tracking of the process “possible” (read: entirely contingent on customer feedback). Still, those prospects are an improvement from when it was first unveiled back in January. “This car was never meant for production,” Evans explained. “Then, (general manager of Lexus product and marketing) Mark Templin said, a month or two after Detroit, that the response was so positive from dealers and distributors around the world, that it had moved from being ‘no plan for production’ to ‘a 50-50 chance.’ The fact that they’ve built a second one, and that they’re showing it here and in L.A.—every time that happens it increases the, I guess, consumer pressure to deliver a car like this into production.”
The LF-LC Blue is set to make its North American debut at the Los Angeles Auto Show later this month. And with another auto-show appearance, we hope the pressure on Lexus to build the LF-LC continues.
Courtesy of Car and Driver
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