Somewhere along the line, I missed Evo Magazine’s review of the Lexus IS-F, which does a fantastic job at heaping substantial amounts of praise onto the super-sedan:

Before the end of the pit straight, one thing is already beyond dispute. For the way it slaughters distance and the noise it makes, the IS-F is a major piece of hardware. But mostly – and this is the best bit – for the way it locks you into the process. True, there’s an element of PlayStation in the electric linearity of the power delivery and the way the lightning-fast gearshifts merge almost imperceptibly together. This, however, is no whispering, sweetness-and-light Lexus. It’s loud and, quite clearly, it’s angry and out for German blood.

For such a compact car, that 5-litre V8 is an impressively big gun; only the C63 AMG’s 449bhp 6.2 hits harder, but the difference is unlikely to be significant on the road. Lexus claims 0-62mph in 4.9sec, but it feels quicker, simply hurtling out of the circuit’s tighter bends and sustaining a savage lick until well beyond 130mph. But then that LS engine unleashed is a phenomenon: sublimely smooth and flexible, free-spinning all the way to the 7000rpm red line and replete with a completely unsuspected – but quite magnificent – granite-edged bellow that shades all of its rivals for sheer aural drama.

It’s quite obvious that this car is simply a demon on the track, but we won’t really know how it handles the day-to-day until it’s in the hands of customers.

[Source: Evo Magazine]