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Lexus LFA Buyer Tours the LFA Manufacturing Facility


While on the topic of the Lexus LFA production facility, Club Lexus member gengar recently visited the Motomachi plant to see his LFA being built, and recounts the experience in vivid detail — here are some quotes:

The tour was led by LFA production manager Shigeru Yamanaka. Accompanying him was LFA chief engineer Haruhiko Tanahashi and a Toyota-supplied translator. Having the chief engineer as part of the experience was a great honor.

Tanahashi was very amusing on the tour – he fills the role of chief engineer and primary brain trust of the LFA quite well. He didn’t speak much English but would interrupt the tour from time to time to point out particularly interesting aspects of the production process or supply technical terms that were difficult to translate, and would also sometimes take over the tour to lead us himself, including on multiple occasions having us go right onto the assembly line next to LFA workers to examine certain aspects of the production process (this would cause the plant manager to run off in a hurry to grab us hard hats).

Because most of the assembly is done by hand, there is very little machinery and therefore the facilities are very quiet. One of the biggest complaints I’ve heard from people who have done factory tours or delivery programs for their vehicles is that the experiences are far too commercialized and uninvolving, and the LFA tour certainly was a big contrast to that.

LFA units 42-59 were in some form of production when I visited. This includes my unit which recently had its structural chassis completed (carbon monocoque and aluminum subframes only) and had just finished machine-based stress testing. Needless to say it was really special to see my LFA in that form, and I feel truly lucky to have visited during my LFA’s production. My LFA is scheduled to go to the assembly line next week and should leave for delivery before the end of the month.

This is only a small portion of the full write-up — the entire article should be required reading for anyone interested in the LFA & its development. Special thanks to gengar for taking the time to put together such a detailed description of his experience!

[Source: Club Lexus]

JapanLexus LFAManufacturing
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    MIKE DELORCA
  • January 20, 2011
KREW----DO you know if all 500 new LFA owners had an invitation or even allowed to see their LFA being assembled ? This is truly more of the reason LEXUS stands apart from the competition. Also, anyone know if any of the other super car plants allow this type of observance and presence into the building process? Even Bentley and RR ?
MIKE DELORCA wrote:KREW—-DO you know if all 500 new LFA owners had an invitation or even allowed to see their LFA being assembled ? This is truly more of the reason LEXUS stands apart from the competition. Also, anyone know if any of the other super car plants allow this type of observance and presence into the building process? Even Bentley and RR ?
I would imagine that every LFA buyer has an open invitation to see the LFA plant -- not really sure about RR & Bentley, though I would expect a tour would be available.
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    Wunko
  • January 20, 2011
Wow, lucky!
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    Eljay
  • January 20, 2011
Imagine watching your very own LFA being built! What an experience that would be!
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WANT!
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    Evn
  • January 21, 2011
Hey KREW, you gotta frontpage this behind-the-scenes look at the first 3 LFA's delivered to the US. From Kaizen Factor: http://kaizenfactor.wordpress.com/2011/01/19/exclusive-the-first-three-production-lfas-arrive-in-the-usa-part-1/
Evn wrote:Hey KREW, you gotta frontpage this behind-the-scenes look at the first 3 LFA’s delivered to the US.
Yeah, just waiting to hear back from the photographer. :-)
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It would be awesome if they could film an episode of "Ultimate Factories" here.

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