It’s time for the annual Road & Track Performance Car of the Year, where the 2018 Lexus LC 500 went head-to-head with the Bentley Continental Supersports:
Conspicuously wealthy appointments, private-jet pace, a hushed but not silent engine always murmuring a tantalizing tale of torque. This is the Bentley approach to performance taken to extreme. Breezing down the highway, it’s a convincing approach.
Editors consistently felt something else in the Lexus: stunned.
Voting hour was contentious. Traditionalists raised their hands in favor of the Bentley’s stodgy charm. “It does everything in the proper Bentley way—big, luxurious cruising,” Baruth argued. “They finally made it feel British, special.” Yet the majority—just barely, with design director Matt Tierney pulled in as a tiebreaker—thought the Lexus offered the R&T definition of a GT: a stylish cruiser that can still clip an apex and be steered with the throttle. Consensus may be elusive, but through the messy democracy of PCOTY, the Lexus is the winning candidate.
The LC 500 went on to finish fourth overall — Road & Track has some great writers, and the whole story is a fun read start to finish.
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