History of Lexus F Car rumors: how they evolved over the years

[Gor134]

4. I think TMC leadership really believe Lexus in its current form is healthy. And if they only look at the raw volume, Lexus is indeed better than ever. But they ignored Lexus is again having an average buyer age problem.

I have a feeling the new GX550 is having a record-breaking number of conquest buyers for Lexus. Decent amount of "soccer mom crossover" owners are switching to the GX, like Q7 and GLE owners and whatnot.

 

[ssun30]

I have a feeling the new GX550 is having a record-breaking number of conquest buyers for Lexus. Decent amount of "soccer mom crossover" owners are switching to the GX, like Q7 and GLE owners and whatnot.

I agree. I used to be cross shopping X5/GLE/Q7, but was no longer interested in them when Lexus launched GX550, until they started recalling GX550 engines too.

 

[mikeavelli]

Although I fully understand your point of view, I also believe that I’m not alone while saying the first F (IS F) was the car that made me a Lexus Enthusiast and I did managed to persuade some 6 persons to change from BBA to Lexus.

Also, how many IS’s weren’t sold with the F Sport package?

That was all due to the F moniker cars.

Even not selling well on their own, they did managed to bump sales in a considerable way.

New IS F’s? Look me and a couple guys still around were fighting for the car when it debuted. I even paid for the driving events for it. Sales peaked in 2008 with over 2k units to what 86 in 2014. About 5k total. Lexus improved it every single year and it didn’t matter. Even I picked a GS 450h over the IS F at the time. Wish i didn’t do that.

If I recall they expected F sport to be 15% of sales and it was 40%. To this day F sport is a hit. The IS 500 F Sport Performance has sold well where it’s life was extended.

So there is a clear F disconnect. I wish there wasn’t as I loved F and promoted it to no end. Which means yeah I fucking failed too and it hurts.

 

[mikeavelli]

The point of M and AMG was not the success of individual M or AMG-badged models, which were always low-volume, it was so that there was an aspirational incentive for buyers to connect to something they feel is "more prestigious" within the brand they buy the car from. They may not own an M car, but they have the idea in their heads that M = prestige, and that's why the M badge is desirable. Thus, people go into a showroom and look at how cool (and expensive) an M5 is, and that encourages them to buy a 530i with the M-Sport pack because they want to be associated with the M5.

This is what Lexus tried to accomplish with the LFA and F sub-brand. And even though few people bought IS-F's or LFA's, the F badge had meaning and prestige in the minds of Lexus owners. You have to pay more money to uprade to an F-Sport product after all.

This is also why I feel like GR's place will confuse customers, because it's not a badge they can upgrade to within the current Lexus lineup, since the GR GT is meant to be an entirely bespoke vehicle with its own brand. Thus, its halo effect is pretty much killed for the Lexus brand. It may be a different story for Toyota owners, but would Toyota owners even know or care when the car doesn't appear in their own dealerships?

Well yeah now you can get amg sport on anything they sell. They had a plan to totally separate AMG, the original GTs was supposed to be the first of many bespoke cars but the second gen is SL based. Today not so sure but AMG is still peak thr S63 E is wonderful.

The thing with F is to this day no one (general masses) knows what it is. Hell to this day people are shocked my LC is a Lexus. I had a leadership class with some
senior high school students and brought the Lexus Racing IS 500 as a tool. Not one kid knew what it was. The older I get the more I realize how tiny a Lexus enthusiast is. It’s like finding a grain of ice on Pluto.

Toyota already moved to GR. TRD basically went to trucks. Amazing brand equity but Japan doesn’t have TRD.

Does anyone remember TTE?

I agree GR will initially be confusing but with billions being spent the average buyer that doesn’t know any of this history won’t care simply if they like how the car looks.

 

[Gor134]

Lexus improved it every single year and it didn’t matter.

You gotta keep in mind it came out during the "peak" performance compact sedan.

The B7 and B8 RS products sold just as badly, while the E92 and W204 were selling like hot cakes and they were damn good! Like I said those updates were meaningful to the ISF but the damage was done from it's launch.

the original GTs was supposed to be the first of many bespoke cars

Shame we got that SL-based thing instead of a true 2nd gen GT.

 

[mikeavelli]

The thing I'm most curious about, but I guess we'll never know is "Why?"

Was F not successful in Akio's eyes? Was this just an experiment that had to prove out in X time with Y sales numbers, and it didn't deliver?

Knowing that 5GS F, LC F, LS F, LF-1 and "LFR" were all well into development and close to being mature products, but killed late term feels like a massive waste of money which seems very unlike Toyota. Why? Why not give them a try?

Was this an ego thing for Akio, like so many of us believe? The LFA wore the wrong badge for him to love it, so he always wanted to put his own stamp on Toyota's performance legacy? All of this for ego?

Or was it a conscious effort to just defund the entire Lexus brand - IS, RC, GS, LS, LC, IS F, RC F, GS F, - because they felt like those aspirational products were no longer needed for Lexus to maintain (and increase) it's cash cow status?

Almost any other brand would have killed to be in Akio's/Lexus' position with those products and that brand equity, and they just threw it all away. Why?

The LFA took so long the entire industry changed and a full blown global recession happened when it debuted. When it started life the global economy was moving. F1 used V-10s. Toyota was in F1. Then engine downsizing and epa rules got tighter. I don’t think Akio was in any executive position to determine things then. He was a master driver not using his real name. Though next thing the LFA was flanked with Gazoo Racing branding and maybe that was a massive clue we missed when it was racing. I dunno.

One thing I’ve leaned. This industry moves so fast it’s unbelievable. It might seem slow but it’s moving at a pace that will beat the **** out of you. And while the Germans are more risk adverse the Japanese are not. We know this.

But hey we could be acura lol

 

[mikeavelli]

I think it's internal sabotage. There's simply no other explanation as to why a whole generation's worth of products was discarded like this. Billions upon billions down the drain. A decision like canning the new GS to turn it into a low-volume hydrogen car is like cutting your nose off to spite your own face. I didn't think Akio was the culprit at first, but with his latest statement about how his greatest regret with the LFA was that it wasn't named after himself, I don't know how much more damning you could get.

If lack of performance on par with the Germans was really an issue, I doubt they would be okay with releasing the GR GT with a measly 650 HP from a TTV8 and electric motor. Lexus rarely if ever actually rivaled the Germans when it came to top-of-the-line performance, and the complaints people had with that wasn't necessarily that they were uncompetitive, it was simply that they thought they were charging too much. Journalists rained praise on the GS-F on day one from people like Clarkson to Chris Harris, with it quickly earning the reputation as an "E39 M5 successor" among them. But everyone also thought that Lexus was asking too much money for what it was. Same story with the LFA, though to a much more substantial degree.

Gerry McGovern, who was in charge of Land Rover's design direction for the past 20 years, was just fired from JLR, supposedly because his campaign to relaunch Jaguar under that one EV was such a colossal missfire after canning the finished XJ and the rest of the Jaguar lineup. What's odd to me is that we don't see this level of turmoil publicly with TMC even though they are not in a dissimilar crisis with how much they threw away from Lexus, and the radical re-focus on the Chinese market with the "Luxury Space" concepts. Koji Sato has been awfully quiet, while Akio is now more of a public figure than ever.

The man’s name is on the door. People need to remember that. To his credit he is a master driver. He’s raced the Nurbeugung 24. We got a GR Yaris, corllla, supra, 86 and all reviewed very well and are selling.

We also need to realize how small we are, I helped host a totally free event with Lexus Racing at the track. Free breakfast too. 2026 IS there. Maybe 80 cars there. Colossal by our standards.

Bmw would have 500. Porsche 500. Mustang 500. Corvette 500. I’m sure with GR i could pull 200-250
easy.

Fighting for the F brand is maybe the toughest fight in automotive. We don’t have the sales. We don’t have the lineup. Not much support in Japan. Meanwhile any rich kid in college wants a M4.

I’m not typing to argue with yall. This **** all hurts

 

[Gor134]

Let me simplify it for you. We were supposed to get a RC convertible. That’s why the damn car weighs so much the middle
chassis is from
the previous convertible. Dealers wanted a bigger RX L. Dealers could not get not so choose.

It wasn’t close. We got the RX L. Why?

SALES

You can do both without compromising one or the other. This is why Lexus can't keep up with the Germans then.

I think the IS 500 and LC 500 align better for a dealer to sell or a customer to understand than a full blown F car. An IS F would have sold like absolute crap cause it would have been 90k easy.

If it had a 500+ hp engine, I think modern F has enough brand cachet that Lexus could've sold that?

Lexus F is just slightly more fresh than V, yet people are eating up the CT4V Blackwings and CT5V Blackwings

 

[mikeavelli]

I have a feeling the new GX550 is having a record-breaking number of conquest buyers for Lexus. Decent amount of "soccer mom crossover" owners are switching to the GX, like Q7 and GLE owners and whatnot.

And everyone please remember the 180. GX and 4 runner were going away. “no one wants BOF”. Within 4 years the OLD OLD OLD GX 460 is outselling the platform specific GS 350! The GS never stood a chance. The GX was selling in 1998-2001 GS numbers.

GS gets killed. GX 550 is a near perfect Lexus. Interior is spartan but outside that they nailed everything. No one gives a **** about mpg they want a badass looking reliable lexus truck.

 

[Gor134]

Cadillac v is struggling too, Both sedans are dead. CT5 supposed to come back, You know what’s selling?

CT4 is dead, CT5 isn't.

I think we need to accept those German aspirations and comparisons are over. Some overlap here and there but I can’t buy a V-8 TX with 550hp. It is what it is.

We've accepted it now.

Just saying the reason why F and their RWD products in general failed is they were never competitive enough when they needed to be.

 

[mikeavelli]

Well more than anything it says how enthused we are for Lexus. We purchase and support the brand like no other. The small hardcore group we make up should be proud we got it going for this long. We support we fought,

So again my heart is just hurting. I’ve only been there since day one for the F brand. Like a few of you here.

 

[Gor134]

I mean this is all semantics lol. The current gen CT5 is discontinued at the end of 2026 and ends production. The new gen CT5 goes into production and on sale in 2027.

 

[mikeavelli]

And i’ll say this. Lexus USA went to bat for F and wanted it to be great. Some great people there tried their best, I’m sure they hurt too but this is business.

That’s the part i’ve learned greatly. It’s business.

 

[mikeavelli]

meh

 

[LCLFV]

Fighting for the F brand is maybe the toughest fight in automotive. We don’t have the sales. We don’t have the lineup. Not much support in Japan. Meanwhile any rich kid in college wants a M4.

We almost had the lineup, but it was thrown away the moment right before it reached the finish line. That's where the root of the frustration come from. Acura and Infiniti have never gotten that far.

New GS, gone. New IS, gone. LC-F and LS-F, gone. LF-1, gone. LFR - given to GR. Would the vehicles that are gone be competitive with the Germans? Maybe not, but when you've already spent that much money to make them, you're better off just releasing them and working with what you have. Mercedes's EV's all flopped, but they're learning from it and have now taken efforts not to repeat those mistakes. Those cycles of learning are what car companies pay for, not just the products themselves.

Branding takes time. Maybe GR will be successful, but it's not as as simple as F because this is supposed to be a launch of a new brand, a launch on par with Lexus in 1989. There is far, far less room for failure for this sort of thing, and if Toyota isn't willing to invest as much in it as they did with Lexus in its prime, it's going to have hard time even catching up to where F currently is perceived among customers.

And i’ll say this. Lexus USA went to bat for F and wanted it to be great. Some great people there tried their best, I’m sure they hurt too but this is business.

That’s the part i’ve learned greatly. It’s business.

I genuinely believe Lexus USA has a better understanding and appreciation of the brand than its Japanese counterpart, and especially Akio. They understood the need for a three-row crossover and pushed for the creation of the TX, and they understood the importance of keeping an enthusiast vehicle alive for the F brand and pushed for that with the IS500. And of course, badging the GR GT as a Lexus. Not to mention that some of the best Lexus designs in recent years (LC, current ES, LF-1) all came from CALTY.

Acura is woefully underfunded, but they seem to actually have more autonomy than Lexus US. Right now, if I was a dealer, I would be lobbying the hell out of Lexus USA to gain more autonomy from its Japanese overlords. If that new ES and funky "LS" concepts are what Lexus Japan envisions will be the future of the brand, then Lexus USA sure as hell has a case on its hands to push for more freedom.