Lexus hints at a successor to the LFA

Although it was not as fast and did not offer as good a price-performance ratio as its rivals, the LFA represented a very special product for Lexus. It went out of production a year ago, but the luxury brand Toyota still has it in mind. Specifically, what it appears to be planning, according to the engineer who conceived it, Autocar reports, Haruhiko Tanahashi, is a replacement.

He explained that they would like to develop a new sports car that would crown the manufacturer’s range above the new RC. Just like the coupe presented this month, the successor to the LFA would inherit the lines of the LF-LC prototype from last year’s Detroit Motor Show. In fact, it would stay closer in concept to that prototype than the RC, a more rational product.

However, the new supercar would not be as radical as the LFA, Tanahashi clarified. If it goes into production, it would be sold at a non-stratospheric price, like the one that made its predecessor famous. These plans were confirmed by Lexus’s International Executive Vice President, Mark Templin, who confirmed that they intend to launch an entire new batch of F models, including a sports car on the scale of the LFA.

However, the priority for the moment is to expand the range of performance versions of the company’s other products. According to Autocar, the first will be the RC-F, which we could see next month in Detroit. It will be followed by the GS-F, which Lexus has been testing at the Nürburgring, and the revamped IS-F. These will share a common feature: as Templin pointed out, they will become high-performance hybrid alternatives in their respective segments.

Source | Autocar