When the luxury division of the world’s second-largest automaker decides it wants a halo car, you get the Lexus LFA. There are only about 500 of them in the world, all completely out of the reach of normal people.
Despite this, auto journalists like me have nothing better to do than to scour the deepest corners of Japanese websites for stories about the LFA. Why? It’s got one of the greatest development stories of modern times and a V10 that sounds like nothing else (with a license plate).
It’s been roughly a decade since Lexus pulled the plug on the LFA. The cutting-edge factory is being used for other projects, but just like with the Supra, we refuse to forget that it existed.
A new report from a Japanese scoop website gives us a lot of hope. You will have to take this with a pinch of salt, but also prepare a couple of shot glasses in case this turns out to be true. According to Spyder7, Lexus has already begun the development of the successor to the LFA, and it’s electrified.
Not electric, electrified
Since so many of today’s fastest cars are fully-electric, such as the Tesla Model S Plaid or the Remac, many have speculated that all exotics are going down that road. Even Nissan has said that the legendary GT-R will, at some point, be electric.
Last year, Toyota promised as many as 30 new electric vehicles would launch by 2030. The star of that 2021 presentation was the Electrified Sport, powered by a solid-state battery and capable of doing 0 to 60 mph in 2.0 seconds. However, that technology isn’t ready, and the LFA successor we’re talking about here is a hybrid, not an EV.
According to our source, this new model will be ready in about three years and may be powered by a twin-turbo 4.4-liter V8 engine in combination with an electric motor. Together, they would produce about 1000 horsepower, which is apparently enough to sprint from 0 to 62 mph in 2.3 seconds. That’s almost unbelievable!
The car also promises an EV cruising mode that can last for up to 30 km or 18 miles. Many European exotics now offer such a thing, and it suggests the new LFA’s electric motor produces at least 150-200 hp to be able to power the car by itself.
The Electrified Sport had solid-state batteries, but Toyota said those will be available first in hybrids and plug-in hybrids. This allows them to experiment and test the tech before it goes into mass production. So the next-gen LFA actually sounds perfect for this job.
For the record, they only made 500 units of the old LFA and 50 more of the Nurburgring edition. This 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 engine has been rumored before and there are even patents for it, but it doesn’t exist yet.
A couple of years back, this was supposed to have 600 horsepower and power F versions of various cars, like the GS and RC, as well as the flagship LS and a new sports crossover, to rival the Cayenne. However, V8s are on their last legs now, so we don’t know what to believe here.
